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Wow, so good and so bad. I'm sure it's been covered to death by this point, but the episodes were too long and it would have been so easily fixed with an editing knife. Most of those plotlines were terrible to ho-hum, but the Hawkins/Vecna and Lab/Vecna ones were still good and elevated the season (more on my theories below). I imagine, maybe heard from critics the writers must have put in every idea they thought up and no one dared take anything out or even question the show at this point. I only have two really decent contributions to chime in with, one of which someone already got here and both are probably out on the internet, but I just have to clear my head of all the scattershot observations that have built up first. -Show seems back on track with its core themes of different ways of dealing with (potentially!*) traumatic events and why the people facing them end up the way they are. Better than back on track because the new (originally) human villain seems like he'll stay a villain. The show has a history of starting to build human villains (Steve, I guess, definitely Billy) then nerfing or redeeming them in various ways. I was a little miffed at S3 for redeeming Billy--I could have sworn I heard it happened because the actor asked for it--because it seemed like he had a decent explanation for being bad, but holy poo poo I'm not sore anymore because it served Max's storyline and e4 climax tremendously. As I understand it, Vecna's origin of being warped/traumatized by his powers showing him people at their worst since his early childhood means he won't be doing a heel-->face turn. I think there was a somewhat similar power for Brother Justin in Carnivale, but it's much better here. (More thoughts on Vecna's attack below.) *I say "potentially" because after someone on here pointed it out, S2 blew me away with how actually Will wasn't traumatized by the stuff that happened to him but Mike had been by 11's disappearance. That's when I started taking the show a bit more seriously, probing it more (I liked S1 as a word of mouth sensation but didn't pay it much mind), and made a point of following the SA ST threads. S3 let me down in this regard but S4 is bringing me back to it. -Show's also back on track with 11's arc, of how (or maybe if, but let's be honest just how) she'll cope with her traumatic past and become a regular person who can deal with living a regular life. I think that's what the show's really been about, not the Upside Down, which is cool to see and could get explained but doesn't absolutely need to be. That's not the point imo. Anyway, S3 seemed to lose focus on this (till the very end) by treating 11 as a regular well-adjusted girl, which I thought was jumping ahead to the endgame goal. Maybe that's why it seems we've got an extra trauma retconned in for her to get a bit of an easy out for, but with more of Brenner and also Owens on the show because of it, I'm not complaining. (The show's done some believable easy outs before, since getting 11 back cured Mike's PTSD at losing her, so I'm guessing with the whole Nina-theme 11 will be much better now that she learned she didn't kill the other kids.) -It was the best of posters, it was the worst of posters. I am completely behind the way the writers tip their hand at monster and season inspiration with the posters seen, and I'm taking the Little Shop of Horrors poster in Will's room as confirmation that Audrey 2 inspired the head of the Demogorgon. I read about how Jaws inspired how the Demogorgon worked, and while I saw it after the fact I never would have gotten it on my own. But if I remember right I thought that thing's head looked like Audrey 2 almost the minute I saw it. It would be funny/odd if anyone in that house recognized the resemblance, but I'd say that wouldn't happen to the actual Little Shop movie comes out later. When it comes to (maybe) telegraphing things with Will's Alan Turing poster project I'm not sure. When the show just does a well written and acted scene in S3 and people speculate in whatever direction, that's fine, it's not on the show and it's not wrong for people on twitter to care about things and speculate either. It's never wrong to just foreshadow either. And I'm not complaining about what goes on in Will and Mike's (precious few meaningful) scenes. But the Turing bit makes it all feel too cute or too clever or too much like a game of "Is this a Hint or Misdirection?" with Will's sexuality. Not to mention what happened to Turing is a bit much for what seems like a cheeky aside. Or maybe I just don't respect subtext enough; I don't how I missed all the Turning subtext when I read Neuromancer a couple decades ago. I don't know, maybe things will look different once the season's over and we see how it's all played. -Show's at it's best when it remixes or recapitulates itself, and that's not a dig or me being ironic. Max's exquisite Running Up That Hill supernatural music therapy scene where everyone tried to get through to her as they lose her in front of them is a bit of a redo of Will's exquisite Should I Stay or Should I Go supernatural music therapy scene in S2 where people try to get through to him as they lose him in front them, which is a redo of how both Will and the others used Should I Stay or Should I Go to reach across dimensions to each other in season 1. My favorite is 2 because, on top of other non-musical reasons, season 3 characteristically uses a lot of pricey visual effects while season 2 just had a handful of talented actors in a dark shed performing great material, sometimes in silence. Reminds of my favorite B5 episode, which is basically just Bruce Boxleitner in the dark with a guy who apparently was just an acting teacher (Intersections in Real Time). It's worth noting that in both S2 and S4 the characters are in different ways using, yes, nostalgia as a weapon against the forces of darkness. Don Draper couldn't have done it better. -I hope the Mind Flayer doesn't turn out to be just some creature Vecna created in the image of the spiders he loves. I love the MF design in season 2, but I do admit it is sort of spider-like. -I liked how the show dropped its normal routine of synth original music to use pipe organ/orchestral music for the main Vecna reveal. Assuming that was original, since it matched what was on screen rather well. -I hope I'm not the only one who noticed how spectral Billy is crying during his otherworldly confrontation with Max the way possessed Billy was crying in his hateful otherworldly confrontation with El in S3. -It was fun to have a villain identity mystery (four different identities technically) you could solve on your own before the big reveal at the end of 7. Nothing too hard and probably not that deep, I guess, but still fun, maybe rewarding. You could get it at the end of episode 4, I think. I got it after the end of e5, I think. It helped me to take it one episode a day--sleeping on things is your friend--and to pour over credits as the obsessive-compulsive I am. When someone called "friendly orderly" is given top billing in the end credits I think every regular-credits ep but the last, but also doesn't seem to be in most episodes, someone is telling you something. (I don't consider credit reading to be cheating. Your mileage may vary.) XboxPants posted:It's worse than that. I saw an article that pointed out that this season we're told that Mike comes to visit El and Will on March 22. In an earlier season we were told that... March 22 is actually Will's birthday. Second, main contribution: I'm 98-100% sure Vecna's attack is a Jungian shadow attack, or maybe I should say Ursula K. Le Guin shadow attack since the whole season might (no idea here) have been telegraphed by what part of that certain book A Wizard of Earthsea Suzie is reading in Season 3. Supposedly Le Guin wrote that without reading similar stuff in Jungian psychology, which I don't claim to understand too well but have seen pop up in fiction now and then. This suggests to me a) she's a loving genius, and b) she and Jung were both on to something. If it worked for Newton and Leibniz with calculus... The idea is basically what Vecna is preying on here: people have a shadow self they are denying and the right thing to do is confront it and admit that it is them, then merge back together; otherwise something...bad comes from denying the truth the shadow represents. Anyway, this feels like the root of Vecna's origin, always seeing the most hidden side of people, and also the theme of the season; I couldn't even skim the whole thread, but someone mentioned something Brenner said to El that is right up the alley of confronting the shadow. The proof this is what the attack is will be whether you can repel the attack by admitting what Vecna is saying about what you are hiding or running away from is true, or if the music defense is the only way. (Maybe Nancy tries this strategy at the start of e8 since I don't think we know her favorite music and they don't have it ready to go in the Upside Down there?) I actually like that there could be two completely different ways of stopping the monster's attack. It's got to be more than a telekenetic attack like he used on the kids at the lab, else there wouldn't be a confrontation before the kills. And didn't it seem like it took a long time to get to the killing stage with Max before the music? I think it's because, with the advantage of thinking she was going to die, she did exactly the right thing with that letter owning up to what she was hiding, and she only started to lose when she started to deny a part of her wanted Billy dead and she hated herself to death for it. I honestly thought Max might die in that scene because she was doing the right thing then the wrong one. Because I felt like I'd seen this before, not just in [the book mentioned in S3] A Wizard of Earthsea but also (hope this isn't spoilers) the video game Persona 4. (That game wears the stuff about shadows on its sleeve, not tucked into the final act.) The Persona games are all supposed to be about Jungian psychology, but that one was specifically about confronting one's shadow. If you broaden out the concept beyond being killed by one's shadow ([book character mentioned in S3]Ged and the Persona 4 characters are explicitly in danger of being possessed and/or, iirc, being brutally mangled by their shadows) then it's a dynamite writing technique you find a lot of places. The recent dynamite season of the dynamite show Undone tackled the same thing about a month ago using its own terms there it was an unintegrated puzzle piece. In the finale of Breaking Bad Walter White's final scene with Skyler can be seen as Walter White finally confronting his shadow. I don't think any of this means the Upside Down is like the Dry Land or some Jungian collective unconscious world. This shadow hook would define this season but not the whole show. But it's an easy formula for good drama, particularly in a fantasy setting. The only time I know of it not being used well was when it was sometimes-bungled in Persona 4, and then only with LGBT issues. Let that perhaps be a warning that Stranger Things should not broaden out the theme too widely this season, especially since it has a billion characters as it is. Or, since everyone's bound to end up in Hawkins by the end of it, maybe the show will get extremely ambitious with it. At least it makes things interesting. I mean, can you imagine what Brenner's shadow would be? Or Owens'? It took me till the end of the second episode to figure out that, in my theory anyway, Vecan's attack is a confrontation with one's shadow. Before that...drat, I was struggling a bit to still love and care about the show. At the Not-Skate-O-Rama I sometimes felt like I wanted someone to call Sludge Vohaul's Sequel Police to wrap the show up for running too long. I think this is the only truly new (new to the series, not original) element that's helping the show. And it's a worthwhile element. With so many viewers, Stranger Things doesn't need help competing for viewership with any show, except maybe the news or, God help us, Tucker Carlson. It's more a question of how the show will use it's soapbox. If the season ended up standing for "What's your favorite song?," that would be fun, I guess, but not something worth remember long or lauding. This shadow attack, which pokes the audience to take a look in the mirror, is, or will be if that's the angle it takes in the S4 conclusion. I really hope it does. OK that was a lot to vent, more like a full review. Way longer than I intended. Maybe should have waited till the season finished, but then no fun with predictions, plus that's almost a drat month away.
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Jun 9, 2022 09:14
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The simple greatness of Will's painting, which anyone who knows what love is will understand*, is that apart from the super obvious (super adorable) stuff explained in the dialogue, it's just an updated version of his earlier drawing of the original party, with himself reinstated as wizard and El spun out into supposed commissioner of the painting. To unpack that, back in season 2 , Mike mentions to Max that El is their wizard and Will is their cleric. I'm sure at some point Will had to hear Mike's new vision of the party. I think when a new season of ST is good it lets you see the old seasons in a different light, maybe even feel like a new direction it's taking the show was secretly there all along. S2 did that for me, S3 didn't, and S4 is starting to in a big way, and I bet it totally would with full a rewatch. The show's gotten long and I just don't have the time for a full rewatch anytime soon, maybe before S5, but this is a good example. Sure back then I got that Will didn't much like having his spot in his circle of friends taken by someone he hadn't yet met or cared for as a friend/sister, but it went over my head then (rightly, way back then, I'd argue) that clerics are, you know, generally supposed to be celibate. *I'm sure #1 Will favorite song must still be Should I Stay or Should I Go, but that Black Mirror one sure fits the bill now. Vecna's (and Mike's?) favorite song is Johanna from Sweeney Todd. Click to explain/ruin the joke or for beautiful love-at-first-sight song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFPYFcVZfE Onomarchus fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 09:18
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From what I've heard in a Duffer interview about the spinoff, it a) could be done without the Stranger Things name attached, b) might be developed during S5 but wouldn't be shot till after, and c) probably most importantly is so unimaginable that only Finn Wolfhard could guess what it would be. So anything we can guess, be it Dustin & Steve Comedy Hour, [Any Given Couple] Domestic Drama, or Mr. Clarke Explains the Universe, should not be it. I won't pretend I'm not intrigued, mildly at least.LividLiquid posted:Out of nowhere metaphor, but It's a lot like being polyamorous. Are you sure it's completely out of nowhere? This season set up the show's first really huge love triangle, and while I'm dead first-instant-of-contemplating-it certain these characters will not be swingers, the way one boy can't handle his girlfriend without being handled by his stealth/not-boyfriend would be either, take your pick, funny if it weren't so pathetic or pathetic if it weren't so heartwarming. (I lean the latter, so hard.) Yes I quoted the Hamill Joker. Sue me. Vecna quotes or channels George Carlin. Anyway, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the storybook romance train may actually be headed in a different direction than the inevitable-seeming destination it started with, and it's looking more and more like Eleven may be the one left at the station.
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Jul 8, 2022 08:55
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Why is there no water in the Upside Down?
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Jul 9, 2022 22:21
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Tender Bender posted:I gotta rewatch season 1 sometime and see how it holds up. I remember being struck by how well the small personal stakes of Hop's arc worked, saving Eleven as part of his working through the grief of losing his own kid. It was tight and focused and told a complete story, at least in my recollection. I highly recommend doing this even though I liked S2 more especially because of S1's tightness, something the series increasingly loses. Love S2 as I do, it's where it first let dross in, in The Lost Sister. ST wears many hats, tries to be all things to all people, but it definitely works as serious psychological drama. It's just that people will put up with horror more often than genuinely depressing stuff, and you need to go low one way or another if you want to feel meaningfully uplifting. Helps to get people in the chapel before you can preach to them. But you kind of mistakenly alluded to something involving a dropped thread from S1 I wish the show had taken up but likely can't or doesn't need to. Thing is, in S1 he was working through his own PTSD from his lost kid by finding Will, and he beat the breath back into him with the anger and pain of the loss of his daughter. But he didn't pivot to saving Eleven because of coincidence or because he discovered himself as some "finder of lost children" in general. He sold her out to Brenner to save Will. The show spends so much time developing Joyce as this nearly crazy woman who would do anything to save Will and won't let go, even having Jonathan of all people tell her to move on at one point I think, but then there's something she won't do. She won't trust Brenner and sell out Eleven to save Will. Hopper does. And the kids back at the school when the G-men show up know someone sold them out. Dustin even says "Lando." Never gets mentioned again, though it easily could have been dealt with off-camera. By now they're all such a caring family unit the reveal would wash off them. Anyhow, S1 plus Hopper and 11 in S2 is what makes the Hopper-Joyce union we finally got in the S4 finale work, and it's based not just on attraction but on wanting to parent each others kids and owing their own kid a small or large measure of atonement that the other partner can cover for. Genuinely well written and not found in any alluded-to other story I'm aware. Anyhow, there's got to be more reveal on Vecna, for one or two reasons that may be the same reason. Have we found out what the sad and angry memory Vecna uses to drive his powers? We don't know which one it is or if we haven't seen it yet. And there is certainly more about Vecna's past that hasn't been revealed yet, though I don't know if it's because he's an unreliable narrator or leaving things out deliberately. There's something I missed on the first time through. Vecna wasn't driven crazy or evil by his Brother-Justin-like power to see the worst in others or confront them with it. He didn't awaken to his powers till after the spiders and after the move, before meeting Brenner. But it was before the move to Hawkins he didn't fit in and teachers and doctors thought he was broken, and that's why his family moved him to Hawkins. Could just be because he was a loner with a morose disposition, sure. But there's some memory of trauma or difficulty fueling his powers, and I bet it's before the move or the very move itself. Since this is ST and everyone must by law have a theory... Noam Chomsky posted:Said the same thing to a friend today, so yeah. I hunted this post down because that exact thought about Vecna occured to me, once I started seeing if it worked to reimagine ST as always being about queer issues based on where it's going. I concluded it's too much to say that about Vecna at this point, but it is certain that Vecna is briefly Will-coded, at two points. (And we know more about Will now). The first is just brilliant misdirection in Freddy Kruger's flashback, when the writers are trying to keep you from solving the mystery of who Vecna is. In addition to glossing over how young Henry went into a coma instead of just dying, you get this brief shot of Henry with crayons looking Will-like with this voice-over calling him sensitive. Makes you think he's just another innocent victim of an upside-down monster the way Will was, twice. The second is the bonechilling shot, maybe the best in the whole season, where it reveals the Mind Flayer was designed and invented by Vecna as a child making the same drawing Will later reproduced. There's really not enough info to go on at this time, but if I had to guess: they thought he was broken because he was queer whether he really was or not at the time, he had a Mike, and they intentionally moved him away from his Mike, which screwed him up. There's your sad and angry memory, and your real origin story trauma. This also ties into his mother calling in Brenner to fix him after they moved to Hawkins. In the 1950's if you want to get a doctor to commit your kid and take him off your hands, even if you think your kid has powers, do you tell the doctor that? There's a much easier way to accomplish your goal. I kind of like Brenner for some talentless quack who got his start in the 1950's trying to fix queer kids and maybe other noncomformists, then only later out of luck stumbled onto something real and became a mad scientist proper.
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Jul 10, 2022 23:59
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THE BAR posted:Couldn't see if it's been mentioned before, but I found it disturbing that everyone insisted on calling Jane by her slave name, even her supposed boyfriend. Fitzy Fitz posted:I've always wondered if the writers settled on "El" because it means "god" in several languages Kaedric posted:It's because "Elle" is a common name for girls, OP. I should just go to bed, but before this gets further afield, unless I'm very mistaken The Last of Us was meant to be a deliberate big influence on the show and Eleven going by El/Eleven a lot of the time is a huge huge shout-out to that. To avoid spoiling a great game with analogies: I'm talking about Hopper recovering from the death of his daughter by adopting a new one, and the girl in The Last of Us being named Ellie. Spores and a post-apocalyptic wasteland factor heavily into The Last of Us (not a real spoiler that). I'm not saying anything about sexuality with this. And I realized I think Vecna is an unreliable/incomplete narrator because in at least once instance he's full of poo poo. (I love those 3 long flashback sequences. Such good music and one sly dig/joke about Hawkins police chiefs over the ages.) Vecna says his father was arrested for his mother and sister's deaths just as he planned. Bullshit. He clearly tried to kill his father with his signature attack and he randomly lived due to the radio getting the perfect song due to the 11-ish effect of his powers on nearby electrical equipment.
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Jul 12, 2022 07:55
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Thanks for that. If you combine it with the recap for Vol 1, which I somehow missed too, it's pretty long but it led me to one near-secret stretching back to S1 I'm grateful for: the Duffers say that scene with Steve going back into the Byers house to fight the Demogorgon (everyone was mentioning it a page back) was originally supposed to be Will and Jonathan's awful Sean-Penn-looking father. That hurt my head and heart. God what a different (worse) show we'd have gotten. Will, Jonathan, Joyce, Nancy, Dustin, and of course Steve with different or worse stories. Though in that hypothetical show Steve was supposedly dead by that point. Also an interesting bit about Brenner and Eleven. Some jesting, some process and trying to justify your character, probably some overjustifying or excusing. Not sure where those lines are exactly. Most interesting thing I thought was what wasn't there at all. Nothing about Will and his love for Mike, pretty much his only plot this season, which I assume means they're covering for how we've only seen the dorsal fin of that story and just how much it'll be a major thing in S5.
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Jul 14, 2022 08:08
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Madurai posted:Eddiechat Fun tidbit: his actor Joseph Quinn also played Catherine the Great's snotty son Paul in the HBO Catherine the Great miniseries a few years back. I can't recommend the production overall or just for him, though it's not outright bad. I didn't recognize him though, needed wikipedia. Range. 8/Kali is one of 4 living human(ish) characters in the 2 universes with Powers now, so there's a good chance she comes back on the show. But the writers should bring her back the way you bring back someone like Lonnie Byers, either for redemption (likely for Kali, note the powers) or for confrontation and telling off (likely for Will's dad, if they even bother having him back, like what El got with Brenner in S4). The show features tons of characters who face extreme difficulty or trauma and PTSD early in life and then does comparison and contrast on them to see how they turn out different. We have Eleven (of course), William (Will), William (Billy), Kali, Mike in S2, and now Max in S4. Hopper as an adult too. All have different approaches to it and outcomes, including two bad ones. Billy, awful as he could be, didn't seem to know how messed up he was. But Kali? She know's she's traumatized, knows Eleven's traumatized, and tempts Eleven with the prospect of healing their trauma together...by seeking revenge and killing people. I guess I just made a case why she should come back on the show, but please not as a cool kid riding in to help save the day.
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Jul 18, 2022 23:15
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Sentinel Red posted:But the Hawkins stuff was wonderful (and horrific), Eddie was an absolute delight, Nancy and Robin undercover was ace, and episode 4 wasn't just the best episode of the show by a mile, it was also the single most anxiety inducing episode of anything I've ever watched. Going into the series I hoped Max might get a bigger role but talk about monkey's paw poo poo, I take it all back. And naturally, given that, the finale pretty much wrecked me. For various reasons, Max's story resonated with me in a way nothing really has before, to a point where everything be damned, I *need* that kid to have a happy ending, I don't care what dumb magic bullshit they have to pull in S5 to fix it. gently caress killing your darlings, the world's a lovely, miserable place and there's plenty of other grim, miserable dramas out there, let her skateboard into the sunset and go see that movie with Lucas, drat it. I wouldn't worry about Max too much. Two reasons. One they are pretty clearly giving her Will's arc from S2, and The Mind Flayer episode I loved so much in particular. Some things are reversed, mainly how he was supernaturally assaulted then mistaken for having psychological problems and PTSD, while Max started with genuine psych issues/PTSD that then made her prey for Vecan's psychological assault. But more is in common, like using a diagetic favorite song to fight off the monster's control, and also having the whole arc as a way to step up the role for an actor who'd been more a side character (at least on-screen) till then. Second reason is a deeper one you hit on the head, the one about this whole age of TV. Starting with the Sopranos we entered this great age of TV where it can match film and stage drama for greatness, particularly stories of great people being brought down by tragic flaws, good people becoming bad, and bad people becoming worse. Especially bad people becoming worse. Not only has this gotten repetitive, it's getting outmoded because, say, a year or so around when this show came on the world got even shittier and never quite stopped. Two or three other of my favorite shows along with (I think/hope) this one--I'm not naming them since this is sorta spoilery--are Trauma TV shows that have depressing and horrifying content to realistically get people low before giving them uplift and help people deal with how awful life often is, doubly so as the last decade or so went on. I had the great fortune to reach the end of The Expanse in the week after ST S4's finale, and that ended with this perfect monologue that was basically about how to write a TV show, and it feels a bit like how David Harbour plugged Stranger Things at the SAG awards for S1 and how the show is probably being written. I know actors don't speak for writers, but there are signs of it throughout this whole pro-outsider show and especially the politics plotline in S3. (That one didn't land so well for me, but it speaks to intent.) The writers know how huge this platform has become, particularly with kids. As for Max, she's a teen girl with suicidal ideation who faced up to it the way you should. Would the writers just kill her off right after that? Doubt it. I suspect something similar with Will being monomaniacally gay for Mike but not confessing or getting shot down in S4. It's left for later for a reason. There's actually a really high chance he could end up with Mike in the end just because of the message it would send and the precedent for mass-market entertainment properties. What good is Mike staying with Eleven going to do out in the world? Besides, Eleven needs a good test for being completely over her trauma and the older the characters get the more the Mike-Eleven romance seems like a semi-creepy Pygmalion story. George Bernard Shaw was probably right about how that should end.
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Jul 21, 2022 09:49
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 01:56 |
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LividLiquid posted:4 was a big recurring motif in this season and one of the ways they did that was showing 4 separate stories that only came together in the end. Nice catch, though maybe I missed the obvious. I didn't connect the storyline number to the 4 motif for some reason, but I did see that motif because I was asking myself why 4 chimes and 4 gates? I eventually decided it was probably just because "Season 4", but I wondered because other shows primed me to think about the possible significance of 4 chimes/notes. (Doctor Who once did it with no meaning then added an excellent retcon meaning, and now Westworld is doing God-only-knows-what with it.) stev posted:Season 3 did the same thing really. You had three distinct groups (with the occasional subgroup) that all converged on the mall in the finale before splitting up again. It may be easy to carry this thinking too far, but if you ignore the adventuring subgroups again, Season 2 also breaks down into 2 threads, Eleven's Journey and Will's Travails. It's the one time the show broke with chronological order to focus on character threads with the episode structure. Eleven shows up eventually in the Will thread, but by then he's fully possessed or sedated. I think they've never even met awake and in the same dimension until after the climax off camera or at the dance in the S2 epilogue.
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Jul 29, 2022 23:28
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