re: Stranger Things: Season 1 ****SPOILERS**** Discussion Thread

Lot to unpack from ManBearTiger's comment. I'm going to start with his critiques and add some of my own. I'll use headers so y'all can just skip to the parts you care about...

HOMAGES. A lot of perfectly placed touches. the title sequence is over the top fantastic, it even plays like a crappy horror show rip off that would've aired on UHF in syndication. We'll get into specific characters, but this show doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of early 80s pop culture, but it helps. It even gets a lot of details right, like how you would Xerox your D&D manuals and put them in a binder to make it easier to flip through. Which makes the stuff they get wrong stand out, but we'll get to that...

WINONA RYDER. She's getting criticized for being too one the nose, but frankly, that's the best thing about the performance. There's not a whole lot of subtlety to it, nor should there be. She's a frantic mother clinging to whatever hope she can, and why she's willing to believe frankly insane things right from the get go. I also like that she's the Spielbergian single mom, but we get more of her point of view. She's criticized by everyone for not watching her kid (and from her ex, which was infuriating) when NO ONE was watching their kids. In fact, she comes closest to Kid World because of her lack of success in Adult World. Good call on Richard Dreyfuss.

HOPPER. Definitely the star of the show, he is the most complete character on the show. He's the one who gets the emotional beat when they save Will, and he's the one who eventually teams up all of the disparate groups doing their own investigations. While he's a keen observer and quick on his feet, he also is prone to some short-sighted and reckless decisions. I like that he's not perfect, even in his competence. He breaks into the facility the first without telling anyone his discoveries. If he gets killed instead of just drugged there, no one finds out. And even the kids can see his second break in to the facility is foolhardy and like sending a lamb to slaughter (he also abandons the kids and leaves them open to the military invasion of the school). Hopper is relatable, smart, and tortured, but he makes serious errors in judgment, too. I could barely watch the stuff with his daughter. Heartbreaking, and the emotional core of the show.

THE KIDS. Totally disagree about the D&D stuff. The fact Dustin continually makes references to earlier campaigns points to his observational skills. He's by far the most perceptive of the trio, which he complains about. He's used to be an outsider, so he has time to study people. Dustin may have been my favorite character, he was just such a perfect character, and how his condition (and moving in the fourth grade) rendered him an outcast. He values his friendships more highly than anyone, because he has so few of them, and the inability to make more easily.

Mike was also a realistic kid. He was impulsive, prone to outbursts of childish anger, and almost completely incapable of seeing any point of view other than his own. He was also empathetic, curious, and courageous. Single-minded, but he never comes off as mean. His refusal to talk about getting picked on struck an accurate chord. He was thankful for El's help, but he never asked for it, and tried to shield her from that part of his reality.

Isaac was the skeptic of the group, and the most grounded in reality. Which is why his brief expulsion from the trio was so devastating. They needed his practical skills, and he was also the only one to ever suggest going to an adult. Without him, they might not answer the walkie talkie, as Dustin's Lando argument would carry the day. Most importantly, the kids felt like real kids, especially in their knowledge of the terrain and the mythos of Kid-dom. For those of you who weren't kids in the 80s, yes, we had that much freedom.

THE TEENAGERS. Nancy was a bad arse. I really liked how in her initial episodes, Steve wasn't taking advantage of her, he just thought he was. She wanted to have sex, and she figured out a way to do it. Which is why she shopped for the perfect top and a new bra. She sends Barb away because she's getting what she wanted. As Bard says, she's not that stupid. Of course she isn't, she wants it, too. Great performance from her, as she slowly hardens over the course of the series.

Jonathan is my biggest issue. I do like how they make him outside of society, and how he's a misanthrope who just observes and resents the people who look down on him as a freak. Yes, he stalks Nancy and takes he photo because he's jealous. He wants in that world. It's a good performance and I liked how he played it.

However, his cultural signifiers were all just slightly off. For a show that was so good about its references, Jonathan is too f'n cool to be real. No kid in suburban Indiana owns a Smiths record in 1983, when they didn't have a release in the US until 1984, unless he bought an import. And he's not the kind of music geek to buy an import, nor does he have the resources to do so. Besides, he likely listens to metal. If you want to give him cool kid tastes, music was VERY regional in 1983, if he's into cool music, he's listening to Chicago punk like Naked Raygun. Or if his suburb doesn't have an amazing record shop, he's listening to proto-grunge music like the Replacements. Or, as a kid who wants to go to NYU, he listens to Velvet Underground, Richard Hell, or Blondie and the NYC scene as an aspirational thing. The music references was just a spot too cool, and impossible for a kid of his means to have access to.

Same with the Evil Dead poster. Evil Dead was almost unheard of until the sequel, especially in the suburbs. He's have almost no access to that. If he liked a cool horror film, it would likely be The Fog or Creepshow. Or even old school like Last House on the Left. For a show with such perfect references, being a few degrees off really stuck out to me.

Totally agree on Steve. He's a teeanger trying on a persona. Most believably, his primary motivation is the acceptance of his peers. He helps deface the movie theater not because he's made at Nancy but because his friends want him to be. He lacks the courage to be his own person, which he finds later in the show. And his reaction to Jonathan is perfectly justifiable, if a little for show.

MODINE. Matthew Modine was like the evil version of Peter Coyote in ET. Hell, they even invert the van blockade in the chase sequence. Instead of the kids flying, the van does. He even sounds a little like Matthew Modine.

THE PARENTS. Mike's mom is the under the radar superstar of the show. Her arc is so damn tragic, but it is totally under the radar. She married a man for security, and he's an oblivious twit who doesn't love her or notice his family. She's isolated and alone, and spend the entire series reaching out to people, only to be rejected at every turn. After being consistently rejected by her husband, she tried to relate to her kids, but her every attempt is thwarted and only succeeds in pushing them further away. She reaches out to Joyce, who explicitly tells her to leave. Modine and his cronies want her help, but she wisely withholds it. In a show about lonlieness and isolated, there is no character more isolated than Karen, and Will spends the entire show hiding in his fort in an alternate dimension.

11. Could she BE more of an homage to Drew Barrymore in Firestarter?