Stranger Things: Season 2

Oh boy. Brace yourselves, because here comes my take on Stranger Things 2. In fact, just to draw out the suspense, let's look back at my take on Stranger Things a year and a half ago. Here it is:

Stranger Things is the type of show that's addicting and excellent while you're watching it, but that starts to fall apart pretty quickly when you pull at the seams of its plot. That's not meant to be an indictment - the show is an homage to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King and 1980s adventures in general, and it ends up being everything it could have wanted to be and more. I'm hoping for a second season, but I also want that second season to have nothing to do with this cast or setting whatsoever. Leave well enough alone, you know?

Well, damn. They didn't leave well enough alone! But we'll get there. My take on the first season was basically, "this show was an enjoyable '80s homage." And in an earlier, simpler time, my take would have ended there. But no! That was my take in July. And as we all know all too well, our takes are no longer our own; they evolve in relation to the takes of those around us, and of the zeitgeist as a whole. Sometimes there's positive feedback thing going on, where we can be talked into liking something more or less than we initially did because everyone else does. Other times, we dig in our heels, and overblown reactions can cause us to slide even farther away from critical consensus with cries of "overrated" and "underrated." This, I think, is what happened to me with Stranger Things. I liked the show just fine in July. By the time those kids were passing out peanut butter sandwiches at the Emmys two months later, I was over them. When I saw my fiftieth Buzzfeed promoted tweet about "look what the Stranger Things kids are up to today" in, like, December, I was a little annoyed. And when the trailer for the second season debuted at the Super Bowl in February, I was almost rooting against it. "This? Why is this the big Netflix hit, of all things? This show wasn't even that good!"

But hype's a powerful thing! Because when late October rolled around and the second season of Stranger Things was imminent, there I was, excited all over again.

Okay, speaking of hype. Enough with the preamble. Here is my Stranger Things 2 take.

It was still enjoyable and easy to watch, but also kind of deeply flawed this time around, with all kinds of pacing issues, and were it not for the "all's well that ends well" final twenty minutes or so, I'd almost consider this whole second helping a sneaky disaster. Not commercially, obviously. But like. Damn!

Nine episodes, and you take the show's most iconic character, and you separate her from the rest of the characters until the very end of the eighth episode? And you give her, in the seventh episode, a standalone episode of her own that just flat doesn't work, just as the action and conflict the rest of the characters are enduring is finally ramping up a bit after way too many expository episodes?

Here's what I understand, before I go any farther. I understand that any show with mass appeal is going to appeal to different people for different reasons. Breaking Bad was one of my all time favorite shows, and it was also one of the all time favorite shows of people who never understood or realized that Walter White was the bad guy, or at least a bad guy in general. I loved what the show did with Skyler and Walt and their fragile, tenuous marriage, and how it explored that they're both flawed people who have put their own pride and greed before their relationship; plenty of other people who loved the show were always content to just call Skyler a bitch. So I know that what I liked and didn't like about the first season of Stranger Things might not be what others did - what you did - but this is my review, my horribly long-running rant, so bear with me.

Here's a short and incomplete list of things that worked in the first season, among other things. The big dumb sinister government lab having no real explanation or backstory. The friendship between the four boys, and how it's challenged and changed by the disappearance of Will and emergence of Eleven. Winona Ryder as a frantic, crazy mother. Steve. Eleven not really having a backstory beyond "science experiment wunderkind." Dustin's goofiness. Jonathan and Nancy not getting together, but becoming good friends. Eleven's quirkiness, especially in her school-appropriate disguise. The bullies at school being just as frightening at times as the monsters from the dark world from Metroid Prime 2. The relationship between Will and Jonathan and their mother. The relationship between Mike and Nancy and their parents. Hopper being a slacker and an alcoholic. The title sequence.

Season 2 seemed to go out of its way to not put the four boys together after the first few episodes. This wasn't all bad, and the Dustin-Steve pairing that emerged in the second half was probably worth the trade, but there was just so much room here to continue to explore these four kids and their relationship to each other as girls continue to enter the picture and as middle school transitions into high school. Oh, do you know what else Season 2 seemed to think? It seemed to think that Nancy and Steve didn't belong together. Which, again, fine - this gave us Dustin and Steve, as well as some great solo Steve material - but Jonathan? Look, he's a nice guy and all, but no. Completely introverted, no signs of being emotionally mature enough to foster a teenage relationship. Just, no! You know who else was almost entirely absent this season? Mike and Nancy's parents. And you know who just sort of became a super-parent foster dad out of nowhere? The former slacker and recovering alcoholic, Hopper.

Oh, and Barb? Bob was Barb all over again. Not quite, since he was a grown ass man and sort of got to go out like a hero, but Barb enough in the sense that everyone gave twenty times as much of a shit about saving Will from dying as they did about Bob and Barb actually dying. So it goes!

Also: Billy. Why? And while we're at it - why Max? Aside from to give Lucas and Dustin something to sort of fight over, but not really fight over. She's an object, not a subject, even if she skateboards and is great at video games, you know?

I dunno, guys. All of these beats felt predictable. You kind of knew which kids would pair up into which relationships right away. You kind of figured out who would die (Bob. Just Bob.) fairly early on. This season just felt weirdly rushed and underplanned. What's the big scary monster this time? It's a slow-moving spider in the netherworld, or maybe it's a bunch of dog-sized monsters that'll eat your face if you don't have, you know, guns or whatever. And of course they kept Eleven separated from the rest of the crew for the entire season, because if she were involved in the "let's raise this slug monster" plot, she'd have killed that motherfucking thing from the get-go.

And what the hell was Brett Gelman doing in this show? I don't just mean that he felt oddly out of place here - I mean, really, what was even the purpose of that character? What purpose did he serve?

Look, this could have been so much more Stand By Me than it was. It could have been darker, or it could have been more fun. It could have been anything it wanted to be. And this is what it decided to be.

And what the fuck was with that seventh episode. This is X-Men now? Heroes? Oof. Jesus.

The larger story didn't really take shape until the sixth episode or so, and by then there were only effectively two episodes left, and how was the day won? How was it saved? Not through any novel or clever means - just Eleven doing Eleven things, all over again, and not even sacrificing herself for all of four minutes in the process this time.

Should Will have died? Should Hopper have died? Either someone bigger should have died, or Bob shouldn't have died. But I'm cold on this whole season, which felt tonally inconsistent and completely unsure of what it was and what it wanted to do. Some great performances, don't get me wrong, and even some solid character arcs, but what else was there? I dunno. Talk me down. Defend the show Defend the season. What did you love about Stranger Things 2?