K-SCORE: 92
Writer / Director: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
Starring: Gaten Matarazzo, Winona Ryder, Matthew Modine, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono
Spoiler Level: Major
(season one)
In one of the later episodes of Stranger Things, season one, the actress playing Nancy Wheeler delights audiences by practicing swinging a baseball bat. Nancy intends on using said baseball bat for the purpose of destroying the unknown evil monster from the upside-down realm that has been nabbing and eating people in her town of Hawkins, Indiana. The seriousness of the moment is completely destroyed by her hilarious ineptitude. I howled with laughter. In the scene she looks like she’s not only never swung a baseball bat before, but perhaps never held any object as large as a baseball bat. Or maybe the problem is that she hasn’t ever used a tool larger than a fork. I don’t know, but it’s fantastic. Had the episode been bloated thirty-percent to accommodate that much more Nancy practice, I would have loved it thirty percent more than I did. Had it been bloated seventy percent… well, you get the idea.
“quickly hit a threshold of lovability after which flaws... become not flaws at all”
But afterwards I was thinking and I decided the scene hadn’t cost the show anything. In a story that didn’t work, with characters I didn’t care about, something like that would have been an iconic moment of the failure of the creators. In Stranger Things, it’s just part of the charm, right alongside Dustin being forced to pronounce, “compasses” over and over again or Eleven wearing around that god-awful wig. This series quickly hit a threshold of lovability after which flaws, nicks in the tone or the smoothness of the narrative, become not flaws at all. It’s like Luke wanting to pick up power-converters with his friends at Toshley Station; it’s like Gimli not wanting to be tossed; it’s like Fenster speaking in some nigh-incomprehensible urban twang. It’s a series clearly made by people who care enough about it to have done substantial work on the story and the characters, and because of that, many of the faults can be forgiven. It succeeds enough that I’m happy just to be along for the ride.
The first season of Stranger Things is enjoyable from start to finish. The show is set in the 1980s, but it doesn’t beat you over the head by shoving snap bracelets and workout videos into every scene. The house decor, the clothes, the communication methods, the cars, having kids bike to school, or teenagers sneaking into each others rooms by climbing onto roofs is all more than enough to create powerful nostalgia. As the series progresses, you just feel immersed in both the time and the place.
The parallel universe plotline is interesting. It takes the simple conflict of a missing child and creates a lot of room for creepiness and mystery. There are these big checkpoint moments too, which works exceptionally well for anything with an episodic format. Watching Joyce Byers try to contact her son with Christmas lights is tragic and fascinating at once, but watching Will send messages back: shiver-inducing. When he spelled out his answer to the question, “Where are you?” with R-I-G-H-T-H-E-R-E, that’s the point when I nodded to myself and said, alright, yep, I’m liking these Stranger Things. I’m on board. And it’s just one of dozens of great moments in the season one arc. Nancy crawling through the ectoplasmic tree-trunk. Hopper cutting into the body produced by the research facility. Jonathan setting bear traps. Mike approaching the dam’s edge with Dustin at knifepoint. Lucas slingshotting the ‘demigorgon.’ El making some eyes bleed. There’s a lot there and a lot left.
“...the characters... that’s the show’s greatest strength”
And the reason I’m looking forward to it is the characters. That’s the show’s greatest strength. Notice how I’m not referring to these people by the actors who play them as I do in so many of my other reviews? That’s because they’re stuck in my head as characters, which is how it should be! That’s a testament to the strength of the writing and the performances. Their flaws are understandable, their motivations clear, and the good ones are aligned in their mission to protect and save their own, and that makes them worth watching. Dustin is incredible, definitely my favorite. When he picks up a weakened El and starts carrying her toward the science classroom, I was cheering for him out loud like a little kid. But I like them all. A few of the teenagers start out annoying, like Steve and Nancy, but I ended up liking them too. They come into their own when their petty high school conflicts get completely eclipsed by paranormal conflicts.
My biggest complaints for the series feel minor looking back. I felt Barbara is too easily dismissed, especially at the very end. I didn’t like that the denouement doesn’t feature at least a few reasonable questions asked of Will Byers. I didn’t like that the Hawkins Lab is never really explored or discussed by the characters and that everyone seems to adopt a don’t-ask don’t-tell policy following the climax. I needed someone to be still crazed saying, “Hey, I know those guys died, but isn’t anyone still curious what our government is doing over there?!” And though I’m fine with where El ends up and love the Eggo Waffle tidbit, I’m not satisfied that her clash with one monster solves the issue of a tear between the real world and the upside down. What has anyone done about the Hawkins Lab gate or the tree trunk or the weak link in the walls of the Byers house? Blood’s an easy trigger. What precautions are the families taking to keep the paranormal monsters at bay? And does Dustin ever get a chocolate pudding feast or has all of this been for no god-damn reason whatsoever?
Many of those issues can be mended with careful planning and loving attention on behalf of the show’s creators when they make season two, to which I am greatly looking forward. I can’t wait to see Mike, Lucas, my boy Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, Joyce, Hopper, and the rest contend with even stranger things.