What Has Stranger Things Become?

this video is sponsored by the amino app do you like stranger things do you like fandoms well boy do I have the app for you the Amino app is a social media app that essentially combines all the best aspects of reddit tumblr and Instagram so you can interact with people who like the same things you do you just join a community and boom it's that simple you've got fun customization chat rooms to join all the juicy discourse and they've even added stories the staple of any good social medium but what's neat about these stories is that they don't expire after 24 hours I have links in the description to help you get started so go check out the Amino app now or you know in 20 minutes after you finish the video I've been reluctant to talk about stranger things in a video for a while because I feel like I don't have much to say about the show in terms of praise or criticism that isn't blatantly face value in the show everything about it is very digestible and has little in terms of hidden meaning or anything to be analyzed like that but I think that's for the betterment of the show its simplicity allows them to compellingly develop a large cast of characters that we can empathize with and have fun with which is refreshing for someone who spends too much time over analyzing unintended minutiae and other movies that's not to say stranger things as a brainless fun type show but rather that it allocates its resources more towards its characters and of course it's nostalgia but it lacks in hidden meaning it makes up foreign references to 80's pop culture as you well know that's the crux of the show and when the first season came out it sort of marked the beginning of the end for 80s nostalgia or rather the beginning of oversaturation which has led people to grow sick of it that said I give stranger things that pass to be as nostalgia Beatty as possible because their approach to a maje works on a deeper fundamental level than a lot of movies coming out that sort of just used nostalgia as a crutch to be fun when they don't actually bring much to the table in terms of substance the most interesting way I saw the first season of stranger things to be interpreted was that there were essentially three 80s archetypes going on at the same time the et children's type movie with a supernatural friend a teen slasher flick and a murder investigation this set a precedent for the show that aside from just taking place in the 80s and having a lot of 80's outfits and toys and music the very form of the paid homage to these tropes I still think season 1 is a near-perfect season of television this three archetype breakdown allows you to look at each of them as their own separate movies with a reasonable amount of characters with their own tensions and struggles so when you combine all three you have what feels like a tight-knit group but is actually an impressively sizeable amount of characters that each have their own distinct development on top of that they didn't feel like three disjointed stories because they all had the same through-line and they each found out information the other two didn't and the whole story works through the dramatic irony of us knowing what's happening because we've seen all three stories and know what all the characters know while each character only knows about a third of the information this made it incredibly satisfying to watch the three narratives come together and see everyone got on the same page like Power Rangers the first season was also jam-packed with individual moments that each achieved a strong sense of iconography successfully maintaining a consistent sense of wonder throughout the eight episodes and it also introduced us to the upside-down whose lore was kept intentionally vague throughout the whole season leaving intrigue and a desire to further explore this world but also finishing in a narrative ly satisfying way I would have been content with season 1 just being a miniseries and ending their loose ends in all I was far from upset to find out that they had a four or five season plan but I was worried that they wouldn't be able to achieve the same sense of airtight coherence that the first season had and while I didn't dislike season two it more or less confirmed most of my worried suspicions with the last two seasons stranger things despite his lack of an episodic feel from episode to episode officially feels like a TV show I'm not calling that a good thing or a bad thing but it certainly feels like something different than what the first season was the best thing about season 2 was the new relationships between pre-existing characters particularly hopper and xi and steve and the kids which i have a feeling and correct me if i'm wrong was at least in part inspired by the last episode of freaks and geeks the worst thing about this season I thought was the new characters I did like Bob and Marie but the narrative didn't really justify the introduction of Max and Billy not that it necessarily needs to but their presence left me a little confused as to how they were even conceived of and added to the script aside from possibly the desire to convey the message that girls can be nerds too but Billy really just had no biz as being in this season again it's not that I'm inherently against their existence in the show but season one was so tight with its characters and with these new introductions you can actively feel the show loosening up which makes the writing feel a little lazier also this episode and all these characters were just terrible I have no idea why it happened it didn't really give xi any necessary insight and it opened the world in a way I have many problems with because it's not so much as mentioned in season 3 I'm just going to pretend this episode isn't part of the stranger things Canon weirdly enough I can't really think of many iconic moments in season 2 aside from a few lines whereas pretty much everything that happened in season 1 became like an iconic image of sorts I feel like iconography is at least partially out of the filmmakers hands though and has more to do with pop cultural context and audience reception in terms of formic omage season 2 also feels less like a few simultaneous but separate clearly defined 80s archetypes and more like a bunch of combined archetypes which felt a little messy aside from those issues there were still some fun sequences like Halloween building on the upside down lore with the mind flayer and the demo dogs and it progressed Mike and xi in ways I was really happy with xi grows frustrated with her situation for more human reasons and mike was really interesting because he's generally accepted as the protagonist of season 1 however all this upside-down stuff primarily revolves around will who is now in the regular world again and xi who now lives with hopper instead of mike so these three characters all get more focused than Mike this season and we see him dealing with a sense of arrogance literally thinking of himself as the main character and coming to terms with the narrative evolving past him I was content with season 2 overall but it did have its problems and I suspected that season 3 would lean a little more in this direction than the direction of season 1 right off the bat I'll say that season 3 is at least an improvement from - in terms of iconography and that's thanks to a little ice-cream shop called scoops ahoy actually it's due to star court mall in general but scoops always the best part of them all the fact that Stephen Robins only outfits the entire season until their last seen as the scoops ahoy uniform the scoops ahoy music they used in spongebob scoops away even has best in Robins ads and it's actually making me want to go to baskin-robbins I won't succumb to their marketing ploy but I do love scoops of Hawaii the outfits are a lot less grounded and new trol than earlier seasons and are far more off-the-wall movie 80s outfits not that I was alive in the 80s to be able to critique the accuracy of the outfits some people didn't like it and that is more to do with the fact that this entire season feels remarkably cartoonish some of the scenes including every scene with Cary Elwes feel cartoonish intentionally there's a scene where they're watching cartoons and then the actions in the scene devolve into cartoonish nonsense but there are entire subplots whose entire existence feel ridiculously cartoonish a lot of this stuff I'm cool with and embraces a different stylistic direction the show is going in but stuff like the knockoff Terminator is just impossible to take seriously especially because he's actually meant as a serious threat I'm gonna go into spoilers now so click away if you haven't seen the season the fact that the Terminator knockoff is responsible for hoppers death is so bizarre because you're faced with the death of this beloved character and it's at the hands of this [ __ ] guy Alexey felt like a cartoon character but because the narrative didn't require anything too serious from him I enjoyed his presence in the show also some stuff this season isn't even cartoonish the only phrase that can describe some parts of this season is Steve in the gang scoops ahoy outfits and all intercept and decode a Russian message and find a Russian base under the mall which they infiltrate and then get caught tortured and interrogated before breaking out of why is it more believable that these kids fought a monster they named after a demon from D&D then these guys successfully beating a bunch of government appointed Russian scientists and soldiers I feel like it's something you have to either embrace completely or despise and I embrace it completely in a silly way though there is part of me that's kind of sad that I have to embrace it in a less critical way than season 1 and that's true of the whole show I still have fun with it for what it is now but in a completely different way maybe it's a good thing that the show is evolving but when it feels like it's evolving in a direction that takes less skill to write I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it that said the scoop Stroup subplot was still the one I constantly found myself wanting the show to get back to whenever it went somewhere else like season to this season felt a lot more like the archetypes were sprinkled about and blended together instead of concrete like season 1 and on paper it sounds like it's a subtler and thus more impressive homage but I honestly think having very concrete archetypes play out was the best way to tell the story and now it can feel a little muddled we have an invasion of the body snatchers type threat which could also be seen as an homage to zombie films after all they do watch Day of the Dead at the beginning of the season there's of course the terminator side plot and I guess it just doesn't feel like it has a strong a sense of employing the genre tropes as before this isn't even a horror based show anymore like the first season sort of was again not that that's a bad thing because I think the strongest tool this show has is the ability to genre hop under the umbrella of 80s omage I just think it's being watered down a little bit I didn't have the problem with the new characters that I had last season I thought Robin was a good addition and I think the difference between her being added to the show and Max and Billy was that Max and Billy were thrown into a group that already felt coherent and foal like it had all the flavors it needed so they felt a little unnecessary and therefore I felt the narrative had a stronger responsibility to justify their existence by season 3 Steve is a completely different character and has also left the other groups becoming a sort of lead of his own because of that there are now slots that need to be filled obviously his relationship with Dustin was one of the highlights of season two and it made sense that they'd be together in this storyline but they needed it to be a group so Robin foils their personalities as the straight man which I understand is an unfortunately ironic term to use considering her representational importance to the show then they gave Lucas's sister Erica who had a side role in season 2 a role in this plot as well and she has a classic annoying little sister presence but this along with other aspects of the season is one of those things that kind of dives into Star Wars territory and that everything important that ever happens happens to the same group of people but I was able to look past that for the most part with most of the characters it makes sense because they'll only investigate things knowing what they know from the previous seasons or they're with someone who has a direct connection to the upside down but there are other aspects that seem merely coincidental surprisingly enough this season actually improved my perception of Max and Billy and accepting that they're just part of the show now I was able to appreciate what they brought to the table Billy was another example of this could have happened to anyone but of course it happened to someone connected to the group and I honestly got a lot of Teen Wolf vibes from that aspect of the season but ironically the MTV show and not the Michael J Fox film that came out the year this season takes place regardless they actually felt rel to the season Billy leading the Body Snatcher plot and max becoming friends with eleven fueling the drama between the kids this season and leading to some growth on Mike's part not so much Lucas they amped up Mike's arrogance even more this season from last season and to an extent I like that they're now using Mike is a vehicle for showing what's wrong with a lot of traits although it can sometimes feel a little juvenile even for kids their age I always appreciated that the show never understated their emotional maturity despite their age but in general I actually did appreciate what they were going forward the group on the poster we see the kids hanging out and watching fireworks but the closest we get to that in the story is them going up the hill before Mike and 11 promptly leave to go make out and the season is partly about them growing out of some of the things that made them friends in the first place and rather than making that attention that's resolved in the end and showing them all hanging out in the last episode happy together the only other time they're together is when they're saying goodbye the season actually did that with a lot of relationships setting up something we think is going somewhere and not actually letting that relationship occur Steve's storyline being from his perspective leads us to believe as he believes that Robin is into him and that doesn't end up happening Joyce and hopper being prompted by Murray in the same way Jonathan and Nancy were prompted the last season don't end up together because Hopper dies and of course the buyers and Eleven I'll move causing a further rift in the group I was happy with these sub versions and specifically the children drifting apart aspect because childhood friendships are such an 80s staple it feels quintessential to the decade in movies in literature therefore I feel like the show kind of had to address that granted they'll just reconnect next season and the wait will probably be diminished but for now I appreciate it the cast of course is bigger than ever which makes it feel a lot less airtight than season one and the characters that die and die don't have the strongest arcs that lead to their deaths Billy sacrificing himself wasn't as narrative ly satisfying as it should have been but that's partially because I didn't think he was a very well fleshed out character to begin with I actually thought this season was pretty hokey and bad and hoppers death didn't really have anything to do with his arc at all speaking of hopper his arc this season had a lot of people uneasy his arc the past two seasons had been about him reintegrating into humanity obtaining a normal life people say it's inconsistent to his character that he wouldn't know how to talk about feelings or that he's being an overbearing father but I think those two things if anything are an indicator that he has comfortably become a normal dad again I loved all the scenes where something goes his way music comes in and he kicks back obviously it's portrayed as a problem for him to work through and have more trust and communicate better but to call it inconsistent to his character I think is a bit unjustified there's also his behavior towards Joyce he's upset that she didn't meet him for dinner that she specified wasn't a date because she ends up having some investigating to do which she cues him in on the next day but he gets mad and yells in her face and berates her for every guy she talks to obviously it's not good to yell at and berate the person you're romantically attracted to or anyone for that matter and that could be seen as a problematic relationship but again the show is criticizing his behavior as part of his arc what's actually questionable is the fact that the resolution is that they just want to [ __ ] each other which is maybe an oversimplification but I think the completion of that arc was a little unclear at the end and again his death felt irrelevant to resolving that so there are definitely some character issues here and there but surprisingly enough I do think the character aspect of this season in general was much better than season 2 what was worse than ever this season was everything to do with monsters than the upside down it's crazy how season 1 showed us this visually intriguing world we knew little to nothing about other than how dangerous it was and by season 3 I hardly even care about it anymore season 2 was a neat progression of season one because the demagogue in was kind of back but in dog form and we got the mind flayer which was a neat concept the season the mind flayer is doing something different and it looks different but it's still just the mind flayer doing some shenanigans and the design is just kind of uninteresting the monsters have always been the least interesting parts of the seasons but never more so than this and the first two seasons characterization came with this narrative momentum and we'd learn about the characters as the plot was unfolding obviously more so in season 1 than in season 2 but that still applies to season 2 the plot this season definitely takes its time but because I wasn't really invested in that monster stuff I actually preferred that so much of the first half of this season was just like a teen comedy set in the 80s these characters we all enjoy doing their thing I still enjoyed the character interactions at the end but I wasn't super invested in fighting the monster there was a lot of 11 moving stuff with her mind earlier in the season so I'm glad they opted for some slightly different solution but I found it all to be a little unengaging but that's the monster stuff specifically I still enjoyed the stuff with the Russians just because of how was the show is feeling very monster-of-the-week at this point is I guess what I'm trying to say though episode 2 episode doesn't feel very episodic but each season feels like one episode or standalone story and I appreciate that but there's really no genuine sense of an overarching plot or that it's amounting to anything big and if there's only one season left or even two seasons I'm not really confident they'll be able to establish a sense of overarching threat I have a feeling the final season will feel the same as every other season and in the last 15 minutes of the last episode they'll just wrap stuff up and be like okay now it's officially done there are other things the show's losing sense of as well both good and bad an example of good would be how in season 2 Joyce was deciphering wills drawings and I sort of saw it as a failed attempt to bring back the wonder of Joyce communicating with will through the lights in season 1 so I'm glad they didn't try to have yet another new method of communication unless you want to count deciphering the Russian code but I don't think that counts we'll also is no longer threatened this season in the same way he was previous seasons but he gets these goose bumps on the back of his neck like a spider sense and they show that exact shot so many times I was sick of it by the end of the season I liked wills arc in the first few episodes but by the end they gave him nothing to do and that's the worst part my favorite thing about the show is that everyone in the past has felt essential has brought something to the table without which fighting the monster would be impossible aside from his little spider sense he doesn't really contribute Jonathan and Nancy don't really contribute all that much either rather than investigating something that brings them new information that brings a new revelation when they meet up with the other group they learn about this thing and they're confused they meet up with the group of kids which has already learned a lot more about the exact same thing and rather than bringing new essential information they're kind of just like oh well that explains what we've been trying to figure out I guess they're the reason they go to the hospital but it feels like everything that happened could have happened with them which is a shame because I like both of them and want them to feel more important to the show what really surprised me was how blatantly the season began to tackle politics there's always been the underlying threat of the Russians as the Cold War fueled this story from the start but this is the first time they blatantly showed the Soviet flag and all the politics with Star Court as well honestly I think the smartest move this season was having so much revolve around the mall because in a way the mall is the real monster of the week we also have Erica spouting politics and a corrupt mayor though he and the malla go hand in hand I think the season definitely had some more out there ideas than the last season in terms of that stuff at least and it did help the season come into its own and feel fresh it's hard to say whether I prefer season 2 or season 3 season 1 is still leagues ahead of both of them but I like and dislike these two seasons for different reasons season 2 handled the monster stuff a little better but season 3 handled characters better and I care more about characters than how the show handles monsters but this season also had a lot of lazy contrivances like the rat exploding seconds after Jonathan and Nancy leave and a bunch of other things I'd have to comb through but those are smaller things and season 2 did have that really bad digression both are probably in the 6 or 7 ballpark whereas the first season feels like a high 9 but the show is still fun I still enjoy the characters and buy into what's happening and feel like they're doing some creative things with new ideas and relationships and visuals even if I feel like they're becoming lazy in a lot of other aspects I suspect that if there are five seasons in total the next season will probably just feel exactly like these two seasons but if the fourth season is the final season I really have no idea how they plan on making it feel like a conclusion without just feeling like another monster of the week installment also there's no way hoppers actually dead there have been too many fake out deaths in this show for me to actually believe he's gone without watching him die and at the hands of arnold schwarzenegger and that's frustrating because so much time at the end of the season is spent mourning him i understand that that's what the characters are going through but it tries to convince us as an audience that that's the case when it clearly isn't let me know what you thought of this season now that game of thrones is over this is basically taken over as the number one zeitgeist essential show so I'm sure you guys have some wildly varied positions also check out the story I just posted on the Amino app talking about my top 10 films from the 80s because stranger things and 80s you know links are in the description thank you for watching have a nice day and good bye you

Channel: Taylor J. Williams

Views: 1,487,976

Keywords: stranger things, netflix, duffer brothers, finn wolfhard, millie bobbie brown, winona ryder, david harbour, demogorgan

Id: xlXYI-ioG6w

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019