Some final thoughts on Stranger Things

I thought I remembered when I first watched Stranger Things, but when I looked up the dates, I saw that things didn’t align as I thought they had.  So this is the best recreation of events that I’ve come up with.

In the summer of 2016 when the first season of Stranger Things came out, I heard a bunch of stuff about “The Upside Down” and “Eleven,” but I didn’t fully know what they were.  And at the time, I didn’t have Netflix.  But some months later, I found a not entirely reputable website that had it and I watched that first season there.  From what I remember, I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t really stick with me. 

Then in late 2017, or probably early 2018, a YouTuber I watch was talking about shows and mentioned this one called Dark.  He called it a “German Stanger Things,” but some of the things he said made me curious.  By this time, I did have a Netflix account so I watched the first season of Dark and instantly fell in love with it.  Dark is in my Top 20 favorite shows of all time.  It’s not perfect, but I’d say that the story is more complicated than that of Stranger Things, but it’s told better in like half the runtime.  I forget how many times I’ve rewatched Dark, and I’d watch it again, but it’s gotten to the point I would much rather watch it with someone who’s never seen it to explain things, without spoiling.  I think that’s the next step in enjoying the show.

Anyway, by the time the first season of Dark was out, the second season of Stranger Things was out.  I watched it, without rewatching the first season, and that was a bit of a problem because I forgot some of the characters and couldn’t remember what had happened to some of them.  I think I just had to read the Wikipedia page to get caught up.  The second season, I still liked it, but again, it didn’t really stick with me.

In the summer of 2019, I rewatched Dark season 1 to prepare for season 2.  And then, after watching season 2, I think I went back and rewatched seasons 1 and 2 again to try to see what I missed.  And around this time, I also did a rewatch of seasons 1 and 2 of Stranger Things to get caught up for Season 3.  This rewatch wasn’t as enjoyable.  I think the twists and surprises of Stranger Things really only work the first time.  And then Season 3 stretched credulity, so by the end of it I was losing interest in the show.  I think I figured I’d continue watching it just for “I understood that reference” reasons.

In 2022, I was half-heartedly getting ready to rewatch the first three seasons to get ready for Season 4, when it was announced that there would be a fifth and final season.  I decided that instead of having to rewatch everything again in a year (ha), I’d just wait.  So I didn’t watch Season 4 when it came out, but I was spoiled about Eddie.

This brings us to late 2025.  My original plan was to start rewatching on some date so that if I watched an episode a day I’d watch Season 5 Episode 7 the day before the final episode was released.  But a couple weeks before that date I was feeling under the weather, so I started my rewatch early and I probably did like four episodes in three days.  Still, I was only in my first time watch through of Season 4 when Season 5 Part 1 dropped.  It was a week or so after Part 1 dropped that I finally caught up with everyone.

This, probably wasn’t for the best.  For Stranger Things, at least.  By finishing Season 4 and starting directly into Season 5, I didn’t have any time to ponder what was going on.  But in the weeks between me finishing Part 1 and Part 2 coming out, I had time to think.  And there were some things I was confused by.  And thinking about it, I came up with a somewhat bland but plausible explanation that would answer the questions I had, as well as a bit more exciting and plausible explanation.  So going into Part 2 I was really interested to see which idea it would be, or would there be a more interesting third option.

Then Part 2 came out and I realized that the odd things I assumed were indications of a more interesting story, were just plot holes.  That was the third option.  And since the final episode wasn’t six hours long, there was no way they’d be able to fill them all.  So I went into the final episode without much confidence.  And the ending, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t care enough to hate it.

A lot of people seem to hate Season 5 for various reasons, but I’d say I dislike it because the writing isn’t that great.  Which isn’t an issue only for Stranger Things.  But it is so frustrating when better writing could have nipped problems before they showed up.  As an example of a minor issue that could have been fixed with an extra paragraph or two, I was confused during Dustin’s graduation speech.  He mentioned the principal and I couldn’t remember if we’d ever seen this character before.  Later, I looked it up on IMDB and apparently that character only appeared in that episode.  And we just had to go with the movie cliché of the asshole principal.  This could have been fixed with one, slight fix.  In the first episode of the season, when Dustin was roughed up by the bullies at school, the principal could have stopped it.  But instead of holding them accountable, he could have sent them on their way and then snidely asked Dustin something like, “Why do you bring this on yourself?” With that one simple fix, we would know the principal was an asshole and would have cheered on Dustin during his speech, instead of scratching our heads wondering if we ever met the guy before.

The way I write a post like this, is think through most of the arguments I want to make and come up with a roughish outline of things.  And then it just rattles around my head for a few weeks before I finally sit down and type it up.  So I came up with all that stuff about the principal, but I had yet to type it up.  And then I watched a YouTuber’s reaction to Season 5, and at one point they put in a clip from Season 4 of Eddie saying something about grabbing his diploma from the hands of Principal Whoever.  I didn’t care enough to check if this Principal is the same from finale, but I’ll assume it is.  Since Eddie had an issue with the Principal, we could assume they were an asshole.  So I guess it was established that Principal Whoever was an asshole, in one line of dialogue about fifteen episodes before Dustin’s speech.  How could I have missed such an obvious thing?

Moving away from a simple problem that could have been easily fixed, to the plot holes that really killed my interest in the show: the ineptness of the military.  For example, was there no one at the camp with a radio listening for transmissions either from the mysterious Upside Down or from other actors?  I mean, even if Murray had some special encrypting walkie talkies, you’d think the military would notice that every time they made a supply run to their Upside Down base, there’s a lot of unknown transmissions.  Or why did nobody notice that all these people – known associates of the person they’re looking for – all seem to gather at the radio station when they do supply runs?  Is nobody curious about that?

A bigger issue is the first question I had about Season 5 which was why people were still in Hawkins?  You’d think the military would have gathered everyone up and put them in a tent city about ten miles away while they studied the cracks to another world.  This would be for everyone’s safety, and so they could do medical checks to make sure they weren’t exposed to anything.  But then you’d think they’d cite national security, give everyone some money, and move them elsewhere.  And then they’d bulldoze the buildings and haul in a ton of howitzers to point directly at the opening, in case anything came through.  I mean, that’s the logical thing to do.

So I was very confused why the town of a few hundred people(?) with a school, and a restaurant, and a radio station, was still around inside this military compound.  But then, in Episode 4, Vecna takes the kids for some plan.  Thinking about this, I assumed that Kay knew Vecna needed kids, so she kept the town and school there so that they could watch him take the kids and somehow replicate his power.  That was my “somewhat bland but plausible explanation” for why the plot hole of keeping everyone in the town wasn’t really a plot hole.  It could also explain that Kay knew about the crawls, but didn’t want to tip her hand.  Of course, why would you want a villain that was halfway competent?  The “bit more exciting and plausible explanation” I had was that Kay and Vecna were working together.  Well, actually, they both promised to help the other with some project, but both were just waiting for the right moment to stab the other in the back.  Of course, who would want to watch a show where the good guys have to debate about working with one competent villain to take down another competent villain?

But in the end, the grand answer to the issues I had was that they were just plot holes.  Don’t get me wrong, every movie and show has plot holes.  For most, the holes are small and there’s enough good stuff that you can overlook them.  But for Stranger Things, these plot holes were just too big for me to ignore, and there wasn’t enough other interesting parts to keep my interest.  Likely, I’ll largely forget about Stranger Things, except for the occasional “I understood that reference.” Probably, the only way I’d ever watch it again is if I had a girlfriend who, somehow, never watched it and wanted to.  But afterwards, we’d watch Dark.

Trump’s Hell

Last night, I foolishly checked social media for the latest news just before going to bed, and saw more of the evilness of the Trump regime.  As I was getting ready for bed, I started thinking of ways I’d love to just fuck with Trump.  What I came up with, was if I had the power – maybe I found a few dozen magic lamps and after I did what I could to make the world better, I’d save a few to fuck with those trying to destroy the planet – I’d make Trump have the same nightmare every night for the rest of his miserable life.  In it, he’d show up to the Pearly Gates and he’d see a bunch of people inside having the time of their … afterlives.  I’d say that two of these people would be Renée Good and Alex Pretti, but I doubt Trump even knows their names let alone what they look like.  So maybe there would be Jimmy Carter and other people Trump despises.  They would wave to him, maybe even motioning him to join them, but as soon as he takes a step forward, a giant hole opens up and drops him to Hell.

Once I was in bed, I started to wonder what Trump’s Hell would be like.  What punishments does he deserve?  This is what I came up with.  For an appetizer, there are probably a billion people who know enough about him to form some opinion on him.  And I think he should hear all of them.  It would start with some magat going on and on about how great he is, and then there would be a hundred people talking about what an evil shit he is.  At first, he’d probably just ignore the whining of libs, but then he’d find out what some of his inner circle really think of him, which I’d bet is most of them are just waiting for the shitty moron to die so they could use his death for their own political reasons. 

For the main course, I think everyone who hates Trump should be able to put as many suggestions they care to in a suggestion box for punishments.  And then Satan – or whatever demon he outsources Trump’s punishment to – just goes through all of them.  You’d have annoying ones like he plays a hundred rounds of golf with Obama, who always manages to beat him by one point, or however golf is scored.  And then the next suggestion would have someone like “The Mountain” swing a sledgehammer into his crotch, once for every thrust Trump made into a child.  Once that was done, Trump could then relive the last ten minutes of every person who died because of him.  Some would be gasping for breath after his piss poor handling of Covid, and then he’d be some fisherman having a beer, and then his boat explodes. 

So I had some nice thoughts as I drifted off to sleep.

Random Story – My dream house?

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Waaaay back when I was in my 20s, for a while I had the idea of moving out to the Dakotas, or somewhere.  Someplace where my nearest neighbor would be ten or more miles away.  And instead of buying an existing house, I’d build one.  I don’t know how long I spent designing this dream house, but it was a relaxing, escapist fantasy.  Eventually, I moved on to other escapist fantasies, and I didn’t think of this dream house for twenty years or so.  But recently, I remembered it, so here is what I remember of what 25ish-year-old me thought my dream house would be like.

The front door would open into a mud room.  From this an inner door would open to the first floor, which – except for the mud room and bathroom – would be entirely open.  There would only be some pillars, and there would be couches or bookshelves to break up the kitchen, dinning area, and living room.  The other odd thing about the first floor, is that it would be a few steps down from the mud room.  I distinctly remember that being a feature, but I can’t remember why I wanted it.  I think there was some idea of it driving home the idea that the first floor would be a big open space.

The basic layout of the first floor would have the mud room in the center with the bathroom to the left and a pantry to the right.  The inner door from the mud room would open to the kitchen/dining area, with the back of the first floor being the living area.  Except for the front, the first-floor walls would be large windows, to let in as much light as possible.  On both sides and the back of the house there would be doors that would go out to a covered patio.  On the sides, this cover would maybe only be ten feet, but at the back it would be twenty or even thirty feet.

There would be a set of stairs on each side going up to the second floor, the one on the left would go to the front of the house, while the other would go to the back.  This would be because the second floor would be in two sections.  The front section – over the bathroom, mud room, pantry – would have another bathroom and the bedroom.  The back part – over the living area – would have a study and a spare room.  The central area of the second floor would be open, with a walkway and railing going all the way around.  There would also be several doors to go out to the deck that would go around three sides of the building. 

I think at some points in the plan there would also be a third floor – perhaps just covering the front or back half of the house – that would be just for storage.  There might even be one spot with an opening all the way down to the first floor, just to be extra cool, I guess.

The big open space open to the second, or third floor, for some reason I thought it was really cool.  And I think that was the whole point of the steps down, just to make it seem even bigger.  I’m not sure why I thought that was important. 

That’s as much as I remembered.  But if I had to build this now, what would I change?  First off, the steps down into the main room.  I could live without them now.  Also, while having a big, two or even three-story open space would be cool, I don’t really feel the need.  I could still see a little open space on the second floor, just above the dining area, but it wouldn’t be necessary.  Instead of a third floor, those storage rooms could just go on the second.

I don’t remember where the garage was in the original plan, but I think it was detached just because that’s what I grew up with.  Now, I’d rather have an attached garage.  At first, I thought about swapping the mud room and the bathroom, but the first-floor bathroom would only be a half-bath, so instead of a squarish mud room, there could be a stubby panhandle hallway leading to the attached garage.  I also don’t know if I thought of it all those years ago, but this new house would have solar panels.  And depending on how bad the winters are wherever I built this, I’d probably cut back on the windows.  Unless there are some really well insulated windows that work as well as walls to keep the warmth in. 

I think the only other change I’d make would be the garden.  I’m sure there was one in the original plans, but now it would be much larger.  And there would be a greenhouse, possibly attached to the house either behind the garage or on the other side of the house, depending on how the house was orientated.  The greenhouse would let me grow stuff through the winter as well as warm weather crops.  And I’m sure I had house plants in the original plans, but now there would be far more of them.  Possibly even used with bookshelves to break up the first floor into little nooks. 

So that’s my dream house.  And unless I win the lottery, that’s all it will be. 

Short story – “The Santa Shakes”

“The Santa Shakes”

“Hello.  This is Amy at Doctor Bodden’s office.  How may I help you?”

“Hi.  This is Doug Ryan, and I guess I need to make an appointment.”

“Okay.  What’s seems to be the problem Mister Ryan?”

“I’m not sure what it is, but for the last few days I’ve felt rather … odd.  But not in like a bad way.  I don’t know.  It’s rather hard to describe.”

“Is it like there’s been an uncomfortable weight on you that’s suddenly been removed, but you’ve grown used to the weight so it’s absence is weird?”

“Yes.  Yes.  That’s it exactly.”

“Okay.  Something that’s pretty common around this time of year is Christmas Music Withdrawal.  People hear nothing but Christmas music for two months and they grow accustomed to it, then Christmas happens, and then it’s cold turkey back to normal music.  For most people, this odd feeling goes away after a few days.  What I can do, is I can pencil you in for an appointment for … Wednesday.  If you’re feeling better by then you can cancel, but if you still feel odd, the Doctor can check to make sure it isn’t something else.  How does that sound?”

***

As someone forced to listen to Christmas music against my will, I’ve more or less trained myself to tune it out.  The last day I worked before Christmas, I was thinking about how soon I’d just have to tune out the normal bland music, when I joking thought about people having withdrawal symptoms from quitting Christmas music cold turkey.  The original version had someone call the doctor and the doctor telling them to listen to “Frosty the Snowman” twice and call them in the morning, along the lines of the old joke of “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” But how often do you actually talk to the doctor when you call the doctor’s office?  In addition, I wasn’t sure where exactly Christmas music fit in the range of things that you should quit cold turkey and what you should wean yourself off of.  I just wanted to make a silly little joke, but then I had to try to be realistic about it.

Short story – “A Collapse We Can Dance To”

“A Collapse We Can Dance To”

In the disturbingly near future

Jodi stopped her cart and listened for a few moments.  Turning to her wife Emily, she asked, “Did this song just have something about ‘sledding pine trees?’ As if the trees were on sleds going downhill?”

Emily dropped a bag of carrots into the cart.  She shrugged and said, “Hey, if you tell AI to write a new Christmas song, it just grabs everything – snowmen, presents, reindeer, mistletoe, and, um, a partridge in a pear tree – and jams it all together.  Resulting in an incoherent mess where pine trees enjoy sledding.”

Jodi sighed, and starting walking again.

“I’ll say this,” Emily said, “at least it’s different.  You’ve never had to work some place like this where you want to blow your brains out after listening to different versions of the same ten songs hour after hour after hour.” Emily listened for a moment and started swaying.  “At least it’s got a good beat.”

Jodi snorted.  “It heralds the collapse of society, but at least we can dance to it.”

Ads for AI

I watch a probably unhealthy amount of YouTube.  And since YouTube likes to put fourteen ad breaks in a twenty-minute video, I see lots of ads.  The vast majority of these ads are for things I have no interest in, or no use for, or are just stupid.  So I do my best to ignore them.  I would skip all that I could, but I do try to watch some so the creators get some revenue. 

A month or so ago, it seemed to me like I was seeing a lot of ads for some AI thing or another.  To the point it felt like a third of the ads were for AI.  So I decided to keep track of what I saw in the next 100 ads.  Out of those 100 ads, twenty-six were for random things like furniture stores or whatever.  Nineteen were for cars, while only ten were specifically for AI, although there were seven more for other tech stuff that might have had some AI in them.  It wasn’t a third, but it did seem like that night when I was tracking ads there was a lull in the AI ads.  Because in the weeks after I tracked the ads, it seems like it’s back to a quarter, at least. 

One of the new AI ads I’ve seen, is something I can’t get my head around.  Apparently, there’s now a washer-dryer that’s AI powered, or something.  Why?  The only thing I can think of, is they have sensors in the machine that allow you to basically hit a button and it will wash your clothes until they are clean, and then dry them until they are dry.  Instead of having a standard wash-dry cycle that you hope gets them clean and dries them completely, this washes and dries only as long as necessary.  That makes sense because that can save water/electricity/time.  If they called this IntelliWash, that would be great.  But since everything now has to be AI, they have to call it AI Wash, or whatever.  Now I know that there are some cases where “some type of AI” is just the right tool for the job.  The problem is, 99% of the stories we hear about AI is the “stolen hammer being used to pound in a screw” stories, so why would you want to call your fancy computer algorithm AI?  Can’t we find some other term for the good AI usages?

The other type of AI ads I’ve been noticing lately, have some business person in a meeting or whatever going, “Me no understand me job.  What me do?” And their AI assistant or whatever goes, “You should buy at $47.” And the person parrots back, “Me buy forty-seven.” I don’t know if it’s a devious scheme by the AI companies to try to tell other companies that “Your employees are complete morons who can’t do anything without AI.  You should just have AI do everything.” Because they hope that eventually AI will run everything, and when AI runs everything, those who control the AIs will control everything.  It’s either that or as an AI company, they don’t understand how businesses … business. 

Random Story – Where’s the fire?

This is just an odd little story from my life.

I work until 10 at night, so I drive home in the dark.  And I go on windy back roads that go through a bunch of woods.  And I rarely see other cars, but I usually see a few deer.

A couple years ago, I was going home when I saw something through the trees.  It was this triangular, reddish shape that seemed to waver.  I only saw it for a second or two before it was obscured by trees, but my brain figured it must be a house on fire up ahead and I was seeing the flames reflecting off the smoke.  This concerned me for several reasons.  First off, I didn’t want anyone to lose their house.  Also, a few miles ahead was this small village I went through where a couple of my uncles live.  So I hoped it wasn’t one of their houses.  But I also worried that the road might be blocked by firetrucks, and depending on where they were, I might have to backtrack several miles to find a way around them. 

All these thoughts hit me in that first second or two, and in the next few minutes – as I caught further quick glimpses of this thing – I grew even more concerned.  Because I hadn’t come to a massive house fire yet, meaning for me to see it from so far away it must be multiple houses on fire, but then why hadn’t any firetrucks come up behind me?  For such a huge fire, they would have called out several companies, and I’m pretty sure the way I was going was the fastest way for some of them to get there.

And then, I couldn’t see it any more.  I caught a glimpse of it through the trees, but then I went through a very windy part thick with trees, and when I came out, I couldn’t see it.  I get to the little village, looking all around but not seeing any fire, or firetrucks or anything out of the ordinary.  Wondering how I could have missed something that big.  I go through the village, and I’m a mile or two down the road – trying to figure out what I had seen – when I see it again.  Only this time, I can see it’s … the moon.

So, it was like a quarter moon that was still rising when I first saw it, which is why I only saw it as a triangular thing.  When the moon is on the horizon, it can be rather reddish, and this was a few years ago when Canada was on fire, so there was a lot of smoke in the air to make it even redder.  And then there were clouds.  It must have been a thin layer of clouds that blocked enough of the moonness to make it not obviously the moon.  Also, the different thicknesses moving in front of it gave it a wavering effect you’d expect from smoke billowing from a huge fire.  But this layer of clouds thickened to the point it blocked out all the moonlight – or at least enough that I couldn’t see it over my headlights – which is why I didn’t see anything for a couple of miles.  But then the clouds cleared enough for me to see that the reason there weren’t any firetrucks is because I confused the moon for a housefire.