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.

The Uncapped Pen, at last!

 

Over a decade ago, I had the idea of putting together a collection of stories dealing with writing: authors arguing with their muse, or struggling with having too many ideas, or too few, or whatever.  But for reasons, I set it aside, until a few years ago when I figured I’d finish it.  Well, it took longer than expected, and just as I was about to put the final polish on, there was a writer’s strike.  While I’m not a member of the Writers Guild of America, it felt wrong to publish a book about writing during their strike.  But since the strike is over, I’ve now published The Uncapped Pen.  You can find it on Kindle for $3.99, or equivalent.

Let’s talk about fan service

The idea behind fan service is to put something into a work – say a movie – that would please the fans.  However, lately it seems the term “fan service” is applied to any stupid shit that clueless, corporate stooges cram into a movie even though nobody wants it.  My opinion, is that – broadly speaking – there is good fan service and bad fan service.  The problem is that good fan service requires thought to be put into it, whereas any clueless, corporate stooge can cram in bad fan service.  This is something that’s been in the back of my mind for some time now, but it really came to the head recently with The Rise of Skywalker, so I’ll use examples from Star Wars. 

An example of good fan service – again, in my opinion – is the crumpled AT-AT where Rey lives in The Force Awakens.  There’s the nostalgic “I remember those” which seems to be the foundation of modern fan service, but it’s also an element of world building.  We had already seen a crashed Star Destroyer, but Rey’s AT-AT drives home that the galaxy is littered with the wreckage from the fall of the Empire.  If they had better scripts – and a plan – that might have built to something, other than a McGuffin in the wreck of Death Star II.

While I could use the wreckage of the Death Star II as an example of bad fan service – “I remember that” – I’ll go to the Prequels instead.  My example is Anakin building C-3PO.  Why?  To be perfectly honest, R2-D2 could have just shown up in Episode III in a cameo and that would have been fine, and would have fit in with that one line in A New Hope.  There is no reason for C-3PO to be in the Prequels, let alone having been built by Anakin.  Oh, it could have been fun to see how the two droids met if the giant shoehorn cramming them into the plot wasn’t so distracting.  And that is the problem with bad fan service: the eye-rolling distraction of them outweigh any benefit to the story of having them there.  Now, I remember at the time a friend going on about how R2-D2 and C-3PO were the only characters in all the movies, but there doesn’t seem to be a point to that.  Especially with the latest trilogy.  But the Prequels needed some nostalgia, since that’s easier to do than compelling stories.

I used to be a Star Wars fan.  I gave it up in the Prequel days, but this latest trilogy didn’t do anything to change that.  As a former Star Wars fan, I wanted good movies.  That might have brought me back.  But that requires actually writing good movies.  I didn’t want just any random shit to remind me of the good movies thrown on screen as “fan service.” But what can we expect from clueless, corporate stooges who are more interested in making a quick buck than lasting art.

Introducing Possible Futures

I primarily write science fiction.  Sometimes my stories are of starships warping off to meet aliens, but often my stories are set closer to home: maybe a few decades or a century from now.  I’m always thinking about how current technology will change in the next few decades.  This can lead to story ideas, or it can just be a fun way to pass the time.  So I have a bunch of random ideas of what we may have in the future.  Few of these can be the foundation of a story, although a few can fit in as part of “world building.”

Well, a couple of years ago I decided to write up some of these ideas on a website I wrote on.  Part of it was because I earned points for views which – if the site had lasted – I could have turned into actual money.  So you needed to have interesting articles that people would take an interest in reading.  But the main reason is that I feel we don’t spend enough time thinking of the future.  Regardless of how we feel about the matter, The Future is Coming. (That’s the title of my Kindle book of essays about science fiction elements that – I feel – will soon be science facts.)

I wrote a few articles on that site, then it died.  Some months went by and then I looked over these articles I had saved, and I wondered if I could get an ebook out of them.  What I figured I’d do was have short articles on these ideas, mixed in with short stories, and maybe just some random thoughts.  The title I came up with was “Possible Futures: short stories, essays, and random thoughts on life in the coming centuries.” So I had a title, I had the handful of posts I had written along with ideas for several more and … that folder just sat on my computer for months and I didn’t do anything with it. 

Because of life and other projects, my blogging pretty much fizzled out in 2016.  As the year is ending, I’ve been thinking of what I should be doing, and I figured since I already have a few articles, I could just revise them and post them here.  Hopefully, that will get me to finish more posts and maybe someday I will get around to publishing an ebook of possible futures.  I’m setting a goal of trying for at least one post a month, but we’ll see how that goes.