Stranger Things season 3

[sholio]

So I finished it!

I'm glad I waited a bit to post about it, because honestly the ending was so different from what I was expecting that all I really had was ".....?!!!" but now that I've slept on it, my feelings on the season overall are actually really positive! So, let's see. Have some reactions.

Things I liked:

- STEVE AND ROBIN OMG. I was SO SURE they were being set up as a couple, and then the scene in the bathroom with his love confession and his reaction to her coming out was just the absolute sweetest, and so was finding out at the end that they're still friends and she's got his back. I want all the fic about the two of them hanging out and having adventures and wingmanning each other's attempts to pick up girls. Also, I now am just going to quietly headcanon that with the Party split up, the new D&D team in town is Erica, Dustin, Robin, and Steve.

- I also felt like Steve kind of got shoehorned into comic relief this season, so having him get a little hero moment when he goes back for the others was great. Fantastic dramatic entrance too! (So that guy never did get his car back, I guess?)

- Once we finally saw Suzie, I really loved her, and I'm glad she got to be useful in the big fight even from a couple thousand miles away! (Really not on board with breaking the tension in the middle of the fight for massive embarrassment squick, though.)

- The final confrontation with the monster and the machine was so cinematic and fun, and such an homage in the lighting and coloring and heroic sacrifices to 80s action/sci-fi movies. I loved every minute of it.

- Billy's heroic sacrifice was actually one of my favorite parts of the finale. (So much so that I went and giffed it.) I'm not really sure I would've wanted a full redemption arc for him, or even that it would've worked at all, but that moment with him and El and the monster was just ... ALL THE EMOTIONS.

- Losing Hopper made me feel a little better about how much I disliked his characterization this season. I guess I'll get into that more in the non-squee section below, but the sacrifice scene was dramatic and fun, and kind of a relief. I also really loved Joyce getting to be a Big Damn Hero and shut down the machine.

- All the partings at the end were really sad, but it also feels true to how families and friendships grow and change over the years.

- Just from a goofball shipper perspective, it was also surprisingly good setup for Steve and Nancy potentially getting back together. I mean, I don't think the show is going to go there in the slightest, but ficwise, I could totally see it. The most interesting thing about that triad this season is how Steve is now off having adventures and investigating weird things all on his own, and Jonathan's the one trying to talk her out of it, and it's now extremely plausible for Nancy and Steve to fall back together while looking into Hawkins weirdness.


Things I didn't like:

- It still frustrates me how cartoonish the human antagonists were this season. I guess it goes along with the movies they were riffing on, but not a single one of them (the newsroom guys, the mayor, the Russians) seemed like a real person in the slightest. I feel like in past seasons, one of the show's strengths is that while it's riffing on all these 80s sources, it's also bringing a modern sensibility, a sense of underlying realism that deepens it. This season just felt like you were watching one of those movies, and not one of the better ones, with the cartoony villains who get tidily knocked off with a single bullet, and I really didn't like it. Didn't like the high human body count either. People being killed by monsters I'm fine with, in a show like this. People being killed in significant numbers by Our Heroes is something I don't enjoy at all.

- Along those lines, I also felt like this season felt less grounded in the community and the families, especially compared to season 2, which brought in the families a lot more. (Ironic given that this season actually had more involvement with the townspeople, but none of them ever really emerged as real people except maybe the little old lady, RIP.) I realize it's a small town and the kids go over to each other's houses all the time, but the fact that the kids could spend a couple of days completely out of touch with their parents and no one ever noticed strained my credibility even by 80s standards, as did the complete lack of impact from all the deaths and the HOSPITAL GETTING MASSACRED right before the big 4th of July fair. Like ... did nobody notice because everyone at the paper is now dead so it didn't actually make the news, or ...?

- I pretty much hated every single minute that Hopper was onscreen. The fact that it wasn't leading up to a happy ending with Joyce redeemed it somewhat, but I guess you're not supposed to be going "Yes! Yes!" when a character lines themselves up for a sacrifice. I had way more feelings about Billy's death than about Hopper's by that point! It also didn't help that I also find Conspiracy Guy insufferable and they never really characterized the Russian scientist beyond "comic relief stereotype", so just about the only thing I enjoyed at all about Hopper's entire storyline was Joyce, and I didn't even enjoy her that much because their interactions were so irritating and the way he treated her pissed me off so much! I assume he's now in a Russian gulag (... somehow) rather than actually dead, so I guess we get to suffer him some more next season (so frustrating!! he was one of my favorites in the last two seasons!!) but maybe he'll be more likable when he comes back? idk. I do feel really bad for Eleven, though I actually don't feel so bad for Joyce because she kinda dodged a bullet. (When Murray was talking about Joyce being unable to commit because she's reminded of past relationships, I think we were supposed to be thinking about Bob, but based on the way Hopper was acting towards her this season, her ex-husband is really more what comes to mind.)


So yeah, on the whole, this was fun and we marathoned it in two days, and I had a really good time watching it, and I feel good about it afterwards. However, while the previous two seasons were really good TV and endlessly rewatchable for me, this one was fun but ... it didn't knock my socks off in the same way. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be able to rewatch it without fast-forwarding through every single Hopper scene, and a lot of this season felt a little too glib and superficial (to me), and less grounded and believable than previous seasons. But it was fun and I have no regrets about the amount of my life that's been eaten up with watching this show over the last couple of days. I do kinda feel like it's jumped the shark a bit, though.

Comments

[sovay]

However, while the previous two seasons were really good TV and endlessly rewatchable for me, this one was fun but ... it didn't knock my socks off in the same way.

I have never seen any Stranger Things, but the first two seasons sounded from the outside as though they went together organically—weird shit happens, characters deal with fallout from weird shit—and this season has sounded more like "and now here's some different weird shit," which can be fun, but not necessarily as closely tied. (Feel free to correct if totally wrong. My friendlist has just started to react to this season.)

[sholio]

Yeah, I think this is fairly accurate. The third season sort of does this - there's a line of continuity with the main plot of the previous seasons - but the first two went together like parts 1 and 2 of a unified story arc, and this season was more distinct in plot and also had a different thematic feeling than the earlier two.

[sovay]

and also had a different thematic feeling than the earlier two.

How does it differ thematically? (Was there a through-line from the first two seasons that you expected to be present in the third, that wasn't?)

[sholio]

Hmmm. Thinking about this, it may be more a matter of tone than theme. The first two seasons, while they were drawing from a wide array of influences, felt all of one piece - they were heavily influenced by Stephen King and similar works of the 80s, with a kind of down-to-earth, small-town feeling, all about a group of different people coming together and fighting to defend their hometown and eventually being friends at the end.

The third season cast its net wider and started drawing in scifi/action influences (which I think was especially obvious at the end) and they just didn't go together all that well. The scope of the third season was much bigger -- the first two seasons obliquely alluded to the Cold War and the like, but the narrative focus was very tight, on this one small town where everything you know about the bigger world is filtered through a handful of mostly-young characters who are preoccupied with their own concerns. The third season started drawing in the big picture but just ... didn't do it well, I felt. It was very glib and surface-y. In the earlier seasons, they were taking various 80s genre tropes and giving them heart and depth. In this season, it seemed like they got all the surface aspects but not the heart.

And then it ended with the group splintering and going their separate ways, which made narrative sense, but also gave the season an overall different feeling than the first two.

I think I might feel better about it if this had been the last season. It was a pretty decent ending, and it felt like an ending, a little sadder and less optimistic than the endings of the previous seasons. Knowing that there's going to be another season - which means they'll have to contrive a way to get all the characters back in one place again - makes me pessimistically suspect that it's going to feel even more like a sequel for a series that's run its course.

[rachelmanija]

Yeah, a lot of the 80s action tropes felt incredibly jarring. Something like Poltergeist or IT doesn't have the heroes killing ordinary people, just monsters. Mowing down tons of anonymous soldiers without anyone caring is an action-movie trope, not a horror movie trope. Switching those tropes on to the same characters makes them come across as sociopathic.

[sovay]

Mowing down tons of anonymous soldiers without anyone caring is an action-movie trope, not a horror movie trope. Switching those tropes on to the same characters makes them come across as sociopathic.

It sounds offputting. I don't even like it all that much in action movies and it has been categorically demonstrated to turn people off superhero narratives unless explicitly addressed in-story.

[sovay]

The third season cast its net wider and started drawing in scifi/action influences (which I think was especially obvious at the end) and they just didn't go together all that well.

Were there particular narrative models from the 1980's they were aiming for? The decade was certainly full of sci-fi/action/horror, but I'm having trouble thinking of a lot of YA crossover, if that makes sense. (I'm not getting a lot of WarGames off your summary. Monsters and machines makes me think more of Buckaroo Banzai or Howard the Duck.)

Knowing that there's going to be another season - which means they'll have to contrive a way to get all the characters back in one place again - makes me pessimistically suspect that it's going to feel even more like a sequel for a series that's run its course.

Did they know there was going to be another season when they scripted this one? Or are they reopening a closed canon?

[rachelmanija]

Red Dawn, Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry, I think.

[sovay]

Red Dawn, Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry, I think.

All famously starring small-town teenagers, of course.

[rachelmanija]

Red Dawn actually was about small-town teenagers, IIRC.

This season was one-third a similar storyline to the previous seasons (Stephen King, Poltergeist vibe), one-third Red Dawn), and one-third action cop story about a violent asshole cop who's the hero we're supposed to cheer on. This was especially noticeable as they were literally three different storylines. And also because the violent cop "hero" had a complete personality transplant from previous seasons.

[sovay]

Red Dawn actually was about small-town teenagers, IIRC.

Sorry. Recognized the two others and neither of them struck me as King's metier.

And also because the violent cop "hero" had a complete personality transplant from previous seasons.

That also sounds offputting.

[kore]

Oh yeah, that was total Brat Pack type territory -- Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, and Brad Savage, with Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O'Neal, William Smith (Rumble Fish!), and Lane Smith to boot. And it was supposed to be set in Calumet, Michigan, but got moved to Colorado to make to make it more "anonymous," LOL (also probably to associate it with Westerns), and was filmed in Las Vegas NM. https://www.grahmsguide.com/red-dawn-1984

TNT (or was it TBS) used to run that sucker like clockwork, along with Beastmaster and Conan and the film whose title I can't remember about two American dumbasses who go hiking in Europe and decide to cross over into the Soviet Union just for kicks. SHENANIGANS ensue.

[sholio]

There are a few other things - Terminator for sure (I swear they cast one of the antagonists simply by trying to find someone who looked as much like 80s-era Schwartzenegger as possible), and aesthetically at least, they were definitely drawing on the early Star Wars movies and a sort of a general 1980s/90s sci-fi look and color palette. But yeah, like Rachel said, some of the storylines this season were pulling from their original set of tropes, some from the new ones, and they ended up with a distinct style mismatch.

[musesfool]

Rambo, definitely, which is referenced in the text, especially for Hopper, which was ill-fitting, and Terminator. They could have actually done a lot more with Terminator, imo, with the Joyce/Sarah Connor and El/John Connor parallel, but they didn't.

[kore]

RAMBO? bzuh.

It sounds like Terminator would have been much more fertile ground.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Yes! I think you're quite right about these movie influences, and I didn't particularly like the two I've seen (haven't seen Lethal Weapon), and so I really didn't like this season a whole lot.

[mikeda]

sovay Did they know there was going to be another season when they scripted this one?

Nearly as I can tell, the answer is that they knew there would be another season barring some unexpected turn of events.

[rachelmanija]

I loved the h/c and endurance from Eleven in the last episode, and the kids all getting together to fight (NOT the cringey singing, ugh) and the giant monster.

I was sorry that Hopper turned out to not be dead because I was really hoping to see the last of him. I think the last character I so wanted to cut out of every frame of a story I otherwise liked was Olaf the Obnoxious Talking Snowman in Frozen.

It also rubbed me the wrong way that the heroes were slaughtering human beings without a second thought or regret.

[sholio]

Oh right, I forgot about that - yes, I really loved everything with Eleven and the kids, too, especially El performing psychic surgery on herself! She's so great.

I was sorry that Hopper turned out to not be dead because I was really hoping to see the last of him. I think the last character I so wanted to cut out of every frame of a story I otherwise liked was Olaf the Obnoxious Talking Snowman in Frozen.

I KNOW RIGHT? I think I'd rather have Olaf than Hopper at this point. He was so utterly insufferable this season that I now have a knee-jerk "get out of my eyeballs!" reaction to him even in scenes where he's not being terrible, like the voiceover letter scene at the end. I really hope this doesn't retroactively ruin all his scenes in the previous seasons. And yeah, not only is he still alive but he's IN RUSSIA, which means that two of my least favorite flavors of this season will be mixed together next season, like bananas and bubble gum!

It also rubbed me the wrong way that the heroes were slaughtering human beings without a second thought or regret.

I gotta say, that scene where the Russian military guys corner Murray and Joyce and Murray's like "Don't shoot us, we're Americans!" my only thought at that point was that you better hope they're better people than you guys are, since you've been remorselessly killing them for the last three episodes. (Not them specifically, it was all Hopper, but they were there for it, and "we surrender, don't shoot" loses a bit of moral standing when you're literally wearing the bullet-riddled uniforms of people that your side killed!)

[alessandriana]

I think the last character I so wanted to cut out of every frame of a story I otherwise liked was Olaf the Obnoxious Talking Snowman in Frozen.

In previous seasons, I've had to pause & look up spoilers during the horror bits to see who died, when things were going to jump out at me, etc. This season I didn't need to do that, but I did have to look up spoilers to see how much of a dick Hopper was going to be.

[conuly]

SERIOUSLY WITH YOU ON HOPPER.

Him being on the wrong side of overprotective makes a lot of character sense, it does - but I'm not sure that the show quite realized he was in the wrong here.

[sholio]

Yeah, I think the underlying sense that the narrative had no idea he was coming across as an abusive, controlling dick was the thing I found hardest to swallow. I can also see him going overboard. What ticks me off is that I think it was supposed to be cute and funny instead of asshole-ish.

I don't always want this, but in this case I really did want an apology to either Joyce or Eleven (which he owed to them both), in the same way Steve backed down from his nasty-boyfriend behavior and apologized to Nancy in season one. The fact that he didn't do anything of the sort makes me think that the writers had no idea how he was coming across.

[conuly]

Her language skills would be so much better if he'd enrolled her in school. Screw hiding! Hanging out alone in the woods day after day is way more suspicious. Even in the 80s, child services didn't like that.

[sholio]

I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that because I can see not wanting to expose her to that many people with the possibility that the US government was still after her (or factions of it, anyway). But there's a very large continuum of possibilities between enrolling her in public school where 500 people are going to see her every day, and keeping her in the middle of nowhere with exactly two (2) people in the entire world that she gets to talk to. (Which in retrospect makes his behavior even more reprehensible, because this isn't even a normal dad freaking out about his daughter getting a boyfriend, this is a guy trying to get rid of the ONE person other than himself that she's allowed to spend time around!)

[conuly]

And meanwhile, what's going on with her education? Is she being homeschooled? Is he even bringing home piles of library books every week?

[kore]

Yeah, she could have been homeschooled with tutoring, which also could've included peer-to-peer learning, and IIRC even in the early eighties there were satellite classes kids could attend at high schools and junior colleges. There are also programs where the parents can pay for the same test materials and books the local public schools use, so the kid can transition into their class later if they want. It would be historically correct too because homeschooling started to boom in the US in the 1980s, due to the religious right -- the Home School Legal Defense Association was founded in 1983. //just spitballing

[conuly]

(I'm a little stuck on that thought of education.)

[maplemood]

I still have to write up a post to get my feelings in order, but you pretty much hit all my likes and dislikes right on the head. This season wasn't bad by any means but I just feel like--unlike seasons 1 and 2, which had their clunky moments but ended up being greater than the sums of their parts--season 3 has a bunch of great moments that never mesh well enough to do the same. It's not as grounded or as human, and some of the character development choices (Hopper?!) are just...not good. At all.

But! I loved Steve & Robin and Steve & Dustin, the Max & El friendship was wonderful and came together in a way that felt pretty believable to me, Erica was lots of fun, Billy's arc surprisingly really worked for me (His moments with El! His heroic sacrifice! The hints that Max was still holding a candle for him, even at the end!) and since I don't buy for a second that Hopper's really dead, maybe in the next season they'll do a better job with his character development?

[sholio]

Unlike seasons 1 and 2, which had their clunky moments but ended up being greater than the sums of their parts--season 3 has a bunch of great moments that never mesh well enough to do the same. It's not as grounded or as human, and some of the character development choices (Hopper?!) are just...not good. At all.

Yes! I think this is a really good way to put it. Taken individually, there were probably just as many good/brilliant moments in this season as in each of the previous two. But it was dragged down by some really poor writing choices, where the previous seasons really come together and click. Not feeling as grounded and human, YES, that was exactly the problem.

But yeah, the stuff I liked, I really liked, including all the things you mentioned! I was also surprised by how completely sold I was on Billy's arc this season, and his death scene was very dramatic and moving.

Fingers crossed Hopper will be improved next season. Or at least more recognizable!

[neonhummingbird]

(Really not on board with breaking the tension in the middle of the fight for massive embarrassment squick, though.)

THANK YOU! Not just me! Everyone is all, "So cute! So adorable!" I'm like, "So embarrassing! Wasted enough time to get Hopper (and Billy)killed!" (Not Suzie's fault, not blaming her, blaming the writers big time.

Also totes agree on the adorable of Steve and Robin; I disagree with your take on Hopper, but I see where you're coming from. :) I also agree that it was less grounded, but I enjoy summer blockbusters, so I'm okay with that, almost.

[sholio]

Yeah, the Neverending Story scene would've been cute under other circumstances, and the actors performed the hell out of it - but right in the middle of the big climactic battle AND as something Dustin was being forced to do over his objections ... it just hit all the wrong notes for me. (So to speak. XD)

... and heh, yeah, everyone's gonna have a different take on different aspects of the show; I know my take on it is just one person's opinion and that's fine! :D

[snickfic]

I think I liked it less than you did, given that I gave up in the middle of episode 5 and read the rest of the season on wikipedia.

However, mostly I came here to say HOW MUCH I hoped that Hopper had been taken over by the Mind Flayer a la Billy. "Ah, he's acting weirdly violent and impulsive, just like Billy almost knocked Karen Wheeler's head into that shelf! It's the Mind Flayer!" And then I guess it... wasn't the Mind Flayer? I'm so incredibly disappointed, when he'd been such a pleasant surprise that first season when I was sure I was going to hate him. And now I do hate him. :(((

Also, this is a minor point, but why bother having people be secretly mind-controlled if you never get a sudden but inevitable betrayal from one of them?

Do Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan ever share a scene together? As far as I'd gotten, Steve had yet to leave the Starcourt premises (or wear anything but tiny shorts).

[sholio]

Yeahhhhh. I absolutely loathed Hopper's characterization this season and my feelings about him being killed off were mostly relief.

My sister helped me come to terms with it a bit by pointing out that there's some evidence this season that he's both suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and sliding back into alcoholism. So, on the one hand, it actually DOES make sense that the kids would be more resilient than the adults, particularly because of having a same-age support system while Hopper and Joyce really don't (aside from each other, and they don't seem to be getting along). So there's a handwave right there for it. But yeah, I got absolutely no suggestion this season that the writers meant to make him as incredibly unpleasant as he came across (an apology to Joyce, Eleven, or Mike, for example), and he went from being one of my favorites because of, yeah, the pleasant surprise factor, to a character who's been retroactively ruined; I don't even enjoy gifs of him from earlier seasons anymore.

That is also SUCH A GOOD POINT about the sudden but inevitable betrayal factor! I am now very disappointed that we didn't get that, because I love that kind of thing, and the setup was RIGHT THERE! Awwwww.


Do Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan ever share a scene together? As far as I'd gotten, Steve had yet to leave the Starcourt premises (or wear anything but tiny shorts).

There is a cool scene with Steve rescuing Nancy et al from the Mind Flayer in the finale (it's several characters in peril, not specifically her, but Nancy's the one most directly in peril), but aside from that and a couple of group scenes near the end involving everybody, the trio don't appear together at all. :( (alessandriana pointed out that you see Steve talking to N&J in the background of one scene, but that's literally the only one-on-one (well, I guess three-on-three) interaction that they get in the whole entire season, DAMMIT.

The writers seemed to be more interested in having Steve be comic relief this season than I'm really into. I don't mind him getting knocked down a peg or some of his behavior played for laughs, but I wasn't really on board with dumbing him down to the extent that they did. (There's one scene in which someone asks him his three favorite movies and he's literally unable to remember the names of three movies. Come on. He might not be book-smart but that's the sort of question he ought to be good at!)

[snickfic]

I got absolutely no suggestion this season that the writers meant to make him as incredibly unpleasant as he came across

Yeah, that was the worst part of it. If the story treated it as lamentable character development, I could have gotten on board, but it sure did look like the writers just thought he was pretty awesome. >:(

that's literally the only one-on-one (well, I guess three-on-three) interaction that they get in the whole entire season, DAMMIT.

How could they do this to us for TWO seasons??? I thought surely they'd throw us a bone this season. :(