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Stranger Things season 4 part 2
Finished it!
On the whole I liked it, although I felt the last two episodes before the break were stronger than the final two - or maybe I just enjoyed them more. Not unhappy with it, despite some complaints below; I'm looking forward to the final season!
That was way less of a bloodbath than I was braced for. Eddie's death had been telegraphed all season to the point where it felt like an anticlimax when it happened (and I was kind of hoping the obvious foreshadowing would be a fakeout just because it was so obvious, but no). Max's death genuinely shocked me, and then Eleven bringing her back was the Power of Friendship stuff that I've been missing. I did wish that they had leaned heavier into friendship than romantic love with both Eleven and Max's motivational scenes in the final episode, so getting some good Max-Eleven teamwork and friendship was a nice antidote to that.
That clock-running-down "bong" noise is pure nightmare fuel.
Somehow the last two episodes felt both overly long and not long enough. The pacing was off - there were just too many storylines, too much sapping of tension by cutting back and forth, WAY too much time given to speechifying and extended scenes with storylines that don't advance the main plot (did we need Brenner having a long death scene in the desert or all the bickering over the helicopter in Russia?) AND YET they left a lot of threads dangling that are unlikely to be picked up next season because they belonged to this season's plots. If that's the last time we ever see Antonov, his arc feels unfinished - we never saw a goodbye with Hopper or found out what his eventual fate was. We never saw anyone except Dustin react to Eddie's death, or *anyone's* reactions to the gate opening under Hawkins, or anyone getting home ... in fact, the skip to two days later was so sudden that I genuinely thought that the Steve-Robin-Nancy triad would be stuck in the Upside Down and presumed dead back in our world, and was a little disconcerted when it turned out that everyone's fine. (Also, I assumed there would be *some* consequences for Steve getting chewed on by Upside Down bats and everyone inhaling Upside Down spores, and found it a little annoying that it was totally not a thing.)
I'm genuinely annoyed that the whole season was focused on music as a way of breaking the bad guy's control, and also featured a character who was a musician, and *never used this* except as a way of making noise to attract the bats. (Honestly made worse because I couldn't figure out what that part of their plan actually was until they did it, including why they thought the bats would come at all, why they thought the bats would stay, and what their exit strategy was other than "flee into Hawkins, pursued by 10,000 demon bats.") Their plans are usually somewhat half-assed - I mean, they're teenagers - but I felt like this one was unusually disjointed and based on frustratingly tenuous logic.
The particular way that the show cuts back and forth between comedy/cartoon-logic aspects and horror/tension played straight hasn't worked for me in the last couple of seasons and it continued to be annoying this season. I felt like it was directly sucking tension from the climax, especially when they were cutting back and forth between characters in dire danger and, for example, Argyle making pizza (I was starting to hate Argyle with the power of 10,000 suns during that sequence) or Erica being pinned down by a guy twice her size in a scene that should have been terrifying but was actually played more like slapstick. There's also the problem that they upped the stakes with a massive body count but the mix of comedy and overt "this is obvious an 80s homage" tropiness made it feel way less impactful. Eleven just straight up killed some guys! They literally walked away and left Brenner dying in the desert - he frankly deserves it, but it was still a shockingly cold move for a bunch of kids - surrounded by the bodies of like a dozen people! You can't go straight to bickering over pizza after that - all of these fourteen-year-olds should be borderline catatonic from trauma! And if you're going to play it like the sort of canon where they toss off a quip and walk away from the flaming wreckage, it cuts the knees out from under the helpless horror of the genuinely very affecting scenes where they're all losing to Vecna and doing battle inside Max's mind. You can't give some characters comedy-sidekick plot armor while others are supposed to be lethally threatened in the same scene!
... okay, so that ended up being a lot of complaining. But there was a lot I did like! I continued to really enjoy the Steve-Nancy-Robin-etc group - they got some great badass scenes, and all of the Eleven-Max scenes were incredibly tense and fun. I also really liked how the show networked the different groups of characters in diverse geographical locations into the big fight; I was genuinely unsure how they were going to manage that, and the way they did it was pretty satisfying and fun. The horror would have been tenser if they hadn't kept sapping the tension with weird pacing and slapstick bits, as mentioned above, but there was a lot that was really tense and atmospheric, especially the eerily deserted dance with the distorted music.
The Robin-Steve-Dustin group volunteering at the community center at the end was a really lovely spot to leave them - it's a different kind of helping out than saving the town with firearms and Molotov cocktails, and it was nice to see them do it.
I really liked the Steve/Nancy this season and I would be very happy with it as an endgame ship. Robin's love interest is kinda bland but cute, and I'm glad she got one.
DUSTIN. ;__; He's really grown up a lot, though. I like that he reached out to Eddie's uncle at the end.
And as cliffhangers go, it's one that feels like it brings the show full circle to where it started, except with massively elevated stakes. And everyone's back in Hawkins now for the big finish!
On the whole, I liked this season a lot better than last season, don't have too-high expectations for season five since I expect the pacing problems I had this season will continue to be problems, but I'm invested enough to be excited about seeing how it all comes out at the end.
On the whole I liked it, although I felt the last two episodes before the break were stronger than the final two - or maybe I just enjoyed them more. Not unhappy with it, despite some complaints below; I'm looking forward to the final season!
That was way less of a bloodbath than I was braced for. Eddie's death had been telegraphed all season to the point where it felt like an anticlimax when it happened (and I was kind of hoping the obvious foreshadowing would be a fakeout just because it was so obvious, but no). Max's death genuinely shocked me, and then Eleven bringing her back was the Power of Friendship stuff that I've been missing. I did wish that they had leaned heavier into friendship than romantic love with both Eleven and Max's motivational scenes in the final episode, so getting some good Max-Eleven teamwork and friendship was a nice antidote to that.
That clock-running-down "bong" noise is pure nightmare fuel.
Somehow the last two episodes felt both overly long and not long enough. The pacing was off - there were just too many storylines, too much sapping of tension by cutting back and forth, WAY too much time given to speechifying and extended scenes with storylines that don't advance the main plot (did we need Brenner having a long death scene in the desert or all the bickering over the helicopter in Russia?) AND YET they left a lot of threads dangling that are unlikely to be picked up next season because they belonged to this season's plots. If that's the last time we ever see Antonov, his arc feels unfinished - we never saw a goodbye with Hopper or found out what his eventual fate was. We never saw anyone except Dustin react to Eddie's death, or *anyone's* reactions to the gate opening under Hawkins, or anyone getting home ... in fact, the skip to two days later was so sudden that I genuinely thought that the Steve-Robin-Nancy triad would be stuck in the Upside Down and presumed dead back in our world, and was a little disconcerted when it turned out that everyone's fine. (Also, I assumed there would be *some* consequences for Steve getting chewed on by Upside Down bats and everyone inhaling Upside Down spores, and found it a little annoying that it was totally not a thing.)
I'm genuinely annoyed that the whole season was focused on music as a way of breaking the bad guy's control, and also featured a character who was a musician, and *never used this* except as a way of making noise to attract the bats. (Honestly made worse because I couldn't figure out what that part of their plan actually was until they did it, including why they thought the bats would come at all, why they thought the bats would stay, and what their exit strategy was other than "flee into Hawkins, pursued by 10,000 demon bats.") Their plans are usually somewhat half-assed - I mean, they're teenagers - but I felt like this one was unusually disjointed and based on frustratingly tenuous logic.
The particular way that the show cuts back and forth between comedy/cartoon-logic aspects and horror/tension played straight hasn't worked for me in the last couple of seasons and it continued to be annoying this season. I felt like it was directly sucking tension from the climax, especially when they were cutting back and forth between characters in dire danger and, for example, Argyle making pizza (I was starting to hate Argyle with the power of 10,000 suns during that sequence) or Erica being pinned down by a guy twice her size in a scene that should have been terrifying but was actually played more like slapstick. There's also the problem that they upped the stakes with a massive body count but the mix of comedy and overt "this is obvious an 80s homage" tropiness made it feel way less impactful. Eleven just straight up killed some guys! They literally walked away and left Brenner dying in the desert - he frankly deserves it, but it was still a shockingly cold move for a bunch of kids - surrounded by the bodies of like a dozen people! You can't go straight to bickering over pizza after that - all of these fourteen-year-olds should be borderline catatonic from trauma! And if you're going to play it like the sort of canon where they toss off a quip and walk away from the flaming wreckage, it cuts the knees out from under the helpless horror of the genuinely very affecting scenes where they're all losing to Vecna and doing battle inside Max's mind. You can't give some characters comedy-sidekick plot armor while others are supposed to be lethally threatened in the same scene!
... okay, so that ended up being a lot of complaining. But there was a lot I did like! I continued to really enjoy the Steve-Nancy-Robin-etc group - they got some great badass scenes, and all of the Eleven-Max scenes were incredibly tense and fun. I also really liked how the show networked the different groups of characters in diverse geographical locations into the big fight; I was genuinely unsure how they were going to manage that, and the way they did it was pretty satisfying and fun. The horror would have been tenser if they hadn't kept sapping the tension with weird pacing and slapstick bits, as mentioned above, but there was a lot that was really tense and atmospheric, especially the eerily deserted dance with the distorted music.
The Robin-Steve-Dustin group volunteering at the community center at the end was a really lovely spot to leave them - it's a different kind of helping out than saving the town with firearms and Molotov cocktails, and it was nice to see them do it.
I really liked the Steve/Nancy this season and I would be very happy with it as an endgame ship. Robin's love interest is kinda bland but cute, and I'm glad she got one.
DUSTIN. ;__; He's really grown up a lot, though. I like that he reached out to Eddie's uncle at the end.
And as cliffhangers go, it's one that feels like it brings the show full circle to where it started, except with massively elevated stakes. And everyone's back in Hawkins now for the big finish!
On the whole, I liked this season a lot better than last season, don't have too-high expectations for season five since I expect the pacing problems I had this season will continue to be problems, but I'm invested enough to be excited about seeing how it all comes out at the end.
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Did the first season(s) do a better job?
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Then season three devolved completely into cartoon logic/cartoon physics, and the show has never really recovered. This season was better - where in the third season, the commitment to comedy wrecked everything serious about it (at least that was my general feeling), this season actually does manage some well-done tension, horror, and serious stuff. But there's still a tendency to shoehorn in comic-relief characters who effectively have plot armor due to Rule of Funny, which is really annoying when some parts of the show are still going for serious tension and danger.
This season's worst-offending scenes in my opinion were 1) a plane crash and 2) a home invasion by a heavily armed SWAT team shooting up the place, both played for laughs with everyone comically screaming and flailing and funny music playing over the top. It's extremely difficult to get away with something like that and then follow it up with very serious action scenes in which there is a realistic chance of characters being hurt or killed.
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D:
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Yikes.
Did the show change writers after the first two seasons, or just relax into a mode that doesn't work at all for you?
(I do feel there is a difference between horror-comedy and comedy-horror.)
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Hopper going medieval on the Demogorgon genuinely had me cheering, and his reunion with Eleven was perfect.
I definitely agree it felt like there was a lot of cutting back and forth between storylines, especially in the last episode, and that sometimes sucked the tension a bit.
I'd also be happy to see Steve and Nancy back together. They've both grown so much since the first series.
Dustin <333 my heart. It cannot take it ;_;
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