TV Binge: Stranger Things (Season 4, 2022)

Stranger Things (Season 4, 2022)

Creator: The Duffer Brothers

Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Priah Ferguson, Matthew Modine, Maya Hawke, Joseph Quinn

When a young boy disappears, his mother, a police chief and his friends must confront terrifying supernatural forces in order to get him back. – IMDB

Its been a while for Stranger Things and now that the two parts of Season 4 are finally released, its time to give it an overall look. Season 4 of Stranger Things definitely takes things back up to the hype of its first season. Not only do the ending 2 episodes become incredibly long running at 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours respectively but the whole show in general shows off a lot of writing especially when referencing back to almost a circle effect as events from prior seasons all come together from looking at what happened exactly with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) at the Hawkins Lab that lead her to run away to the initial group being separate for various reasons but all coming together in their different places, showing off the extent of the Upside Down and the hive mind of the demogorgons and also what connects them all together. Its an elaborate story and one that truly elevates especially in terms of the script.

Since I never managed to get the TV binges for Season 2 and 3 out, its suitable to talk a little about my feelings towards it. The last 2 seasons were decent but never quite lived up to its first season, even though season 3 did end on quite the big change with a lot at stake in its big finale. Perhaps its how it felt a little been there done that with the same similar plot of the Upside Down and Eleven’s powers and Hawkins Lab and sealing the portals and such. There were some decent new characters as well, even if some didn’t last. The threat doesn’t seem to change even if the dynamic between the friends shifted a little and still had some fun moments.

What makes Season 4 work better even if some of the threats are familiar, is that there is more depth. There’s a lot of change and it justifies that a certain amount of time has moved on since how things ended in Season 3. It brings in topics of bullying and the 80s satanic panic along with new characters coming into play. The 80s theme is still very vibrant with the soundtrack, even surpassing that of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill and Metallica’s Master of Puppets. It helps that the crew is all split up in different locations which adds some freshness as the adults are in Russia, the kids are split between Hawkins and California while Eleven needs to reconnect with her powers despite the people involved. There’s a lot to talk about just in terms of the many tangents of the plotline. The most direct would be the whole process of Russia where the adults come together with Joyce (Winona Ryder) working with Murray (Brett Gelman) to follow a message allegedly from Hopper (David Harbour) and they head off to save him. As much as the kids are a part of the story, the adults are also rather important as well. This side of the story as dangerous as it is actually packs a lot of comedic relief whether its the dialogue from Murray or Joyce and their very unplanned way of trying to save Hopper.

The whole dynamic between the friends shifts as they get older with different priorities like wanting to break away from being the Dungeons and Dragons nerds to being the popular jock. While Eleven in her new environment with Will (Noah Schnapp) experiences her powers gone after the last season’s events and has to deal with bullying. Despite all this, everyone tries to pretend everything is okay when it isn’t which is the main reason for some of the conflicts here afterwards. With new alliances, the main one being the new character Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) who is wrongly accused of a fellow classmate’s death in his trailer as well as Steve’s (Joe Keery) work buddy Robin (Maya Hawke). Its nice to see that as Lucas falls out of the group for a bit, his sister Erica (Priah Ferguson) steps up with a bigger role as she is a little body with a big attitude who is incredibly fun to watch. With a lot of the relationships and little other things put into the backdrop as they group together to fight against the new enemy Vecna, it all builds to a rather big thing with some serious aftermath affecting not only the Upside Down but also Hawkins as a whole. What deserves a big mention, other than Eleven’s side of the story as she’s always a big part, is that Max (Sadie Sink) gets a much bigger role in this season as what happened in the previous season haunts her to the point that makes her mentally weaker and giving the chance to be trapped into a deadly situation.

Stranger Things Season 4 is definitely a step up from the previous 2 seasons. While it seems to jump around a lot, the difference in locations and the different groups of characters working together in one scenario to the next gives off parallel storylines that drive the story further. The writing also adds depth as it does pull a lot of the world that they’ve been building all these seasons together giving it a circle effect (which I have to admit is something I particularly love seeing in any sort of film or TV as it makes it feel very clever). The characters, new ones especially did such a great job, no matter if it was the bully or the jock or Eddie Munson who all delivered the necessary effects. It is nice to see Steve’s character have some other purpose than being the babysitter at the end while Eddie and Dustin does build a nice friendship as well. If there was one thing to criticize (and I’m sure there’s more especially some bits of the episodes working towards those 2 final ones) more strongly is its the whole cliffhanger ending, which from memory Stranger Things always did have the tendency to do to build up the anticipation for the next season. With that said, its not so bad since their final season is going to happen so hopefully we will see that released soon and see how the Duffer Brothers wrap up this whole world.

What’s Up Week 27: Slowing Down

As the coverage season (at least for me) approaches, things are slowing down mostly because time becomes less and its the process to just not burn out on certain types of writing before getting to the main thing.

READING

• Lifelike by Jay Kristoff

Currently reading: The Serpent-Bearer and the Prince of Stars

Its been a long time but I finally wrapped up Lifelike (and got a mild sunburn in the process). I have some pros and cons to Lifelike for sure. Putting obvious fatigue and and being preoccupied with other things aside, Lifelike did take me a little while to get into so I have some issues with it but at the same time, its a good comparison for Jay Kristoff as a solo author writing sci-fi and his ideas while comparing them to when he teams up and co-wrote the Illuminae Trilogy. That review is coming up soon-ish.

PLAYING

Seeing as it was an event coverage weekend, gaming was not really that much at home. Instead, I did try out a few games at Montreal Comiccon. You can find the recap of the Indie Game Zone HERE. Below are some games that we had a chance to try out:

• Aeolis Tournament
• Tech Support: Error Unknown
• City Game Studio

I linked up the Steam pages in case you ever are interested and wanted to check it out!

Other than that, its been pretty much the same as I’ve been on the move mostly so playing mostly mobile games:

• PinOut
• Two Dots

I’m going to be honest that I don’t think gaming is going to be too vibrant. But I have skipped two mobile games roundups for Game Warp so the hope is to get one of those up by the end of July as I have been playing a lot of mobile games.

WATCHING

• Lick the Star (short)
• The Virgin Suicides

Movies and Tea is still in its After Hours episodes with only one of three episodes released. Due to my busy schedule, Elwood and I had decided to get the first episode Season 3 recorded to just get things started. Our next author, in case you don’t follow the Movies and Tea Facebook page, is Sofia Coppola. We chose her for multiple reasons. One of them being that her movies are more dramatic which definitely is a change from Paul W.S. Anderson and Guillermo Del Toro. We kick off with The Virgin Suicides, which I had seen only a few years ago but I don’t think I reviewed because I couldn’t quite grasp how I felt about it overall. This time though, I tried really hard to make sense of it all and notice the little things. I’m not going to talk too much about it as you can hear it all on the upcoming episode.

BINGING

• Umbrella Academy (Season 1, 2019)
• Stranger Things (Season 3, 2019)

Currently binging: Love Signal, River Flows To You, “My Highness” The Class Monitor

Back to some Netflix TV binging for us this past week as the husband was on his vacation (well, staycation). I wanted to check out The Umbrella Academy for the Montreal Comiccon and wrapped that up during the beginning of the week. Maybe on Canada Day. Then the husband got really excited about Stranger Things Season 3 launching on Thursday and started that up right away so despite media coverage season, I still found some energy to watch it and I think, we binged it over evenings. I’m prioritizing the TV binge for Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy so it should come out over this month some time. Its already in the works.

As for the currently binging stuff, My Highness should end next week whereas River Flows To You and Love Signal is still in early stages. For the moment, I’m not starting anything new until after July. At thats the plan…but you never know with a new season for Queer Eye, Sugar Rush and Orange is the New Black coming up in July, its going to be hard to resist.

That’s it for this week’s Whats Up!

TV Binge: Stranger Things (Season 1, 2016)

We FINALLY saw Stranger Things and not to mention, properly binge watched it over our week off from work. It only took us maybe two sittings to get through it all and that is a compliment to it. Whenever we turned it off, we’d always keep wanting to go back to see what happens. That is what makes a good show. But a lot of you already know that since I think we may be the only people in the world with Netflix that hasn’t seen it yet. However, this also gives us an advantage to not have such a long wait for Season 2.

Stranger Things (Season 1, 2016)

Creator: Matt Duffer & Ross Duffer

Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Noah Schnapp

When a young boy disappears, his mother, a police chief, and his friends must confront terrifying forces in order to get him back. – IMDB

I’m going to admit that I put off watching Stranger Things because I tend to avoid watching things when they are mega hyped up. Almost anything that you go in with the expectation of it being the best thing ever made is going to somehow disappoint with a few rare exceptions, I’d say. I can’t say that Stranger Things is the best show in the world because I can think of a few that I’d probably rank before just for its entertainment value and how I get immersed into it but Stranger Things is definitely an awesome show. Its one that will have its creepy moments but at the same time offer thrills at every corner. It also helps that the cast and story and atmosphere is incredibly charming and wonderfully crafted. What deserves a lot of credit for this film is not only the physical town they are in with its mysterious government facility closed to the public but also the way they utilize the area around it from the forest to every backdrop for the show. The setting creates a lot of it and of course its effective use of building up the Upside Down and how they implemented the use of lights.

I have no idea where to even start with this write-up so lets just start with our stars: The kids or are you really called The Losers (like in IT?) Anyways, details that I can’t remember because I’m really bad at remembering things like that. However, they were fantastic. Of course, Will (played by Noah Schnapp) wasn’t really there for most of the series as he was the one kidnapped but the other kids here are great, especially seeing that they were able to give them distinct personalities and how they are very cool (and nerdy) with their Dungeons and Dragons match at the beginning, which gave us a good feeling of who these kids were. They are such colorful characters and their naivety in dealing with this situation really helped them feel like they were kids faced with something way over their heads and had to find the courage to figure it out and help their friend out. And here’s where we meet Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown who doesn’t have a lot of dialogue but carries her role proficiently. Eleven is possibly one of my favorite characters of Stranger Things because of where she starts and her story, she also has a lot of character development and you all know, I’m a sucker for that.

Looking to the teens, we have Nancy, played by Natalia Dyer. I’ve seen her before in a movie called I Believe In Unicorns and you can check out the review HERE. She did great there as well. Something about Nancy here makes her also a fantastic character with a lot of development. When she starts, you see her be that nerdy girl who just loves being liked by the popular crowd at school. She seems to forget who she is but somehow in the process of trying to find her best friend who disappears, she teams up with an unpopular character, Jonathan (played by Charlie Heaton) and sparks a somewhat triangle (but not) relationship alongside her boyfriend Steve. This group also being very compelling to watch as they all find growth in their characters and are each great in their own ways. Natalia however does take it away with her awesome acting and how she finds that courage to be pretty badass by the end of the season.

And then we have the adults. Before we move on, here is where the magic also is for the show to be able to find characters to like for every age group. The adults were equally strong. Winona Ryder plays a powerful mom who is dedicated and believes that her son is still in danger and that he isn’t dead no matter what she sees in front of her. She might sound crazy but she has to do what she has to do to bring her son back and those moments are some of the most intense especially as she find s way to communicate with Will. Alongside the adult crew is the sheriff, played by David Harbour. If we were to talk about a tough guy, David Harbour is a great sheriff, one with a painful story as well that they touched on slightly. However, while he had some softer moments, he also had some great one-liners and it worked so well with his role. Being movie goers, we’re cynical about many things and at times, we even question our characters actions and Sheriff Jim Hopper makes some crazy decisions at times for the investigation and truly has us at the edge of our seat as he pieces everything together.

Overall, Season 1 of Stranger Things does have it all pretty well. It has the dark creepy atmosphere and a fantastic and mysterious world created. The cast is fantastic from the kids to the teens to the adults who all deliver strong roles. While certain roles had more character development than others, it is important to realize that this is TV and not just a movie, so what isn’t done here could most possibly be continued on and focused on in the second season. The beauty of watching TV series is the ability to tell a story that can keep a good pacing but still leave room for the story to expand and/or go deeper into its world and lore. Suffice to say, this was a refreshing experience and we’re looking forward to season 2 which releases in just a few days!