“Is “Briefer” a word? Don’t care, I’m going for the alliteration again.”
Happy 4th of July, on the 5th of July! This country feels like it’s going to tear itself to pieces in two years, my hatred for our political and economic system knows no bounds, and I am afraid that the Supreme Court is going to boot us back to being Puritans and crushing people with rocks for being inconvenient, but go America, I guess? I ate potato salad off of a hotdog bun and cooked a turkey burger on a grill yesterday, and it immediately fell apart, so that’s how my Independence Day went. We live in a society.
Anyway! Let’s talk about something stupid and meaningless as the world burns down outside. I was not a massive fan of the first half of Netflix’s overzealous fourth season of their flagship TV show, Stranger Things. Following, once again, in the exploits of a bunch of teenagers as they battle against psychic psychopaths, the U.S. government, their own traumas, and, uh, Russian labor camps doesn’t have quite the same zing to it that it did three years ago. But now I should update my feelings because the full season is out. For some reason, Netflix withheld the last two episodes of the series for an extra month after the first seven came out. I can only assume that this was a marketing ploy to get free publicity for the show twice, because if they truly wanted us to watch it one episode at a time like Lorne Michaels intended, they would have just released it one episode at a time. But instead we get Season 4 Part 1 and Season 4 Part 2, because everything has to be stretched out as long as possible to make more money.
But I have watched it, Cheyenne and I did, once again, dedicate a good chunk of our day to watching about four hours of television in one sitting, and we did make a pillow fort by moving our mattress from the bedroom to the living room. It’s no Demogorgon Pizza, but it’ll do. And I have to say, we both kind of liked this part more? So that’s got to count for something, right?
SPOILERS FOR STRANGER THINGS SEASON FOUR! READ YOUR OWN RISK BECAUSE I WILL TELL YOU WHO DIES AND I WILL NOT FEEL BAD ABOUT IT.
I’ll try to keep this whole thing short, because I don’t really care to rehash it anymore and I’m tired of writing about the show in general, but the gist of it is that, yeah, I kind of liked it more. Maybe this is because the beginning of the season had lowered my expectations enough that I was able to settle into the proper headspace for the rest of it. Maybe this is because Cheyenne and I both kind of warmed up to the first half of the season over the intervening month or so since it originally came out. Maybe this is because it’s shorter and I didn’t feel like I’d spent an inordinate amount of time with storylines I didn’t really care about. Perchance it was a good thing that Netflix forced us to wait for the second half, because maybe having that break to let my thoughts on the show simmer and stew made me more interested in it overall. But whatever it was, I liked it better, simple as that.
Not, of course, that I disliked the first half. Because I didn’t. I still liked it, just not as much as I wanted to. So, I do think the expectations thing has a lot to do with it. Of course I’m never going to love this series as much as I did when I was younger. Of course I’m going to appreciate the season more as its ending and we have all the bloat of the russia plotline behind us. Of course I’m going to feel things more strongly when I’ve spent so much time with these characters once again and feel more emotionally connected instead of having them drop in out of nowhere. Splitting the season in two was a great way to put me in exactly the mindspace that I needed to be in to actually get hit by real emotions when watching the ending of the show. Because I know for a fact I would not have cared as much if I watched this all when the first part came out.
A few things that went well in this part of the season for me: Willl’s entire subplot where he’s pining away for Mike is emotionally brutal, and perhaps one of the best, if woefully unexplored, parts of the show. The whole thing with Max’s monologue and her possession and mind-fight and eventual brutal murder and subsequent resurrection did almost make me cry. Almost. Same with Eddie’s metal concert and subsequent death. I want this show to take its characters lives more seriously, and I want deaths to have lasting consequences (*cough* should have killed Hopper *cough), so killing Eddie makes sense, but if they killed off Steve like Cheyenne and I were expecting, this would be a very different blog post. If Steve Harrington died, this blog would be converted into a Joe Keery-as-Steve Harrington memorial page. I wish only good things for that man.
But, at the same time, killing off Eddie is too easy. He didn’t realistically need to stay to fight off the bats. They could have been distracted long enough anyway just by trying to get into the camper. And we didn’t really know Eddie well enough to get attached to him. It’s like Bob Newby, from season two. So central to being a vehicle for the plot that he’s almost a non-character by the end, and his death feels unearned. But Dustin’s talk with Eddie’s uncle, and the fact that half the town still thinks the kids are raising demons, is an interesting way to end it. Hopefully it means something later. But this also kind of brings me to a few things that didn’t work.
The whole part where Brenner locks Eleven in the secret government facility is totally unnecessary. The part where Eleven walks away from him as he’s dying, neglecting him his final wish, while a cool moment, is also totally unnecessary. As someone pointed out in a review I read of Part 1, this is ground we’ve treaded previously. We didn’t need to bring Brenner back. They brought him back for shock value, pretended that he’d become a better person in the interim, and then when he locks up Eleven and resorts to manipulative mind games again, it isn’t surprising. It doesn’t add anything new to either character. We’ve seen this before. We know he’s an asshole! We know Eleven has outgrown him! Just get rid of him already!
The big reveal that Vecna is the Mind-Flayer, instead of being party to the Mind-Flayer, is also disappointing to me. I don’t really know why, but everyone seems to adore Vecna as a villain. Sure, he’s got a cool backstory, he’s spooky and has got crazy powers, but I don’t find him interesting or compelling as a villain. This season draws a lot of inspiration from Halloween, and that’s very clear, but Michael Myers isn’t a better villain, either! Or even a good villain! Scary, sure, but not an interesting one. The moment I knew that Mind-Flayer was just Henry Creel and not some sort of unknowable abomination from an alternate dimension, the big bad lost its focus and “cool” factor for me. And villains are all about cool factor.
I don’t know, maybe I’m being too hard on that part of the show, because his modus operandi of murder is pretty neat, and he’s very threatening. And sure, complex human or near-human villains can be really interesting when written well. Villains that are sympathetic enough to be almost heroes themselves work well, or people in situations so brutal they are pushed to atrocious acts are also interesting. See Walter in Nice House on the Lake for an example, or Gollum from Lord of the Rings, even. But I’ve always been more interested by monsters that are partially or totally unknowable, that are some sort of alien or interdimensional being, or else something so totally buckwild that you can’t even ascribe human emotions or characteristics to it anymore. Give me your Pinheads, your Xenomorphs, your Things, your Eldritch Abominations and Old Gods. Hell, I think that the monster in It Follows or even fucking Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men are more interesting as villains because they aren’t human. Not really.
Maybe it’s rather telling about something in me that I’m more intrigued by non-human forces than human ones. That the thing that really scares me is the questions that I’ll never have answers to, to coming face to face with something that I just do not have the frame of reference or mental capacity to understand. People I can understand. A human-shaped villain with human-shaped feelings I can understand, and that makes it less scary. If you’re writing Old Gods or Capital Letter Lovecraftian Horrors into your story, a surefire way to make me groan and lose interest is to have them start talking. Old Gods of Appalachia, a recent favorite of mine, has its Big Bad talk to characters, and it has human-like motives, and its Big Bad is a proper Old God, but the only reason I put up with it is because it’s also a Faustian dealmaker and master of puppets, and that’s the second-best kind of villain in my book. Vecna/the Mind-Flayer is neither an Old God or a Master of Puppets (except in season three, I guess?), and the Mind-Flayer, I think, is lesser off for it. So, yeah, this is all to say that I did not like that twist.
But these are, mostly, minor gripes. I really did like the thing! The four hours it took the watch felt like they flew by, which is more than I can say for the previous eight-or-so hours of the season. I felt every hour we spent in Russia, for fuck’s sake. But I am glad that Season Five is, supposed to be, shorter than season four. This damn thing is too much, and I think the best part of Part Two is that it got straight to the damn point. No more mucking about. Let’s see these kid build molotov cocktails and bats with nails in them, damn it! This is the content I’m here to see.
I don’t really know why I feel better about the end of the season beyond that, though. Nothing much has changed. The characters are still written as well as they have been, with the show’s strengths and weaknesses the same as they’ve ever been. There’s still a bunch of stuff that kind of goes nowhere, things that don’t really matter and get swept under the rug, a bunch of emotional orchestrating ahead of time, everything gets resolved at the end and there’s a big happy reunion, yadda yadda yadda. It’s more or less what you’d expect! But for whatever reason, I’m more forgiving of it now. Maybe it’s me that’s changed, then? I don’t know. Being shorter and getting to the action more is definitely working in the show’s favor.
But the cliffhanger ending is kind of cool! It’s spooky, and means Max’s death does have weight, even if she gets brought back to life (which feels like cheating, but I’ll let it slide because it’s interesting). I will still definitely be watching season five, whenever it comes out. But maybe when I watch it with my kids in twenty years, I’ll tell them there’s only one season, and see how long I can get away with it.
