I was eagerly awaiting the launch of Season 1 of "Stranger Things", a Netflix original television program on Friday, July 14th.
Based on trailers and what I'd read of the show, it sounded like it was directly in my wheelhouse. Consisting of just 8 episodes, the show chronicles the life of several citizens of Hawkins, Indiana and how they cope with "strange goings-on" in their town.
Set in 1983, the show captured the look and feel of the time very well. Watching the young protagonists hanging out in a basement, riding their bikes in search of clues and the general sense of adventure reminded me a lot of my own youth during that time.
The Good:
- Interesting story
- Well-cast
- Nice serial feel to entire Season
- Several AMAZING surprises
- the soundtrack was pure 80's John Carpenter
The Not As Good:
- Exceptionally tropey in all ways
- Winona Ryder's "enthusiasm" for her role
- A blissful ignorance of tensions in a small Midwest town
- Scenes, dialogue and plot directly procured from approximately a dozen works by Spielberg and Stephen King. Unapologetically so at times.
While I enjoyed the show (yep - binge watched over 3 days) the finale was a bit of a head scratcher. It seemed to me that the writers and directors were expecting one or two more episodes in the season and were caught by surprise at the end.
"Well, we have a lot of plot arcs to complete, characters to punish and 'hanging chads' to punch. Let's see how many we do in 60 minutes!" Or so I imagined the conversation.
Still, "Stranger Things" is the worth the time. As I described to a couple of friends:
"The perfect mashup of 'The Goonies' meets 'ET' as written by Stephen King, shooting for a PG-13 rating. And a dash of Lovecraft for seasoning."
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