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alibi_shopAlthough I myself was a Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing tween in 1984, I'm not sure if that means I'm the target audience for this, or if the kind of nostalgia it offers is aimed more at people who just know the '80s from movies. That part of it isn't super interesting to me; it's a candy-colored suburban version of the era that might be accurate for some people but it wasn't the world I grew up in, and I never had a gang of best friends or a middle-school crush, so stories about those things are abstract for me unless the character writing and dialogue are great... which I don't think they are here. But I'm a sucker for monsters and mad scientists and ESP, and this show manages to rehash a lot of familiar takes on those things in a way that may not exactly be fresh and new, but does feel like what a lot of '80s movies and paperback thrillers might have aspired to be if they'd had better special effects and permission to really take their time. The tone is odd: not always light (a lot of dark gruesome stuff does happen), just always sort of friendly—which is different from my usual taste in SF/horror, but they do it with great conviction and it usually works.
As usual, the cast is pretty strong all around but the script doesn't treat them all equally well. Again as usual, Lucas (Caleb McLaughin) gets screwed the worst in that regard: his role is mostly to be the kid who doesn't have any weird problems, plus now he's also the butt of a lot of clueless-boyfriend jokes due to his pseudo-romance with Max (Sadie Sink, who didn't seem essential to the show last year but does now). His little sister (Priah Ferguson) gets a much bigger role, and I like the actor a lot even though she has a lot of very overwritten "super-smart sassy kid" dialogue. The best stuff goes to former cool kid Steve (Joe Keery) and his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke); Hawke basically steals the show in the last couple of episodes. Hopper (David Harbour) has gone off in a very different and uncomfortable direction, and I like the idea of what they were trying to do—instead of immediately making him Winona Ryder's love interest like everyone would expect, they have him failing to cope with his new stepfather role and becoming pretty desperate and scary—but that's one area where the basic friendliness of the show can't really support that kind of unpleasant semi-realism, plus it's impossible not to feel like a shallow fan who just wants to see Harbour keep being a teddy bear. Ryder doesn't get a lot to do, alas. Millie Bobby Brown is very good of course, I'll watch her in anything, and she does a credible job of figuring out what the semi-alien child from season 1 might be like by now. She and the other kids still aren't super well written (Noah Schnapp as Will stands out as the one who feels the most real, simply because he's not ridiculously self-assured) but I like them and I like seeing them try to figure out their changing relationships.
Writing that paragraph, and realizing how many other people I didn't mention, reminds me that the other thing about this show is that there are 20 bajillion characters (Cary Elwes is an evil mayor!) from three age groups—so you basically get three interrelated fantasy shows about some kids, some teens, and some grownups. They don't always juggle those perfectly, but it's a good idea.
The biggest departure from previous seasons is that the scary parts are both grosser and actually scarier. The basic idea of the monster in this is a good one (our more distant glimpses of it in season 2 are retroactively way more disturbing, now that we know what it's made of), the effects are well done, and the way some of the human characters fall under its influence has a lot more of a psychological horror feeling than we've seen before, mainly regarding our main asshole Billy (Dacre Montgomery) who goes from being a confident bully to a sweaty violent basket case you can almost feel sorry for.
ps. There is one glaring anachronism that I did not catch, but my wife did. At one point someone wants to demonstrate knowledge of My Little Pony, and recounts some plot details from an episode of the animated series. I'm reliably informed that that was actually the plot of the 1984 My Little Pony movie; there was no TV show yet. I'm lucky I didn't notice that—it would've totally ruined my suspension of disbelief!
pps. My wife, who is less comfortable than I am with gross scary horror things, also came up with a brilliant strategy for how to be less freaked out by the main monster in this: she decided that its real name is Lumpy Space Princess.
As usual, the cast is pretty strong all around but the script doesn't treat them all equally well. Again as usual, Lucas (Caleb McLaughin) gets screwed the worst in that regard: his role is mostly to be the kid who doesn't have any weird problems, plus now he's also the butt of a lot of clueless-boyfriend jokes due to his pseudo-romance with Max (Sadie Sink, who didn't seem essential to the show last year but does now). His little sister (Priah Ferguson) gets a much bigger role, and I like the actor a lot even though she has a lot of very overwritten "super-smart sassy kid" dialogue. The best stuff goes to former cool kid Steve (Joe Keery) and his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke); Hawke basically steals the show in the last couple of episodes. Hopper (David Harbour) has gone off in a very different and uncomfortable direction, and I like the idea of what they were trying to do—instead of immediately making him Winona Ryder's love interest like everyone would expect, they have him failing to cope with his new stepfather role and becoming pretty desperate and scary—but that's one area where the basic friendliness of the show can't really support that kind of unpleasant semi-realism, plus it's impossible not to feel like a shallow fan who just wants to see Harbour keep being a teddy bear. Ryder doesn't get a lot to do, alas. Millie Bobby Brown is very good of course, I'll watch her in anything, and she does a credible job of figuring out what the semi-alien child from season 1 might be like by now. She and the other kids still aren't super well written (Noah Schnapp as Will stands out as the one who feels the most real, simply because he's not ridiculously self-assured) but I like them and I like seeing them try to figure out their changing relationships.
Writing that paragraph, and realizing how many other people I didn't mention, reminds me that the other thing about this show is that there are 20 bajillion characters (Cary Elwes is an evil mayor!) from three age groups—so you basically get three interrelated fantasy shows about some kids, some teens, and some grownups. They don't always juggle those perfectly, but it's a good idea.
The biggest departure from previous seasons is that the scary parts are both grosser and actually scarier. The basic idea of the monster in this is a good one (our more distant glimpses of it in season 2 are retroactively way more disturbing, now that we know what it's made of), the effects are well done, and the way some of the human characters fall under its influence has a lot more of a psychological horror feeling than we've seen before, mainly regarding our main asshole Billy (Dacre Montgomery) who goes from being a confident bully to a sweaty violent basket case you can almost feel sorry for.
ps. There is one glaring anachronism that I did not catch, but my wife did. At one point someone wants to demonstrate knowledge of My Little Pony, and recounts some plot details from an episode of the animated series. I'm reliably informed that that was actually the plot of the 1984 My Little Pony movie; there was no TV show yet. I'm lucky I didn't notice that—it would've totally ruined my suspension of disbelief!
pps. My wife, who is less comfortable than I am with gross scary horror things, also came up with a brilliant strategy for how to be less freaked out by the main monster in this: she decided that its real name is Lumpy Space Princess.
