Stranger Things Netflix series catch-all

I couldn't get enough of Randall P. Havens playing 1983 nerds, so I started watching Halt and Catch Fire. It's slightly less subtle with the TV-isms than Stranger Things. I'm only four episodes in and already three animals have died serving as metaphors for the main characters.

"Less subtle" than Stranger Things takes some effort.

"Look, ET is on the TV."

Spoiler:

Not an actual quote, I think...

I didn't mean homages to the '80s, I meant like typical TV tropes and abrupt, artificial contrivances whenever there needs to be srs character drama. I felt like ST worked that stuff in more organically and believably, whereas halfway through the first season, HCF is still a group of archetypes whose behaviour will change depending on whatever the writers need for the scene. And again, animals-getting-killed symbolism, which was fine the first time, but with six episodes left I'm worried about the potential death toll.

If they get this off the ground, I will purchase the entire set:

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I'm about half way through the series, and it's just so good. Someone mentioned how many networks passed on the series. I hate to agree with any of the network boneheads, but some shows are just better taken on a whole, the season exceeds the sum of its parts. If the first 2 episodes were wasted on NBC Friday Night, it would have likely been cancelled. Much better for us all that it landed on Netflix where it could really flourish.

It makes me wish Firefly had been proposed in this climate rather than a decade ago, it would likely be on it's 5th season on Netflix or Amazon Prime by now.

Also, did anybody else get a strong Dean Koontz vibe from this show? I read Watchers nearly 30 years ago, and the escaped dog Einstein, a genetically altered golden retriever, has a strong resemblance to El. So far.
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It's weird that you mention that book! I got the same feeling about both stories as well. My mom read the book and I remember seeing the movie, so I saw a lot of similarities, except for the whole gouging out of eyeballs thing.

At the sporting goods store:
Jonathon, "And uhh, four boxes of .38's."
Shopkeep, "What are you kids doing with all this?"
Nancy, "Monster hunting."
Shopkeep, "Meh."

Best summation of the 80's!

That makes a lot of sense. I kept asking my gf what the black place is Eleven goes to. Where is that? How does it relate to the upside down world? I guess I didn't take my thoughts far enough.

Running Man wrote:

Also, did anybody else get a strong Dean Koontz vibe from this show? I read Watchers nearly 30 years ago, and the escaped dog Einstein, a genetically altered golden retriever, has a strong resemblance to El. So far.

Years ago, Yellek and I were on a Koontz audiobook during road trip kick, and the Watchers plot description sounds familiar enough that I think we listened to that one. Another Koontz book with an atmosphere like Stranger Things is Fear Nothing.

On the other hand, the Stephen King parallels in Stranger Things are just yuuuge. El's nosebleed while using powers is lifted directly from the father in Firestarter, for example, as is

Spoiler:

the idea of multi-generational government experiments in drug-induced psychic powers.

The font used for the title is the same font used on most of Stepen King's earlier books.

This would simultaneously fit the design aesthetic from which the show draws, and disappoint me. I was happy that

Spoiler:

they left it undisclosed. I worried the upside-down was going to be (if I'm remembering things correctly) Terry Ives' mental world in her quasi-catatonic state. I know they'll feel the need to tell us what it is eventually, but I'd rather they hint and leave it at that. Especially if the hints seem to conflict.

Gravey wrote:

I couldn't get enough of Randall P. Havens playing 1983 nerds, so I started watching Halt and Catch Fire. It's slightly less subtle with the TV-isms than Stranger Things. I'm only four episodes in and already three animals have died serving as metaphors for the main characters.

I love Halt and Catch Fire! There are also some great Spotify playlists by the music producers for the show with era-specific mixes for each character and the companies. It's also great insight into what goes into character building within the context of a show.

cartoonin wrote:

It's weird that you mention that book! I got the same feeling about both stories as well. My mom read the book and I remember seeing the movie, so I saw a lot of similarities, except for the whole gouging out of eyeballs thing. :)

I also got the same thought. Eleven was Einstein.

That feels like a stretch.

Spoiler:

Whatever the black space is meant to be, the things she encounters in it are real. She goes looking for a government official to assassinate--he's there. I could maybe still buy the idea that the monster is a construct of her own psyche, except then the process that follows seems overly complicated if that's the case. She see it, freaks out, and tears a hole between the world and the upside down, which has not only the creepy vines in it but the monster as well. And it seems like the monster is breeding the vines or something.

Honestly, I think it's more likely that the monster is somehow a part of the vines that have taken over the upside down. It even has a flower-face. So now that the vines are in the real world, perhaps we'll see another monster once they've taken hold (thanks to the vomit-drain incident in the epilogue). Next season should be interesting.

My own thoughts on the monster:

Spoiler:

So the Upside Down is a corrupted/decayed version of our world. But how does that work, exactly? If something moves or changes in our world, does the Upside Down change too?

Maybe the Upside Down isn't a "dark mirror" of our world. Maybe it was our world, in a parallel universe almost identical to our own. We know the Demogorgon can travel between worlds, and perceive things in other worlds. Maybe it didn't originate in the Upside Down. Maybe it's a sort of dimension-hopping predator/parasite that infests and consumes a world until there's nothing left, and then moves onto the next world. From what we've seen so far it's virtually indestructible - burn it and shoot it as much as you want, it just keeps coming. Only Eleven was able to stop it, and at a terrible cost. Without her, who knows what it might have done.

Maybe the Upside Down was once a normal parallel Earth before the Demogorgon destroyed it. Maybe it was looking for a new world to consume when Eleven unintentionally attracted it to ours.

A wizard did it.

muttonchop wrote:

My own thoughts on the monster

Spoiler:

Yeah I got a definite Lovecraftian "this universe has been consumed by the elder gods" sorta vibe from the upside down. Definitely thinking along the same lines there.

complexmath wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

My own thoughts on the monster

Spoiler:

Yeah I got a definite Lovecraftian "this universe has been consumed by the elder gods" sorta vibe from the upside down. Definitely thinking along the same lines there.

Yeah, I'm down with this interpretation. Seems obvious and elegant.

How do you explain how she saw it in the black empty space then?

Discussion of Firestarter made me record it on DVR when I saw a cable channel was showing it today.

Movies have come a long way.

Yeah, but Steven King movies pretty much always suck. Except maybe The Green Mile. Oh, and Shawshank was pretty good, too. And The Shining. But the rest of them...

LANGOLIERS! NEVER FORGET!

The worst offender was IT. Incredible book, incredibly bad miniseries.

The Dead Zone with Christopher Walken was pretty decent, I thought.

I thought IT was great, just rewatched it for the third time a month or so ago.

I guess what I didn't like was how much the tv ending changed compared to the novel. The revelation of a giant glowing spider didn't really jibe with what I had imagined from the story.

karmajay wrote:

How do you explain how she saw it in the black empty space then?

The empty black space isn't a place. It's her mind. It's textbook Astral Projection.

tbh I think some of the interpretations have the Inception problem, people are trying to make things more complicated than the text supports. Except Inception goes out of its way to cause confusion. Stranger Things doesn't do that, but people expect it.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
karmajay wrote:

How do you explain how she saw it in the black empty space then?

The empty black space isn't a place. It's her mind. It's textbook Astral Projection.

tbh I think some of the interpretations have the Inception problem, people are trying to make things more complicated than the text supports. Except Inception goes out of its way to cause confusion. Stranger Things doesn't do that, but people expect it.

I was referencing muttonchop's theory which doesn't seem to account for the black space part.

Let's all just get on-board with the hope that Githyanki show up in S02.

Running Man wrote:

The worst offender was IT. Incredible book, incredibly bad miniseries.

The Dead Zone with Christopher Walken was pretty decent, I thought.

The other day, someone reminded me that that book has a giant tween orgy scene near it's, err, climax. For some reason, I'd completely blanked that out, possibly because I was around that age when I read it, and it seemed...I guess less weird at the time?