I found season two enjoyable enough. It lacks the 'surprise' factor of Season 1 and it loses its focus every now and then. They could have done 8 episodes Spoiler: bit of a spoiler and cut out the 'search for 008'/Jane's Sister, which (seems to me) a clear indication about where season 3 is going.
Not really. That could have been achieved in many different ways and even the Duffer brothers considered dropping that episode - which they totally should have.
Yes, it was justified. And the Duffers ultimately thought so too and explained why during the Netflix interviews. It could have been done a different way but that doesn't mean that the way they chose to portray it was wrong. It wasn't a random episode.
It might have been an interesting way to go to have Eleven show up in that outfit unexplained, and leave the backstory for next season, when I imagine other kids with powers are going to play into the story more.
Does anyone else not want this show to turn into some version of the X-Men? The "kids with special powers" or "escaped human lab rats with powers" thing has been over-done, IMO. I really hope they don't emphasize that aspect too much going forward.
I'm only two episodes into season 2. Loving Sean Astin thus far. I hope he's here to stay. Slow dancing with Wynona to Dolly and Kenny was quite charming.
Kali shows up in S3 and explains that she let her guard down and the punks got caught/imprisoned. She felt alone/guilty/depressed, fled Chicago, and came to Hawkins to rendezvous with Eleven. That keeps the Lab Kids arc alive while shedding the gang.
I'm not talking about the gang, I'm saying I don't want to meet 001 through 007 or 009 or 010, because it will quickly turn into X-Men.
I also think there's some spin-off potential there. I think it was always gonna be that, once you realized that El was the subject of evil U.S. government lab experiments.
Right? That seventh episode was crappy in so many ways, but when they started showing others with random superpowers, I sighed and also dreaded an X-Men rehash. If they do go down that road next season, I'm out. This needs to be a tight, character driven piece, which in large part was what made S1 so good.
The wife and I just fid Season 2 last night. We both LOVED it. We thought it was better than Season 1. Great show.
This. Even though the show is an obvious homage to so many 80s books and films without the strongest plot, the characters are really solid. The actors are really good, they care about their characters, and so I care about their characters. Not so with the punk gang. They were just cartoon characters. Which would be fine, except that this is so far away from the tone of the rest of the show. It just felt sloppy and unnecessary. And the actors were atrocious.
Just finished Season 2. Thought it was fantastic. Slightly better than Season 1 IMO. Loved the school dance scene!!
The school dance scene was awesome. I actually teared up a bit. they really did an amazing job of channeling 80s teen movies.
People on forums tend to be hypercritical holding everything to the same unreasonably high standards. For what it's supposed to be I think Stranger Things (1 and 2) is just about perfect. Cheesy acting in some rare instances? A few characters that are more caricatures? Yup, that was the 80's alright!
It is reminiscent of IT, only better. To me it's like The Goonies and Stand by Me meets X Files and Buffy.
Season 2 felt unnecessary, except for a few particular scenes in the first few eps... scenes which I think should have appeared in -- Sheriff Hopper's Christmas Special Spoiler In this very special Christmas-themed bonus episode of Stranger Things, we'd have seen all the scenes about Eleven's resurrection and Hopper's rescue of her, and her difficult adjustment to living secretly in the woods in his cabin. Their spat, and Eleven's search for her mom, would lead to a what you'd expect would be a Christmas miracle of El briefly being able to communicate with her mom - but would then lead to the more realistic miracle of Eleven returning to live with Hopper, settling their conflict, and celebrating a small Christmas together. And then wait until the kids can play as if they're 5 to 10 years older, and do a full second season set in the 1990s. (No trip to the inner city of Chicago, no Demodogs, no Halloween, none of the other kids except perhaps Mike via walkie-talky -- and Mike would never actually meet Eleven and know she's alive, instead he'll just have to have faith). I mean really what would be more 1980s than a show getting a slightly warm and fuzzy Christmas episode?