We Deserve Better “Things”
This essay was originally and angrily written after viewing Season One of Stranger Things in 2016. While the writing has been preserved, the author would like to note that he has little to no recollection of the herein grievances which so rightly plagued him. Like, not at all. Oh, well.
Spoiler warning for Season One of Stranger Things (2016).
I deleted Pokemon Go after a week, because it was an incoherent mess of an app pretending to be a game that preyed on a generation’s nostalgia for something they were never really that into. I’m sorry, were you also perpetually playing Pokemon Pinball on your Gameboy Advance SP for the entirety of High School?
I reviewed Pokemon X & Y back in 2013 for Kill Screen, an accomplishment that made my fourteen-year old self cry out for joy. Pokemon is a typical JRPG with complex “rock, paper, scissors” battle mechanics that adds redundant characters each year, and an intense breeding meta-game. Let’s just say my boxes were filled with Dratinis for a while. Are they not still?
It was with true astonishment that I saw Pokemon Go skyrocket to phenomenon status, literally overnight. Suddenly all the bullies in high school wanted to catch ’em all, too. And for no apparent reason than the nostalgic aesthetic, because other than the images of the Pokemon, it bears as much resemblance to the actual game as a slab of butter.
Enter Stranger Things, a Netflix mini-series that unabashedly rips from every major 80’s Zeitgeist that could be crammed into eight episodes. In the first five minutes, we got Dungeon’s & Dragons, kids on bikes, and a monster in the woods. Hell yeah.
I binged a few episodes the first night — my childhood screamed in joyous recognition as I was brought back to lovable companionship of The Goonies mixed with a badass psychic girl and a scruffy anti-hero and Winona Ryder and holy crap a Hell Dimension. It kept getting better.
Then, it imploded. Characters started behaving inconsistently with regards to how they were introduced, and it became clear that Stranger Things was about hitting as many benchmarks reminiscent of its inspiration as it possibly could, regardless of whether or not the trope fit within the pace of the story.
For example, Mike decides to “stand up for himself” against the bullies when his band of travelers had much bigger fish to fry, like sneaking into the school with a psychic girl that the government is looking for to hack into a transistor radio that the teacher has only one of to contact their presumed dead friend in a Hell Dimension. Not only that, but this odd lateral move in the narrative was met with no major consequences, nor the classically rewarding bully heel-turn team-up.
Also, the entire time Hopper was breaking into the secret government compound, I’m thinking, “How is this happening?” First, why is their security so lax that one man can get all the way through Area 51 to the secret Hell Dimension chamber? Second, why would they just leave him alive when they’ve been killing everyone else? Third, yeah Hopper saw some shit, but he’s a practical dude. All he saw was a weird room, and that’s enough for him to immediately jump on board with presumed dead children talking through phones and lights and an extremely forgettable blood monster. The moment Hopper lost his skepticism, his questioning, the show lost its mystery, because the need for resolution was taken away.
Joyce and Hopper had such profound animosity for the agents when they were being interrogated — yeah, they suck, but also, dude is totally a dad and cares for Eleven as his daughter. I want to connect with his humanness before justice rains from above — like the masterful character journey in Breaking Bad. I want to understand why he is who he is. Joyce and Hopper, being our protagonists, alienate them instantly, thus we are encouraged to, as well.
Then, Hopper totally sells out Eleven for whatever deal that we’re not supposed to know about because they want to make a Season 2, thereby putting all of the kids in danger. The agents might not have the intention of hurting anyone else, but they’re a lot of agents with guns and we already know the kids have a habit of being reckless. Hostiles entering schools with automatic weapons sure has aged well.
Hopper’s arc in the final episode was admittedly beautiful, as you finally began to see why he might be obsessed with saving his ex-lover’s lost child.
And then we end with a lot of open, unexplainable things to solidify a second season. It’s like they knew exactly what the internet would go nuts over and simply sat there. There’s so much that was intentionally unresolved. Like:
Why is there only one monster in Hell Dimension? Why are plants and trees and buildings reflected but not people or animals? Is the monster a reflection of people? Why is there only one monster, then? How come Will survived for a month but Barb was killed instantly? Really, how did he survive other than he had to so he could be rescued? Where did the special box all of a sudden come from that can magically teleport food to Hell Dimension where El is presumably alive?! We never established that you could do that. We never saw a box. Why is there a box? WHY IS THERE A BOX?! How come Eleven can literally do everything from teleport her consciousness to manipulating other people’s bodies? Why is there only one of her — oh shit, is she the monster? oh… shit.
Fans will always come up with their own justifications or explanations to fill in the blanks the writers left empty. It reminds me of J.R.R. Tolkien’s habit of writing poorly. Ser, you are writing a story, not heedlessly journaling. At the end of the day, you cannot excuse Tom Bombadil. You just can’t. Tom Bombadil was, and always will be, a mistake. He was an unfinished thread that Tolkien probably completely forget about, then looked back, thought, “Huh, that’s neat,” decided to leave it in to troll his readers, and went along his own merry way continuing to write excessive globs of words that he eventually smushed together to form The Lord of the Rings. Sudden revelation: Tolkien is Tom Bombadil.
“It’s unexplainable and magic, so that means it’s all connected,” is not a good enough reason to justify your phenomena. Establish your world — ironically, something Tolkien did well. All of the Things— strange and familiar — intentionally pluck at our nostalgic heartstrings, satisfy something we think is lost (hint: it’s our childhood), thereby feeding the hype train and distracting us from the actual story at play.
Oh, just like Pokemon Go. That’s why I did that.
