When I did finally get a Netflix account, it wasn't to watch the platform's flagship show. I subbed for The Umbrella Academy but once I was in I started to work my way through all the other shows that interested me. And even then, Stranger Things wasn't all that close to the top of my list.
That was Netflix marketing department's fault. By then, I'd had a certain amount of involuntary exposure to the show through advertising and merchandise and all of it had confirmed a couple of things in my mind: it was some kind of kids' show and it was all about 'eighties nostalgia. If I'd stopped to parse that I might have seen the paradox: kids have no nostalgia for the eighties (They might have anemoia but that doesn't sell subscriptions.)
I also had the vaguest notion the show had some kind of fantasy or science fiction edge but if I thought about it all I figured it would be something like a junior version of The X-Files, one of those Monster of the Week kind of deals. And then I watched the first season and it wasn't quite like that at all.
I just checked my notes to see if what I've written today tallies with what I wrote back when I first mentioned the show here, five years ago. It tracks almost exactly, even to the repetition of the same reference points and analogies. It's reassuring and worrying to see that kind of consistency.
So, here we are, more than a decade after the show began, half a decade after I started watching it. And now it's over. There will be no more. (Probably. Never say never where money's involved. Also the Duffers have said there will be more. Just not more of the same.)
How did Stranger Things go out? Banging or whimpering?
Hmm. I'm going to say upfront that I loved the final episode. It was two hours long and I don't watch anything that length any more. I was dreading having to sit there for a whole two hours, let alone having to do it with the existential fear of disappointment hanging over me like a fog.
And then the hours just flew by. I didn't notice time passing at all, until right at the end, when I was hoping there was more of it left than there was. The finale was an unalloyed joy from beginning to end. A triumph.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the whole of the final season. All eight episodes. I even appreciated the odd cadence Netflix chose, split around Christmas and the New Year. It did have the intended effect of making the whole thing feel like an event.
So, what did I like about it? Oh, just liitle things, like how it looked, how it sounded, the dialog, the characters, the action....
There were a few things I was less sure about...
Ah, yes. Reviews always focus on the negatives, don't they? It's what people like to read and what reviewers like to write about. Why shy away from it?
Okay, it's the plot. Everyone knows it's the plot, right?
I'd need to re-watch to be absolutely certain but my memory tells me the first three season were plotted extremely precisely. Chokingly tight. No holes to be found.
Then there was Season Four, where the threads began to unravel and the holes began to appear. And now, in Season Five, there are more holes than thread and you could drive Murray's truck through some of them. Sideways.
This is where the inevitable SPOILER WARNING appears. Imagine a siren and flashing lights.
We'd be here a long, long time if I tried to list all the moments I widened my eyes and mouthed a silently "Really?" A couple stand out, the kidnapping of Derek's family in Episode 3 most notably. Glaringly. Incomprehensibly.
Nothing at all about it makes any sense whatsoever. How it's done. Why it's done. That it's done. But even giving all of that a pass, which would be a loooong Hail Mary, once it's done, the entire farrago is just... forgotten.
Having been drugged, kidnapped, threatened and traumatized, Derek, one of several excellent additions to the ever-growing cast, goes on to play a significant part in the rest of the season. His parents and sister, likewise drugged and kidnapped, along with having their house almost completely destroyed, are literally never heard of again.
The last I remember seeing of them, they were still tied up and unconscious in a deserted barn, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. None of the cast ever mentions either them or the incident again, other than for a couple of ironic call-backs, when the idea of further kidnappings are vetoed.
Oh, wait... except there's that key plot point a few episodes later, when Derek is dissuaded from backing Holly's attempt to convince the other children of Henry's villainy, by Henry showing him a vision of the his parents and sister lying dead, blood seeping from their eyes.
Now he cares! Has he spared a thought for them any time since? Has he hell! But then, why should he? Neither has anyone else, most especially not the writers.
It may be there's something I'm forgetting here. Was there a brief explanation I missed, a fleeting scene where the rest of Derek's family are shown, safe and well? Not traumatized at all. Not being interviewed by the authorities about the whole lunatic experience. Remind me of it in the comments, please, if I missed it. I'd like to go back and see it happen.
One thing I definitely didn't miss, because it happens All. The. Time. is the vast number of murders committed by many, perhaps most, of the main cast. How many soldiers do they kill? It seems like it has to be hundreds. Nancy and Hopper alone must have scores of confirmed kills to their names. And no-one cares.
Granted, the soldiers are The Enemy. Well, one of the enemies. Granted, the whole Hawkins/Upside Down deal is a head-fuck. Even so, the complete lack of affect shown by every single character, whenever they shoot or stab or blow someone up is... surprising.
Not as surprising, however, as the complete absence of any consequences whatsoever. If I had to name the single most unbelievable aspect of the entire final season, it would have to be the "18 Months Later" coda, in which the army appears to have completely capitulated, left Hawkins and given everyone a pass for everything that happened, including having killed maybe hundreds of serving members of the U.S. military.
At no point in the entire history of the show have we seen the slightest sign of compassion from the military-industrial complex that forms the real villain in the show. Okay, alright, there was that part in Season Three (Or was it Four?) with the scientist guy who started it all and Eleven. I'll give them that. But that was one person, one time...
In fact, wasn't the absolute intransigence and indefatigable persistence of the military the specific and only reason Eleven had to make her grand sacrifice? They will never give up. That's what Kali said. Looks like she was wrong about that. Dead wrong, in her case. And Eleven's, unless you believe Mike. (I believe! Yeah, no I don't.)
Also, while I'm on the subject of Kali and Eleven's suicide pact to save the world, what about all those pregnant women? Didn't they all have Kali's blood in them already? Don't the military already have what they need? Eleven's blood would just be insurance. How does her vanishing put a final stop to the whole thing? Barely an inconvenience.
Of course, that all presumes that a) I understand the plot and b) the plot makes sense. I don't believe either of those propositions to be true.
And it doesn't matter. Not one jot. I loved that finale episode and I thoroughly enjoyed all the others leading up to it. The thing about Season Five of Stranger Things is that it's the show finally going full comic-book superhero. And I'm a lifelong superhero comics fan. If there's one thing I do not need to enjoy my superhero comics, it's a plot that makes any sense at all.
Logic and proportion are two of the things that fall sloppy dead in Season 5. Another is the good old 'eighties. That whole super-accurate recreation of the Decade Taste Forgot (Title to be decided in a cage match with the 1970s.) is barely an after-thought in the last season. How could it be anything else? All the action takes place in either a militarized zone or another dimension. No-one has time for leg-warmers and Tiffany.
Do we miss the eighties vibe? I don't imagine so. I wasn't that keen on it in the first place. For that matter, I wasn't particularly struck by all the endless references to Dungeons and Dragons, either. Those seemed like just another 'eighties trope at the start but by the end there was a whole meta-fictional underpinning going on that threatened to turn the entire show into something completely other and I'm not convinced D&D can carry that weight.
Speaking of, I have another candidate for the most unbelievable thing that happens in the fifth season. It's that final scene, when Holly and her pals storm down into the basement to play D&D and there are more girls than boys. Playing D&D. In the 1980s. Yeah, right...
Anyway, I could go on for another few thousand words, nitpicking the plot. I'm not for one moment suggesting that wouldn't be fun. It's why we watch these things as much as any other reason, isn't it? But it would obscure the main message here, which is that I really liked the final season, in all the ways that matter. It pressed all the right buttons at all the right times. The dopamine hits were very real, especially whenever Nancy pulled that trigger.
I'll finish by mentioning something that kept occurring to me as I watched, especially in the last two episodes. It felt just like the way Buffy went out. That whole thing, where the team keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, until they literally need a bus or a truck just to get everyone to the fights. I loved that in Buffy and if anything I think it works even better here. Cometh the hour, cometh...everyone.
That's the most inspiring part of the narrative. The way so many people just get on board as soon as they understand even a little of what's going on. Hardly anyone questions it. The way everyone has the capacity to be a hero in their own way.
There was a lot of that in Season 4, especially with Erica and Max, but in Season 5 it seems like anyone can join the gang. It leads to a lot of very unwieldy group scenes but the spiritual message is Anyone Can Be A Slayer.
Er.. sorry... crossed the streams again, there.
In the end, none of it made sense but I loved it anyway. And you can put that on the posters.
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