STRANGER THINGS s4 episodes 5,6,and 7 (spoilers)

 

STRANGER THINGS s4 episodes 5,6,and 7    (spoilers)

 

The last three episodes are not written by Shawn Levy and it shows. Dustin’s girlfriend Suzie’s house is visited upon by Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle. The first of that foursome do nothing at all in the entire seven episodes. At all.

 

Will and Mike are boring now; Jon is a waste. Only Argyle provides some relief and he’s just having sex with the sister of Suzie, who looks like Molly Ringwald from BREAKFAST CLUB.

 

In addition, for no reason at all, Suzie’s entire family are a bunch of weirdos. She has one brother who films a sister “fake” killing herself; she has another brother who runs around dressed or rather undressed like the Indian Native from LITTLE INDIAN, BIG CITY (remade as JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE with Tim Allen and the kid who grew up to be in the American version of BEING HUMAN); two other siblings who sword fight, and a father who is oblivious to insanity around him. It’s not funny at all but curiously dumb.

 

El’s “adventures” in the missile silo in Nevada stretch on WAY too long and become fast forward-able, too. BTW, keep fast forwarding through ALL the Russia, Joyce, Murray, and Hopper stuff. It’s horridly boring. The only thing worth watching is the fight on the plane between Joyce, Murray and their pilot Yuri and the crash. After the crash, keep that finger on the fast forward button for EVERY scene involving Hopper, Joyce and Murray. YOU WILL LOVE ME for it.

 

NOW, you have to fast forward, eventually by episode six, through ALL the El stuff too. El is an unknown again and while I appreciate the effort exploring her miserable time in the project, THIS much exploration of it I didn’t want to see. I also find it hard to believe that NOT ONE of the kids in the project was sympathetic toward El?

Oh and BTW, El's always dropping a tear. It's way too much too often. We get it. She's upset. Cue lots of tears falling from eye. 

 

The big revelation about the Jamie Campbell Bower “kid” orderly was a good one and unexpected but all the same it took seven episodes to get there and then we end on THAT cliffhanger, not to mention Nancy, the big star of this season, in terribly life draining danger from Vecna.

 

The other big revelation about Creel’s son being Jamie’s character from the project AND becoming Vecna is amazingly well conceived and well done. It DOES make sense. What doesn’t is why El uses her powers to make him into Vecna? Why not just kill him like she did others? BTW, are those guards dead? Owen seems to vanish in most of this and by the end I’m sick of Papa Brenner  and wish he would vanish or be killed off for good.

 

I also don’t appreciate Jason turning into that religious nut job lady from THE MIST and in fact, a lot of this starts turning into THE MIST and later, there are two much more well done nods to POLTERGEIST as the kids have to climb up out of the underworld dimension and FALL into the real world. Amazing. Nancy also has some dilemmas in a swimming pool but truthfully if you’re going to nod to something like POLTERGEIST, you’d best make it very exciting. As it stands, we’re just reminded how much more thrilling POLTERGEIST (and THE MIST) were to this. At least in THE MIST, we felt someone could die. I guess here, someone could and for a split second I thought Steve was going to bite the dust ala THE MIST monster bats.

 

It also has elements of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (Freddie is name checked), STEPHEN KING'S IT (is that the same house used for Creel's house also used in the inferior remake of IT?), FIRESTARTER, EQUINOX, PHANTASM, and a few other things. 

Honestly, though Vecna is all powerful but…he uses this little bats to guard his place? And weaponless kids can get to him? For their part, the kids are unbelievably stupid going into the underworld without weapons. And what is the point to having part of the underworld, Nancy’s house of all things, in 1983 and not in 1986? Will that fall into place somehow?

 

Jason also saw Eddie’s reaction to Patrick’s horrid death (a well filmed one to be honest) and yet he goes and blames him for consorting with the devil? Lame.

 

The massacre at the lab is lame, too. It lacks any punch. On the other hand, do we really want to see teens being killed?

 

Jamie is a good actor and does well as all the roles he’s given to play: Vecna being his best but the orderly being quite sinister despite being, at first, sort of fey. In a way I wish Vecna would stay as the Jamie form. He works as a villain.

 

The show seems to think juxtaposition alone can make scenes terrific. Sometimes it does but alone, no? It takes direction and tone as well as acting. Most of the time this falls flat but in the revelation about the villain(s), it works well.

 

Which is more than I can say for the bulk of this. Nancy, Eddie, Steve, and Robin’s venture into the underworld is well done but I had a feeling they were not in real danger, despite Steve maybe going to die or as Robin confessed, maybe getting rabies? Before that Dustin seemed back to his wonderful self from season one rather than the idiot cat murderer from season two. Steve, Robin and Nancy, as well as Eddie, who is expendable, all come off as well drawn, interesting, funny, and dynamic characters. Max always was. Lucas is earning respect again.

 

The rest? Not so much.

 

REMEMBER REALLY LEAVE THE RUSSIA, HOPPER STUFF alone as if it never happened and SKIP it all. It’s that bad.

 

5-a mix of weird, exciting, and boring

6-Stop this El Project and get her out of there

7-Interesting, lots of great sequences

 

It’s clear that Shawn Levy should write this entire series now. Only he sees to have a sense of pace, character, humor, and nerve. The Duffer Brothers are okay in ep7 but I think Levy could have written it even better. As for this other writer who wrote 5 and 6: No. Just No. They’ve made El a bore now, too and skippable. There are some good parts and it’s not a total POS but it’s close.

 

 

 

 

 

THE NINA PROJECT

Owens takes Eleven to an abandoned ICBM silo in Nevada, where he and Dr. Brenner have developed a specialized isolation tank (dubbed "NINA") that allows Eleven to access memories of her time with other children at Hawkins Lab. Eleven attempts to escape and briefly regains her powers in the process, convincing her to continue with the experiment. In California, Owens' dying agent gives the boys a phone number for the NINA project that connects to a modem; Mike decides to enlist the aid of Dustin's girlfriend Suzie in Salt Lake City. Hopper is imprisoned alongside Antonov ("Enzo"). While being flown to Russia, Joyce and Murray subdue Yuri and crash-land in the wilderness. Max, Lucas, Steve, and Dustin regroup with Nancy and Robin and decide to investigate the Creel house; inside, they encounter flickering lights which they trace to Vecna's movements in the Upside Down. Jason and his fellow players locate Eddie trying to escape in a boat while Jason and his teammate Patrick swim after him. Vecna kills Patrick in front of Jason and Eddie, causing the lights in the Creel house to burst.

 

THE DIVE

Eleven relives memories of befriending a lab orderly who warns her not to trust Brenner. She also recalls her ostracism by other test subjects, leading her to believe she was responsible for the lab massacre. Suzie helps Mike's group locate the NINA project's coordinates and joins them in their quest to find it. Hopper and the other inmates are given a large feast, which Hopper warns is to prepare them to be fed to the Demogorgon. He later manages to pickpocket a lighter, recalling that the Demogorgon's weakness is fire. Joyce and Murray force Yuri to take them to a nearby town where he stores his goods, and decide to have Murray pose as Yuri to infiltrate the prison. At a town hall meeting, Jason galvanizes Hawkins' residents against Eddie's supposed Satanic cult. Steve's group finds Eddie; Dustin notices his compass misbehaving and realizes there is a new gate to the Upside Down nearby. They trace the gate to Lover's Lake, where Steve dives down to inspect it before being yanked into the Upside Down by a tendril and swarmed by bat-like creatures. Nancy, Robin and Eddie dive down after him.

 

MASSACRE AT ANTAL’S LAB

Joyce, Murray and Yuri enter Kamchatka and witness Hopper and his fellow prisoners fight the Demogorgon. Hopper holds the creature back with a flaming spear while Murray and Joyce subdue the guards and open the prison doors, allowing Hopper and Antonov to escape. Joyce and Hopper reunite. Steve's group ventures deeper into the Upside Down. Dustin, Lucas, and Erica theorize that Vecna has spawned a gate at the site of each murder, which they communicate across dimensions to Steve's group. Both parties reunite at a gate inside Eddie's trailer where Chrissy died. Robin and Eddie safely exit while Nancy is possessed by Vecna; she discovers that he is Victor Creel's son Henry, who killed his mother and sister with his psychic powers before falling into a coma and being placed in Brenner's care. Henry went onto become subject 001 in Brenner's experiments, and later the orderly Eleven befriended. Eleven finally remembers that Henry committed the lab massacre and tried to kill her when she refused to help him eradicate humanity; Eleven overpowered Henry and sent him to the Upside Down, where he became Vecna.

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