strangerthings

The fascination with the series “Stranger Things” is baffling to me. The show is ok at best but it sure as hell/the upside down is not the best. The arguments as to why is one of the great series seem hollow and shortsighted. The supposedly great music selection is in reality just subpar at best. The original music in it is ok, not amazing and breathtaking as it has been insisted upon. The acting on the show is equally as middle of the road (why has no one said that Mike acted and looked like Shelley Duvall in the Shining?) as is the editing trying really hard to keep you on the edge of your seat as it is trying to “genuinely” scare you or to get you to jump out of your couch, now that being said if this is the kind of thing that gets you off in a movie or tv show then in that case I sort of kind of understand why you would be so enthralled in a show like this.

One of the many issues with the show is that I found it really hard to care about almost any of the characters in the show. The children were boring. The supporting cast seemed like they were just hanging around. Winona Ryder I just can’t seem to understand, neither why was she in the show or why is she even an icon of sorts to some.

The one thing that the Duffer brothers got right was the tribute that they were paying to all of their filmmaking heroes of the late 70’s and the unremembered 80’s. The homages were not subtle either, nods to the movies were so blatant that you could almost taste a lawsuit occurring. the one thing I sort of hoped from this was that some of the fans would go watch some of the great works that they might not be familiar with. I’m sure by now they’ve seen the videos or comparison charts as to who they were paying tribute to.

The show felt like an exercise in nostalgia and fans of anything/everything cannot get enough of their daily serving of the same. Here’s to hoping that the inevitable Season 2 is better (I doubt it), the the acting improves (one can only hope), that the music selection actually improves and that the score can actually make you feel uneasy or scared instead of just being there filling up dead air time and making you feel almost nothing, that they stop with the fade out/cut into the next scene, that technique is just dull.

Hopefully for their next season they can find other (better) movies to pay homage to. I doubt it. Nostalgia will always sell.