Well, I recently revived one topic that had been left dead for much of a year, so how about another?
Taking a bit of a break from gaming after some more stressful sessions of late, so finally got around to watching
Stranger Things: Season 1. Heard a lot about this show over the years, but just never felt like getting into it. That said, I had picked up the Seasons 1 & 2 Target BluRays when they were on sale years ago (for, like, $15 each IIRC), so now seemed as good a time as any.
Overall, it's a good show so far. I'd heard a lot about "key jangling" and " 'member-berries" when hearing criticism of it, but I didn't really see that with this first season. Aside from a really out of place vintage coke ad, I didn't think the nostalgia-baiting was particularly egregious.
I'm somewhat amused at how much this show rips off of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, between the "tragedy in a small town gradually rips a town apart" angle and the "dark parallel universe full of monsters that can invade the real world".
That said, I didn't like Eleven as a character. For one thing, her character is a Sci-Fi cliche, being the "psychic child raised by the government on the run and fleeing recapture". For another, she's just too damn powerful way too quickly. She's basically an instant-win button in every scene she appears in, and it just annihilates any stakes. She goes from basic telekinesis to popping a dozen soldier heads in the span of a handful of episodes. It's just too much, and I'd have appreciated at least in this first season a bigger focus on the core boys. Maybe she could have been introduced later, but right from the start it's just too much.
I could have also done without the love triangle, but I've seen far worse from Netflix in recent years (oh hi Locke & Key). I thought Winona Ryder was excellent in her role, and the Jack Nicholson impersonator playing the Sheriff did well also.
On a side note, as I mentioned I'm watching these 1st few seasons from my BluRays. Yes. I have Netflix, but I bought these once upon a time so I might as well watch them. Well, some genius decided that before you are allowed to watch a single episode of the first disc of the 1st season BluRay, you need to sit through 5 minutes of unskippable Netflix trailers...including a very spoiler-iffic trailer for Season 2 of Stranger Things.
What the actual ****, Netflix?
