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TV commentary:
Stranger Things- Heh, things moved at a pretty quick pace this season, so I actually ended up binging the whole thing Friday night. The show kinda followed the formula of various sets of people doing things that ended up converging by the end. Well, that and if people stopped to talk each other, a lot of the problems they encountered wouldn't have happened.
Where to start? Let's go with Eleven. So, Hopper is pretty pissed that she went out, because its incredibly dangerous for her. I mean, her frustration is understandable. She's cooped up in the cabin all day, unable to see her friends. She and Hopper get into a big blow out fight, since she has powers, so its like, how does her really discipline her when she can kill him with a thought. He does end up taking her TV away, and takes off to give her time to think. (more on that later)
So, being bored, she ends up rummaging through the cabin and finds the record for her mom. So she runs away to her aunt's house, and eventually finds a way to communicate with her mom, who as we remember, is suffering brain damage. She sees images of her mom at the institute, trying to rescue her, before getting lobotomized. The relevant part was that there was another girl at the institute, who as one could figure out, was the girl at the beginning.
Eleven is able to find her, and when her aunt goes to call Hopper saying "my niece showed up, and she says there's another girl at the institute"- since Hopper hadn't talked to her since last season, she has no idea what's going on. All she has is his card, and instructions to call if she finds out anything else, which she did. El overhears this though, and runs away to find her sister, 08/Kali.
Now, I thought the ep dealing with that was fine, but it sounds like a lot of people hated it. (Weird, I totally did not recognize the crazy white chick in the gang in the beginning as Taylor from Finding Carter!) I mean, I guess its jarring, because it was a total deviation from the narrative, almost like a different show altogether. But, the Duffer brothers are all about tropes, and this ep was kinda like X-men.
Apparently Kali and her gang hunt down the people who've hurt them, their abusers. Kali is excited to find Eleven, not only because they're similar, but El is much better at finding people, and that talent is useful for their hunt. Only, when they find a guy, a former guard from the Institute, El refuses to kill him after seeing he has two little girls.
Anyways, they end up fleeing without killing him, much to Kali's chagrin. Eventually, because they left him and his daughters alive, the cops find them. They escape, but El goes off on her own, back to Hawkins, because she sees the craziness that Hopper and Mike have gotten into and goes to save them.
Before I get to that, let's get to the others. I'll break down their storylines up until the converge. So Nancy and Jonathan do have a plan- they knew they were being eavesdropped on, and get taken in by the Institute. There, Dr Owens gives them the patriotic schpeel, about how he's not like Brenner and the previous members of the institute, and how they're trying to curb the Upside Down. And if they blab, Russian spies might hear, and 1) exploit what happened and start another incident in Hawkins or 2) try similar experiments themselves, again, causing another incident.
So, Jonathan and Nancy are all, they understand, but it turns out Nancy recorded the entire conversation. Which, they didn't freaking check her for recording devices? Anyways, they go to the crazy guy from the beginning who was talking to Hopper about Russian spies, and basically tell him everything. He's obviously shocked, his world rocked, but he tells them, they can't just release the recording.
He goes into a whole speech that normal citizens don't want to hear about this sort of craziness. They want to go on living nice, peaceful lies, so if they try to tell them this outlandish tale, the government will come up with all sorts of ways to discredit them. And the people will believe, because they want to be fooled. But he figures out that what they need to do is water it down. Nancy picks up on the metaphor, and its convenient in his speech that Dr Owens had mentioned trimming weeds.
So, they send out a bunch of copies of the tape (and Nancy and Jonathan totally do it!), making it look like the institute was working on powerful pesticides, and Nancy was exposed and died, and they covered it up. That is more palatable to the masses than a monster from another dimension.
They head home, and come to an empty house, full of the crazy drawings Will made (heh, again, I'm getting there) but also a discarded Polaroid cartridge. Which, man, the Institute can be sloppy, but I guess they weren't trying to be sneaky, they needed the information. Anyways, the fact that someone was in the house troubles Jonathan, and he and Nancy head to the Institute, which is where they reunite with the other storylines.
But since this is already a long post, I'll continue the recap/review in another post.
Stranger Things- Heh, things moved at a pretty quick pace this season, so I actually ended up binging the whole thing Friday night. The show kinda followed the formula of various sets of people doing things that ended up converging by the end. Well, that and if people stopped to talk each other, a lot of the problems they encountered wouldn't have happened.
Where to start? Let's go with Eleven. So, Hopper is pretty pissed that she went out, because its incredibly dangerous for her. I mean, her frustration is understandable. She's cooped up in the cabin all day, unable to see her friends. She and Hopper get into a big blow out fight, since she has powers, so its like, how does her really discipline her when she can kill him with a thought. He does end up taking her TV away, and takes off to give her time to think. (more on that later)
So, being bored, she ends up rummaging through the cabin and finds the record for her mom. So she runs away to her aunt's house, and eventually finds a way to communicate with her mom, who as we remember, is suffering brain damage. She sees images of her mom at the institute, trying to rescue her, before getting lobotomized. The relevant part was that there was another girl at the institute, who as one could figure out, was the girl at the beginning.
Eleven is able to find her, and when her aunt goes to call Hopper saying "my niece showed up, and she says there's another girl at the institute"- since Hopper hadn't talked to her since last season, she has no idea what's going on. All she has is his card, and instructions to call if she finds out anything else, which she did. El overhears this though, and runs away to find her sister, 08/Kali.
Now, I thought the ep dealing with that was fine, but it sounds like a lot of people hated it. (Weird, I totally did not recognize the crazy white chick in the gang in the beginning as Taylor from Finding Carter!) I mean, I guess its jarring, because it was a total deviation from the narrative, almost like a different show altogether. But, the Duffer brothers are all about tropes, and this ep was kinda like X-men.
Apparently Kali and her gang hunt down the people who've hurt them, their abusers. Kali is excited to find Eleven, not only because they're similar, but El is much better at finding people, and that talent is useful for their hunt. Only, when they find a guy, a former guard from the Institute, El refuses to kill him after seeing he has two little girls.
Anyways, they end up fleeing without killing him, much to Kali's chagrin. Eventually, because they left him and his daughters alive, the cops find them. They escape, but El goes off on her own, back to Hawkins, because she sees the craziness that Hopper and Mike have gotten into and goes to save them.
Before I get to that, let's get to the others. I'll break down their storylines up until the converge. So Nancy and Jonathan do have a plan- they knew they were being eavesdropped on, and get taken in by the Institute. There, Dr Owens gives them the patriotic schpeel, about how he's not like Brenner and the previous members of the institute, and how they're trying to curb the Upside Down. And if they blab, Russian spies might hear, and 1) exploit what happened and start another incident in Hawkins or 2) try similar experiments themselves, again, causing another incident.
So, Jonathan and Nancy are all, they understand, but it turns out Nancy recorded the entire conversation. Which, they didn't freaking check her for recording devices? Anyways, they go to the crazy guy from the beginning who was talking to Hopper about Russian spies, and basically tell him everything. He's obviously shocked, his world rocked, but he tells them, they can't just release the recording.
He goes into a whole speech that normal citizens don't want to hear about this sort of craziness. They want to go on living nice, peaceful lies, so if they try to tell them this outlandish tale, the government will come up with all sorts of ways to discredit them. And the people will believe, because they want to be fooled. But he figures out that what they need to do is water it down. Nancy picks up on the metaphor, and its convenient in his speech that Dr Owens had mentioned trimming weeds.
So, they send out a bunch of copies of the tape (and Nancy and Jonathan totally do it!), making it look like the institute was working on powerful pesticides, and Nancy was exposed and died, and they covered it up. That is more palatable to the masses than a monster from another dimension.
They head home, and come to an empty house, full of the crazy drawings Will made (heh, again, I'm getting there) but also a discarded Polaroid cartridge. Which, man, the Institute can be sloppy, but I guess they weren't trying to be sneaky, they needed the information. Anyways, the fact that someone was in the house troubles Jonathan, and he and Nancy head to the Institute, which is where they reunite with the other storylines.
But since this is already a long post, I'll continue the recap/review in another post.