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insert-witty-comment · 6 years

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I post a lot in here. Lately I noticed that I leave a lot of criticism of Stranger Things 2 (or Season 2 if you prefer). It's true that I like the original season better than the second for a pile of reasons I went into previously. However, I realized I left so much criticism and comparisons to season 1 that I'm coming off as a bit of a negative Nancy (tehehehe)!The truth is I loved and do love Stranger Things 2. I was so excited to watch it and left it feeling very satisfied. I felt it surpassed my own expectations for a sophomore season by a long ways. So I think given the amount of criticism I leveled at this season in comments on this sub, I may as well explain why I loved it if even just to keep it as a link for myself for later! So here we go!The continuity of the party!Right away in Season 1 we see all the boys together in some perfectly shot scenes in perfect sets. That arcade is so damn beautiful it makes me nostalgic for my real life history where I played games at the arcade (I'm now old enough that I remember the 90s, in which arcades were still awesome!). These four boys are a blessing to viewers and could not have been better cast! They are always entertaining!Noah Schnapp!If you pay even the slightest attention to Stranger Things 2, you can't miss Noah Schnapp's considerable contribution. Almost a stranger to us in the first season, Noah blows it out of the park in ST2. We meet him in ST2 as a kid kind of boxed in, with his life being dominated by others. That could be his mother's understandable preoccupation with his safety, or his need to report every episode to the people at the lab. He plays the role of an outsider - Zombie Boy - so perfectly. You see it on his face as he walks in and out of the school knowing people are talking about him.Then he has to portray possession. It's not just the task of actually portraying the act of possession itself on the field but the actual possession later as the shadow monster learns to slowly take over his brain. He has to portray both the evil and good side of Will and probably doesn't even know where the balance is scene by scene. Then, they asked him to portray a seizure. I have a sister with severe epilepsy, I can say that the out of control muscular spasms he shows as well as the expression on his face are scarily close to somebody who is experiencing a bad seizure.If that wasn't enough, they added in his exorcism scene where he has to portay a total lunatic, if as possessed by a demon exorcist-style. Yet, he manages it all. The boy out of shot all of the first season grabbed ST2 and made it his own.Noah Schnapp... the heart and soul of Stranger Things 2. Kudos young man, I've never seen a performance like that from someone so young!Winona and HarbourThe two adult leads on the show picked up right where they left off. Winona Ryder was a serious crush of mine as a kid (lol) and it's rare that when you become an adult and get into your 30s (which unfortunately I am) your crush can still be relevant. Well, it is. Winona is so damn talented and natural it is RIDICULOUS. I buy Joyce Byers. I buy that she would knife you to save her son, even though she's a small, almost frail looking single Mama. Her strength comes from the best place of all.. love.That face she had when she is embracing Will and looks at the picture of the Shadow Monster is just perfect. It is almost like she is daring it.. COME AT ME! Come at a Mama when you are threatening her cubs, I dare you! There's nothing like a mother's love and Joyce is a real mother, she'd walk through HELL for Will. I mean.. she did!David Harbour is proof that the best are so often overlooked. Even by his own admission his career has relegated him to being part of the background. He was in big productions, like The Equalizer with Denzel, but he is always the villain with the gun or just the extra guy. In the first season he showed the depth he truly has as we went on a journey from hating this terrible cop, to being glad this "asshole" is on the case because he is at least competent, to being heartbroken when he tells Joyce about his grief over Sarah, to being TOTALLY invested in his fate right to the end when he saves a little boy.In ST2, he comes back and does it again... by...Hopper and Eleven!I love that they showed us Hopper and Eleven's backstory to some degree. The small details can mean so much. When Hopper hears her behind him and turns to see her there, in the flesh, his immediate reaction is to take off his hat. This may seem like a small thing, but it is everything.If the cops show up at your house and they remove their hats, it likely means you aren't in trouble. It is done for respect. They are not there to enforce the law against you, rather they are there to inform you of something, probably something not good. It is respect, they are no authority in that moment, they are public servants there to help.When Hopper sees El his immediate reaction is to take off his hat. This is so adorable because she can't know what this means but it is everything to him. It is a signal to her that he is here to help. He is a friend. She is in no trouble at all. It is also clearly a relief to him having told Brenner where they are that she is still breathing.But they didn't keep it rosy and overload us with the MOMENT that is the "Hopper Dance", instead they show us conflict. In that conflict we see both sides of the argument. We see it from El's side and Hopper's side. She is cooked up, lonely and sick and tired of spending every day there. He cares only about her safety. They are bound to clash and they do, and when they do it isn't pretty. Both of them come across badly. She accuses him of being like Papa, and he acts rather childishly with the "wanna go back in the lab?" line. I do appreciate though that he stands up to and faces her power, he won't let her win by just being more powerful. In any case, it's a hard scene to watch and that's why it is good. It is honest!Their redemption scene in the car is also.. everything. El is only the second person we see him even acknowledge Sara's death with, after Joyce. I also adore that he gave her the bracelet.Oh and that shot at the end of S4 when he is in the tunnel with the flashlight and we flip upside down. God damn!!!Bob Newby, Superhero!I loved the Goonies as a boy and I loved (and still love) the Lord of the Rings as a teenager. To see Sean Aston join the the cast was awesome. On screen, he was perfect as Bob Newby, the nerdy guy who clearly loved Joyce and the boys and wanted to help whatever the cost. While the show made him almost seem a bit silly or maybe even pathetic in early moments, it showed his strength in Episode 8. In that episode, the strong stereotypical male lead, Hopper, was powerless to enable them to escape the lab. Instead, "Bob the Brain" was the one who could turn the power back on and use his programming knowledge to get them the hell out of there.I still won't say I liked the manner of his death, but his death at least was understandable. He undertook a serious mission and it was a success, except the part of coming out alive. The people he thought of first and foremost.. namely Joyce and Will.. left the lab alive and in good physical health.Bob may have been a character introduced to die so that they don't have to kill a main character.. but they pulled it off!Steve Harrington and Dustin Henderson!I just... I love this. I love how much Steve ends up liking Dustin. Clearly reluctant to help Dustin at first, Steve went way above and beyond the call of duty later. When he realized Dustin was right about Dart, he didn't run off. Just like he walked back in that house in the S1 finale and saved both Jonathan and Nancy, Steve stayed by Dustin's side right to the end.One little moment I love between them is when Steve pats Dustin on the head after putting the demodog in the Byers' refrigerator. He's "his boy" now. Dustin grew on Steve like he grew on all of us as we watched him in S1. Dustin could grow on anyone to be fair!The fact that they kept their budding friendship and "big brother / little brother" thing going right to the end is wonderful. I love that Steve saw this young boy who was struggling in some aspect of his social life even though he is clearly a smart kid, and decided to take him under his wing. I hope it continues into Season 3.I also love that while Steve's advice seems to have failed, it "sort of" worked. We see Dustin crushing on Nancy in the opening minutes of Season 1 and we get the impression he tries to get her attention every chance he gets. In the meantime, he has turned his attention to Max and isn't showing any outward interest toward Nancy. Then, while not chasing after his friend's older sister he ends up dancing with her at the Snow Ball. Which is no small deal! Did you see the look on the girl's faces? They are intrigued.. why is she dancing with him? WHAT DID WE MISS? Indeed Steve, "act like you don't care" worked in part for Dustin... except it was for the girl you are crushing on :PEl's refusal and Kali's portrayal in Episode 7So I am critical of Episode 7 for reasons I won't go into because this is about what I liked! Eleven's refusal to commit murder is HUGE for her character. She has killed before but in immediate defense of her life and freedom, or of those she cares about. That's reasonable! Kali wanted her to kill a man who hurt her mother for revenge, but upon seeing the children she would be depriving of a father figure she can't do it. She cannot do to them what he did to her, she is too good. She even stops Kali from doing it.This moral compass is a direct result of the people who influenced her in Hawkins. This includes Benny (RIP gentle bear!), the boys (especially Mike) and Hopper. She escaped and won the lottery when it comes to who to influence her. Mike berates her when she does wrong, like throwing Lucas across the field. Hopper resists her powers in an argument even though she could snap his neck in a rage. When she does wrong, it is not excused, she is told! She is yelled at. She also learned small, seemingly insignificant but important things like "friends don't lie". These are all part of the moral compass she has developed in the previous year.Unfortunately Kali doesn't seem to have benefited from similar influence. In fact, Kali comes across VERY badly. Not only does she kill at will, she has recruited lost people to do her bidding. They depend on her for survival, for protection and everything. They talk about her with the same reverence uttered about Marhshall Applewhite, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Charles Manson and so on. All of their followers believed them to be saviors. "We were dead. All of us. Kali saved us here, and in here".Those cult leaders also sought to manipulate their followers to believe the world was against them. Kali does this to Eleven directly. She even tries to poison the relationships Eleven made already, insisting they can't help her, even though they already have. There is a feeling of "only through me is there salvation and peace" about it.Kali has saved NOBODY. She has put her gang on an inevitable path toward death or imprisonment. It is only a matter of time. She also doesn't hesitate to use her power to try to psychologically influence Eleven. She shows her Brenner, understanding that El has been brainwashed to see this man, her handler, as her savior and protector. We also hear Axel tell Kali "I told you to stay out of my head" or words to that effect earlier, suggesting she doesn't have a problem using her power against the people around her.While I don't like episode 7 and make no bones about that... I appreciate they left Kali's true nature up to interpretation and redeemed Eleven before it was over!Max MayfieldI'll say it.. I like Max. At first I didn't see the point but on re-watch and thinking about it, she is no mere introduction for a love triangle. Instead, Max introduces real drama. She causes a rift with the boys because Mike doesn't want her there. She also dumps the boys as friends when she feels she was being mistreated.. and I respect that!She also is the person besides Eleven who makes Mike really SMILE. And I mean really SMILE. You may have missed it if you were focused on El finding Mike, but when Max is skating around Mike she breaks down his phony tough shell easily and he is smiling at her. He is moments away from accepting her as a friend and fellow party member until Eleven's jealousy interrupts them. This is probably the first time Mike smiled properly in a year and it's to her credit, because she under it all is a good person.She also plays a major role at the end potentially saving Steve's life (and Billy from life imprisonment?), but she manages to get herself and the boys to the tunnel to lure the demodogs away from Hopper and Eleven, which almost certainly saved Hopper's life and maybe even Eleven's.I'm looking forward to finding out what happened in California!The "pull out" line and the cookie eating!...... what can I say? There will always be an inner 12 year old in me who appreciates a little inappropriate innuendo etc. :PSo that's just some more positive thoughts on S2 from someone who constantly seems to be criticizing it. The way I see it, I wouldn't be criticizing so many aspects of it if I didn't care about it at all! But still, it is good to remember that I enjoyed it a lot.. and why!If you read all that.. god damn.. well done and thanks :P via /r/StrangerThings

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