Stranger Things <> Season 2

Netflix Original

I don’t think expectations for a series can get any higher than they do for Stranger Things. Last year the show came out of nowhere and swept people up into its 1980s mythos. Netflix has had some popular shows but nothing to the level of this. It’s become part of American pop culture.

I adored the first season. It was made for me and I ate it up. A time period I grew up in and remember well. An awesome adventure that stars kids that harkens back to the best stuff that Stephen Spielberg has done. The cast of kids is awesome, the story was cool with a fantastic mix of horror, suspense, and laughs.

Now a year and a half later, The Duffer Brothers and crew have delivered Season 2.

I’m going to talk about everything, so spoilers ahoy.

It’s an expansive season in terms of the main kids. They are apart for quite a bit of the runtime, trying to figure things out largely on their own until things blow up so much they come together to survive. By breaking the group up, more personal stories come out.

Eleven and Mike are largely pushed out of the spotlight. Mike is pretty much in mourning over the missing Eleven and is very protective of keeping the status quo of his crew. Eleven doesn’t reunite with the boys until the very end which was really surprising. Hopper keeps her hidden (rightfully so) until he’s swept away and she breaks out on her own.

Will remains window dressing, which is disappointing. The kid is the resident of The Upside Down and everyone more or less worries about him for the entire show. He’s the McGuffin again and while the kid is fantastic at selling torment, they can’t waste his talents as the We Have To Figure Out How To Help Him Kid again.

Dustin and Lucas get pushed forward with much more screen time and all for the better. They’ve both hit the “notice girls” phase and jockey for attention from the new girl. We get to meet Lucas’ family (his little sister is fantastic) and he gets much more fleshed out as a character. Dustin gets himself in trouble by breaking group rules and he scrambles for awhile to fix things on his own.

Speaking fo the new girl, Max is a good fit for the cast. She’s rather guarded and it takes far too long to find out why, but she’s an interesting added dynamic that has a lot of room to grow. Her stepbrother Billy is a ponderous character though. His dynamic with Lucas is super weird and he’s a rather tacked on bully that doesn’t do much. He’s a half-baked character compared to the rest.  His quick scene with Mike’s mother was a great payoff though.

Steve is probably the biggest standout this season, pretty much everything he’s in is fantastic. By breaking up the kids more, they got to do different character pairings that worked really well. Steve and Dustin are the greatest together as it turns out Steve is a great mentor and he’s awesome to have in a clutch situation.

After Nancy chose Steve last year, I think we were all bummed for Jonathan. One of my favorite arcs this season was the love triangle shift. The dynamic between Nancy and Steve quickly soured and the mission with Nancy and Jonathan brought the real couple together. And hey, Justice for Barb is real!

Sean Astin as Bob! I love Sean Astin, so I love Bob. They managed to keep Joyce from being ultra weepy so, so that’s a bonus. Bob was good for her. For as little time as Bob got, he was established well and he made for a great hero. I’m also happy with Paul Reiser’s character, Dr. Sam Owens. I thought they’d follow his Aliens roll but they kept him solid guy which I was happy to see.

Hopper remained great and his surrogate father role worked well and felt believable to me. As much as Eleven pouted and complained, he was right in everything he did. When you find out The Upsidedown is spreading under your town, that can be a distraction from your parenting duties. That leads to the most controversial part of the season: episode 7. Eleven’s Solo Adventure.

I liked it. It was good to get out of the town and see something else. Eleven desperately needed something new to do. It’s very easy for her character to stay trapped in Will territory, the same stresses and scenes replaying over and over again. She has far and away the most interesting backstory to explore too. She learns her mother isn’t dead and manages to communicate with her when no one has in years. It’s such a tragic story but it’s great to see Eleven meet her roots. That leads her to Eight, who is essentially her sister. The only person (right now) that knows exactly what Eleven has gone through.

The criticism for this stretch seems to be that it’s too much of a show deviation. It’s only Eleven, so everything stops for her to take a short road trip. I don’t agree with that. I’ve seen people go as far to say it was “pointless” which is completely wrong. It’s world-building for a show that really needs it. Eleven is integral to everything and she has to make moves on her own. She’s been basically a lab rat for her entire life so she’s naive and it’s often like following a preschooler around. How many times can we see her wiggle her hands around to use her power and make her nose bleed? You gotta move past those clichés as fast as you can.

The girl has the guts to go hitchhiking and she finds her family! She decides to put in some of her detective skills to good use after everyone has been sheltering her (something Will can relate to). I think Eight is cool and watching Eleven basically meet her sister was huge.  They both got away from the lab and they both found their own crews. Eight has been consumed by anger and found friends to enable her. Her whole motivation is revenge and that’s something Eleven can (and has) fallen easily into. It’s not that difficult to manipulate Eleven but in this episode, Eleven stands up for herself. She’s uncomfortable with Eight’s techniques and realizes her place isn’t next to her sister. Her crew that she left behind (and that includes her “father” Hopper) is where she needs to be. It’s major growth for her and I was stoked to see it. Plus, she gets a bad ass entrance when she comes back. Our telekinetic is done hiding!

The build-up is slow this season. It takes awhile for the pieces to be put in place and the mayhem to kick in. I found the build up to be fun, if predictable. What happens with Dustin’s pet, Dart, is obvious as anything and the show asks you to just roll with things a lot (what are they injecting Will with? No one’s putting a single second thought into jacking him up like that) about the dosage? Characters figure out/realize things at just the right time). The climax is rather blasé too. We never truly meet the monster and never get any kind of motivation or goal from it. Something besides “thing that’s trying to get here to do bad things” would be appreciated.

I had fun the whole way through. I get a kick out of the little things like how they show what a pain in the ass it was to find a friend if he wasn’t home when you called. The chemistry with the kids is great, and the balance of comedy and suspense is spot on. Killer soundtrack and solid special effects, too.  I think the end sets up the possibility for the best season yet because of where everyone is left to move on from. It’ll take the show to new areas which I think will ultimately pay off. I’d like to see Eleven find more kids and I hope someday Eight comes back. A monster that can communicate would be nice. Now that Eleven is back and Will is fine (he better be) the crew will be whole right from the start so there are no limits to how they can kick season 3 off. After the initial cold shoulder Eleven gave Max, it’ll be something to see them become friends.

Let’s blow this adventure up to new heights, I’m excited for more.

 

Mr. Robot S3E04

TV

Metadata

There is a lot of division going on in Mr. Robot.

Let’s start with the family. Elliot confronts his sister about hacking him. In a clever move to keep her role with the FBI a secret, she tells him she had to because Mr. Robot has hurt her and she’s afraid of what he’s up to. Elliot at this point thinks Mr. Robot is gone (or dormant) so this new rattles him. With this knowledge, he invites Darlene into what he’s been doing.

This gives Darlene a new perspective. The FBI knows that Elliot has been working with Tyrell and now she knows that Elliot doesn’t know he’s been in contact with Tyrell. Elliot shows her the work he’s been doing to keep Stage 2 from happening and that prompts the question: If you have all this info, why haven’t you made an anonymous tip to the Feds? You can stop this and keep your hands clean. Elliot’s thoughts: I can’t leave behind what we’ve started. He feels responsible for what’s happened and wants to stop it himself. Privately, he’s still fascinated with the idea of the revolution.

Knowing that Mr. Robot is active makes Elliot’s life more complicated. There’s a whole countermeasure to what he’s been doing that he can’t account for. That’s a problem. He deduces that since he isn’t missing out on any time in the day, it Mr. Robot must be active when he sleeps. He wants Darlene to keep watch at night and follow him. He stations Darlene next door in Shayla’s still empty apartment (which could have some terrible foreshadowing meaning behind it).

So, this plan of espionage is how Darlene finds out Angela is involved with Mr. Robot.

Tyrell is beside himself in anger. Angela and Mr. Robot meet him in a secret location and they discuss how Irving, on behalf of Whiterose has made them commit to a time to destroy the E Corp records: September 29th. Oh, and Elliot has been thwarting the records being moved to the New York location, ruining their plan. Angela is confident they can get it all moved in time and Tyrell isn’t having it. He’s over his infatuation with Elliot, he’s nuts and is nothing but a problem now.

Mr. Robot throws his weight around at the effort does something to him. He loses control to Elliot and he now sees Angela and Tyrell together in the same room. Angela knocks out Elliot with an injection to buy some time.

Always the professional, Irving manages to calm Tyrell down and speak directly to his ego: Stick with us Tyrell, you were born to do this. Tyrell likes what he hears but has some new conditions in order to do the work. My kid, my wife and I are on a plane to the Ukraine the moment stage 2 is done. Tell my wife we’re leaving together soon. Irving, knowing that Joanna is dead, says sure thing.

Angela talks to Price about getting Elliot fired from his E Corp job in order to contain his anti-Stage 2 work. Angela and Price’s conversations have always been strange and this one is no exception. Angela wants to hide who Elliot is, so she tells him she needs Elliot gone for important reasons she doesn’t want to talk about. Through some awkward back and forth he agrees.

Angela returns to her kitchen with Mr. Robot in her kitchen. He’s panicking but she bets that she can explain away any concerns Elliot has when he comes back. Angela is doing her best to keep calm and forge ahead but a lot seems to be going wrong for her. Elliot might just go along with what Angela says just to appease her and then flee to Darlene.

Out of everyone, I’m worried about Darlene the most. Losing Cisco traumatized her in ways that can’t be fixed. She’s caught in the middle of her brother and the feds with no good way out. The walls have been closing in on her and there are few moves left for her to make. At best she can keep tabs on Elliot and try to steer him from doing anything worse (or getting killed). She straight up confesses to the hack on the subway to the girl that pickpockets her and the only thing she wants back is an old picture of her family. She regrets everything she’s done and wishes to go back in time to a simpler time. A sliver of time, no matter how brief, where she had a family that was intact. She leaves the picture in Elliot’s apartment.

Lights Out

Movies

Lights Out is a decent ghost story. With a PG-13 rating, it goes for jump scares above all else. The age-old ‘afraid of the dark’ motif gets put to use here.

Rebecca’s little brother, Martin, is having trouble sleeping. Rebecca left home long years ago as she doesn’t get along with her mother after her father walked out on them. Martin calls Rebecca from school and she comes to pick him up, a child service worker says he keeps falling asleep in class. His behavior mimics problems Rebecca had in her childhood and she’s immediately suspicious of mom. It turns out their mother has a rather disturbing friend following her around, one that gets very angry when she doesn’t get her way.

At 80 minutes long, Lights Out zips along. We meet the ghost in the first scene and get a sense of her powers. From there we meet Rebecca and Martin and their mother’s problems become known. Due to the short run time, Rebecca puts things together fast. She finds background info in the first place she looks, she finds a way to harm the ghost more or less by accident and then it’s a matter of protecting her brother.

It’s all a little convenient but it works well enough. The special effects are really good and using darkness as a scare tactic is always effective. The threat of the ghost comes with a flicker. Lights on she can’t do anything, but in the dark, she’s free to move about quickly (she might have had ninja training when she was alive) and do harm. Neat monster design (even if it is too close to the witch in the Left 4 Dead games) that has a great silhouette. The old technique of hiding the monster until the final act is done to great effect.

Good cast and a solid ending, even if it is predictable. Good character building, the script hits all the checkpoints at the typical page count. A good scary movie for those new to the genre as there is not much here for the vets.

Channel Zero: No-End House

TV

Channel Zero is an anthology horror series in its second season on SYFY. I haven’t watched the first (Candle Cove) as No-End House was the first promo I’ve seen for the series.

No-End House is a creative take on haunted houses that pop up all over the country for Halloween. This particular house has a viral internet following as it seems to get only advertising online. Short teaser clips sent to people that are shared around until someone sees the house (an on the small side two story home painted matte black). When people congregate at night, the front door unlocks, allowing groups of people. Inside are six rooms, each scarier than the last. Most people bail out of the experience before they get to the end. There are all sorts of rumors about the house that draws people in, that the rooms are different for everyone, and making it through will change your life.

Main characters, Margot and Jules decide to check out the house together with their friend JD. They meet another guy, Seth, shortly after they find out about the house and he tags along with them.

Margot and Jules had been close childhood friends until Margot’s father died from a prescription drug reaction. After the tragedy, Jules left town for school, essentially leaving Margot behind. Jules comes home from break and she tries to reconnect with Margot. What better way than a haunted house?

Once in the house, Margot and Jules traverse the increasingly intense rooms with JD and Seth and two others until they are separated. They come out of the back the house to discover…they are still inside the house and it wants something from them.

Through the six episodes, the rules and secrets of the house become exposed. The secrets of the people also trickle out. It’s a cerebral trip through a dangerous and surreal world.

No-End House is a really creepy show. The set up with the house is cool and there are some amazing visuals once things going. Like any good horror/mystery story, subtle foreshadowing is all over the place and not everything is answered. You constantly question the motives of the house and the people. Each person has their own story, one that the house seemingly knows and exploits.

I think six episodes is the sweet spot for a show like this. Enough room to get a complete and complex story out without any wheel spinning. It’s constantly moving and delivering, there’s time for characters to grow (and die) but not waste time. The end is satisfying yet open-ended enough to create good discussions on what happened.

Season 3, Butcher’s Block, is coming up next year and I’m looking forward to it if this is the kind of quality I can expect. I’m going to check out Season 1 as soon as I can.

Mr. Robot S3E03

TV

legacy

All about that Tyrell. The long gap of time where Tyrell was missing has been filled in. Turns out he really. really, missed Elliot.

So the Dark Army found Elliot and Tyrell back at the original f society HQ just after the five/nine hack. And Irving was managing that pick up team, so Whiterose has had him in his employ for some time. He separated the two and hid Tyrell from the feds while Elliot went on to commit himself.

It was a rough go for Tyrell, looking at video of his son while he was secluded in a cabin in the woods in New York.  Coding and chopping wood seemed to be his only two pastimes while he was there. Being so pull out of society damaged his psyche. Reading that your wife has filed for divorce will do that to a man. And as Tyrell said, if she saw him the way he was there, she never would have taken him back.

We got a sizable nugget from this separation: Tyrell didn’t know Elliot had a split personality. Every time he was with Elliot, it was Mr. Robot. When he talks to Elliot on the phone when he’s locked up (season 2), Tyrell gets upset that Elliot didn’t recognize his voice. Tyrell holds Elliot (the version he knows anyway) in high esteem. He tells everyone that will listen he has to be working with Elliot on Stage 2. It’s not until Elliot is recovering from surgery that Angela tells him about the two personalities. It’s Mr. Robot who wakes up first.

We get another glance of the machinations of Whiterose. The complications of Elliot breaking and committing himself brings us to Whiterose’s right-hand man first expressing his displeasure of the continued insistence on not cutting Elliot loose and moving on without him. Whiterose is none too pleased about what happened but he’s confident in his decisions. Keep an eye on Elliot while he’s there and pull the strings to get him out (which they do). And then comes Donald Trump on TV at the start of his campaigning to become president of the United States. Whiterose found another wildcard to bet on.

Cult of Chucky

Movies

I admire writer/director Don Mancini for keeping his horror franchise going for this long. Seven movies in about 30 years, Chucky manages to keep coming back every few years with his trademark bad attitude. Figuring out how to get a two-foot tall doll to murder people is quite an achievement.

The last movie, Curse, was surprisingly good. Really creative, got every dime of the budget on screen, and they managed to make Chucky a real threat and the end was solid.

Cult follows Nica, the main survivor of the last film and Chucky’s main obsession (aside from Tiff), to a new psychiatric facility. Once again, no one believes Chucky is real, the murders from the last ordeal were done by Nica. She’s mentally ill and isn’t criminally responsible for the murders. After the trauma and intense (shock) therapy she believes Chucky isn’t real either. And then the doctor brings a Good Guy doll to the facility and people start dying again. Andy (the longest running human character in the series) finds out what’s going and rushes to help Nica.

Much like Curse, Cult is pretty much locked into one location. It offers a sense of claustrophobia and the foreboding sense that there is no way to escape. Only one person knows of the threat in the building and Chucky is free to sneak around causing mayhem and confusion. It’s classic 80’s horror set up (like Nightmare on Elm Steet, the parents don’t listen to the kids until it’s too late). Mancini has a knack for coming up with new scenarios to make his little monster work. And he has to because if Chucky doesn’t get the jump on people, a swift kick is going to hinder his plans. The doubt, the questions of sanity, the snowballing of events with Chucky’s new trick, the great special effects work to make Chucky a menace all come together well. It’s not a scary movie, but twisted and fun. It fits the franchise. There are quite a few deaths and there’s a good amount of blood, but nothing terribly creative or memorable (Chucky has always been a fan simplicity, stabbing usually gets the job done).

There’s a significant time jump between movies so there is some confusion at the start about how this is all came together. Most of it is answered though. Fiona Dourif is once again fantastic as Nica, she carries the movie. Her work in the final scenes is fantastic stuff.

Child’s Play is an easy horror movie franchise to forget but every time it comes around I’m happy to give it another go. After a super wacky mid-section (Bride and Seed) I like the path Mancini has found now. The doors are wide open for a sequel and I’ll be there for part 8.

Mr. Robot S3E02

TV

Undo

Elliot gets a job at E Corp on the recovery team and does everything he can to fix what he started. One of his biggest goals is to keep the physical files from being brought to the New York location to prevent the mass destruction of everything from being possible. When a wall comes up, he goes classic hacker to knock it down. He makes some good progress but when he’s away from work, he gets crushingly depressed from being lonely.

After avoiding his sister (he thinks she’s a trigger for Mr. Robot), he talks to her. She says she’s ready to skip town and Elliot asks her to keep him company for the night. Darlene is working for the feds and hasn’t been able to give them any useful information. She thinks he isn’t working with Tyrell and they give her proof that he is. When Elliot is asleep, she plants something on his computer. But Elliot is asleep and that means she has an abrupt meeting with Mr. Robot that sends her running. Her software drop was successful, giving Dom and her partner access to Elliot’s PC. Well, sort of successful.

Price tries swinging his weight at Whiterose and it doesn’t work. Chalk up another brilliant scene for BD Wong.

Elliot’s therapist, Krista Gordon, meets Mr. Robot for the first time. Chalk up another brilliant scene for Christian Slater.

A major character death! It took me by complete surprise, I never saw it coming. Just goes to show, when you get used to trampling people to get what you want, you can think you’re invincible. There can be consequences from being a pile of garbage.

Unghrahwah

NY Rangers

1-5-1.

The Penguin game was won. Won! A terrible start followed by a second period opening rally to punish Sidney Crosby. A glorious 5-3 power play opportunity opens up to get a 2 goal lead and the Rangers completely blow it, letting Pen tie it up.

And then it all collapsed in a series of complete nonsense at the end of the third. First, a twist of physics to get stupid Crosby a game-tying goal. Then a bush league mistake in the first minute of overtime to lose.

Crushing. It’s mindboggling what’s going on. I can’t even imagine what the team’s headspace is like right now but they have to ignore it and go out and skate like there is no tomorrow to get out of this. There’s just the most bizarre decisions being made. High-risk low reward passing that goes nowhere or blows up in their face. Stop trying to make every goal a one-timer, you see a sliver of an opening, fire that puck on net. Quit waiting around for things to line up perfectly all the time. It’s like tar that’s weighing them down, it’s such a downer.  Not making the playoffs would be horrible.

Halt and Catch Fire Season 4 <> Series Finale

TV

Search / Ten of Swords

Halt and Catch Fire is a series of failures. A group of four brilliant people and those that get pulled into their orbit jumping to reach the sky and hitting the ground after each attempt. Sometimes their feet don’t make contact first.

Halt never found a big audience. It managed to reach and keep just enough fans to keep going. In fact, the production never knew if there would be another season when they finished filming each year. Thankfully we managed to keep this show on to get it to its conclusion.

I love where this show went. It transformed and expanded past just Gordon and Joe. Halt covered a lot of time, more than a decade, and that meant the tech nexus of each season got to change with it. Four people who met in the 80s and worked on the next big thing had to keep coming up with another next big thing. Their relationships changed just as much as the tech they worked on.

In just four seasons I got really attached to Joe, Gordon, Donna, Cameron and to an extent Bos. The acting so strong that I believed everything they went through together. Their emotions and rational were tangible through every moment. That all came together in a powerful final season.

Starting with IBM clone PCs, to Mutiny, to Comet, each project started with an idea. A thought that turned into a business that would start a wave or catch one that others were chasing. While there were great successes, failure was seemingly never far behind.

It’s the bounce from those failures, how they broke and managed to piece things together to keep going, is what Halt is ultimately about.

Joe and Gordon were the easy focal points of the show at the beginning. While they were a great base to build from, where Cameron and Donna went is what I think is the shows’ greatest strength.

Cameron and Donna are fantastic characters. Both brilliant from different angles, it was often their partnership what drove the show. Joe and Gordon would not have gone anywhere without them. So when they broke apart, there was a major shift in the show. The star-crossed lovers, Joe and Cam, split up as did Gordon and Donna’s marriage. No one could trust Joe. Cameron was stubborn and a flake, nearly impossible to work with. She hated the business side of tech while Donna embraced it. That was Donna’s anchor tied to her foot. She could be ruthless and would choose “the greater good” over an individual every time. Gordon was often caught in the current the others made, an engineer who was happiest when working with his hands.

Sacrifices were made by everyone and I always questioned if they felt it was worth it. Donna’s cocktail party at the end was especially poignant for me, sharing how she reflected on her career and what it did to her life.

I really liked the end. Bos gets his second chance, a celebration of life. Comet burns out in the only way it could: they were inches short again. Joe and Cameron fall back on their tried and true trait: run. But Joe goes in a different direction. Cameron reaches out to Donna, something I didn’t think she’d do. It’s not instant though, there’s an apprehension behind their potential future and they talk about it.

And this extends to Gordon and Donna’s kids. Haley travels abroad to find herself and in Thailand relays a beautiful experience to her mother (after only talking to Haley for weeks). Haley’s time working with her father at Comet was a pivotal time in her life. She also comes of age with her own questions about herself. She’ll continue her father’s legacy, using him as her inspiration and her guiding star.

No matter what there’s always talk of the future on Halt. The talk of the next big thing, what could be next, what can they do and how do they avoid what always happens to them? Cam says, “I don’t know, I don’t have any more ideas.” and then later the inspiration comes from Donna, “I have an idea.”

Nothing is perfect and few things work out the way we want. Gordon and Donna drifted apart. Joe and Cameron found that they wanted different things. A tragedy doesn’t signal the end. You just need to find the opportunities to follow and the guts to pursue them.

You’re Killing Me, Rangers

NY Rangers

1-4. That is the actual record of the New York Rangers right now. It’s a spiral of history staining proportions that needs to be pulled out of right now. The team is just not working together well, the defense is still a problem. Shattenkirk is doing everything he can but he’s only one guy. Weird breaks against them are happening (deflection off a teammate into a goal last night) that they aren’t rebounding from.

The lines are constantly changing seemingly at a whim. Filip was sent to Hartford a week ago. The hype flew out the window in maybe 20 minutes of ice time for him. Some stability needs to be found and it ain’t coming from coach Alain Vigneault. He’s been given a lot of chances and I think his doomsday clock just started moving.

If they don’t beat the Devils tonight, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.