TV: Stranger Things

[Anders]

An hour left of the second last episode now. Then two and a half hours on the last episode to go.

[Anders]

Starting the final episode now, but won’t finish today. Two hours and thirty minutes long. Crazy.

[Anders]

Will finish tomorrow. Decent final episode so far, but this show could be half as long.

[wease]

Will finish tomorrow. Decent final episode so far, but this show could be half as long.

It could be twice as long, too.

[Rob]

I wouldn’t change anything but if I had to, it would not be making it shorter.

[Mecca]

I would’ve made it shorter

[Anders]

Kind of looking forward to this ending today.

[lvc]

Season 5 is around the corner. I just started season one with my oldest kid and he's digging it. Reading back through this thread, I'm reminded of one thing: Season 4 was completely incredible...


... for how high on the smell of their own shit the Duffer bros became. Tight writing is what made this show work at the beginning. I can't believe that these guys haven't read Stephen King enough to have the truism "kill your darlings" completely engraved on their subconscious. Season 1 was 8 episodes and like six and a half hours. Same with 2 and 3. Season 4 was 9 episodes and 13 hours and I felt that pacing every slogging step of the way. And it looks like season 5 will make the same mistake. These guys do not have the writing chops to demand that much attention, the acting talent of the cast is too unevenly distributed to sustain interest.

The whole Stranger Things phenomenon is a master class is letting success go to your head.

[lvc]

Just did some googling. By the time Season 5 is over, Stranger things will have stretched itself out (maybe 48-50 hours) over nearly as much time as Breaking Bad (56 hours) and pretty much the same time as the entire Infinity Saga (50 hours). The amount of storytelling the Duffer brothers accomplish in that enormous amount of time is laughable by comparison.

I think this might be the greatest weakness of "TV" shows made by streaming services. The hour or half-hour constraints of traditional TV formatting forced writers to be concise and focused. The drawback was that 24 season orders led to some duds mixed in to even really good shows. AMC kind of solved that by shortening seasons to 16 episodes, often in 8-episode blocks. So you got a lot of really good long-form TV because you got the best combination of constraints. Every episode short enough to be a "leave them wanting more" scenario, especially the more invested viewers became in the story arc. 50 minutes of story time felt too short, but it was actually just right. And 8 or 16 episode blocks

Streaming throws that all out the window and you get episodes, episodes of a "TV" show that last longer than many feature-length movies. The whole pacing and rhythm is just tanked. You slog through an entire movie's worth of film but minus the payoff or closure you get at the end of a movie.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Feels like it has been 5 years since the last season.

[VinylGuy]

not five but three

[wease]

This is still a thing? I’d totally forgotten about it.

Surely there will be some sort of time jump. These kids don’t even look like kids anymore.

[Mecca]

This is still a thing? I’d totally forgotten about it.

Surely there will be some sort of time jump. These kids don’t even look like kids anymore.

Linda Hamilton was 10 when the series first aired and now look at her

[bart]

I watched the first season of this back when it came out and enjoyed it but never got around to watching any of the other seasons. Recently I rewatched that season and still liked it a lot, so I moved on to season 2 and liked everything but the idiotic sister plot. Now I’m on the third episode of season 3 and it’s god awful, just a chore to get through. Does it get better? I’m tempted to just skip to the end and move on to season 4.

[VinylGuy]

season 3 happened like ten years ago buddy i cant remember anything about it

[bart]

season 3 happened like ten years ago buddy i cant remember anything about it

Thank you for posting!

[VinylGuy]

season 3 happened like ten years ago buddy i cant remember anything about it

Thank you for posting!

you welcome

[Ensign9]

First episode down. I love how every footstep, look, and setting down of a notebook sounds like a cannon going off.

[Mecca]

Episode 3

Spoiler: show

Erica is kind of a psychopath with that needle

[blueviper]

Watched first episode of season 5. Kinda ho hum. Feels like a pastiche of itself. The dialog seems more cringey than usual.