Season 2 keeps bonds of family at core of show
Stranger Things ★★1/2 (out of 4) Season 2. Starring Paul Reiser, Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Millie Bobby Brown. On Netflix Oct. 27.
Stranger Things, the saccharine but creepy Netflix series about friends growing up in a small town, took the canon of 1980s science fiction films and ruthlessly weaponized the themes of childhood lost, ingratiating itself to audiences yearning for an analogue world.
It worked. The series was nominated for 18 Emmys. While it didn’t win any major drama awards, the show became a major cultural phenomenon.
So what to do for a followup? In the proud tradition of sequels, go bigger. Executive producers the Duffer Brothers have upped the nostalgia ante to Spinal Tap levels.
Sean Astin, boyfriend to ’80s icon Winona Ryder, is now a grown-up Mikey from The Goonies and is employed at Radio Shack. The show starts with the kids hanging out at the video arcade playing Centipede. It is only days before Halloween and the friends are readying their Ghostbusters costumes.
Meanwhile, the hot guy in school has a pompadour that would put that guy from A Flock of Seagulls to shame. And there is an unrelenting ’80s soundtrack. Cue Ray Parker Jr. Turn volume to 11.
I must confess I couldn’t see the fuss when the show first debuted. I was in the minority. It has a 96-percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The unlikely hit is a slavish homage to the early movies of Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus with some John Hughes and Wes Craven thrown in for good measure.
And apart from generating a deep nostalgia for Three Musketeers bars and original recipe KFC, it never seemed to rise from its derivative, cheesy origins into something quite fully formed.
A nice time-wasting trifle yes, but all whipped cream. Still, the Duffer Brothers never said they were remaking a 21st-century version of Stand by Me. On the most basic level it’s a kids’ show and that’s where it works best.
Certainly the market has spoken: the monster-sized remake of Stephen King’s It has already shattered box office records, grossing $650 million (U.S.) worldwide. (Not uncoincidentally, the movie co-stars Canadian Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things.)
Netflix is on a warpath to create content like Stranger Things at the expense of the legacy broadcasters.
In the big scheme of things it’s not Will Byers who should be worried. Executives at conventional networks are already finding themselves living in an Upside Down world and their Demogorgon is Netflix.
There are some parallels here. In last season’s finale, Will, played by Noah Schnapp, was rescued from his harrowing trip to the Upside Down. Schnapp seemed an afterthought in Season 1 but does the heavy lifting in Season 2.
His work here is astonishing for a child actor, playing someone who is essentially recovering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Wolfhard and Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the superpowered Eleven, are supporting players to Schnapp’s fragile journey.
The show, as in Season 1, is a slow burn in the early going. There are more cheap scares than the Haunted Mansion ride at the CNE and the low budget special effects — especially the rubbery underworld of the Up- side Down — are made for VHS. But familiarity is strength in this original series, which is essentially a remake of many others. And on that level, Season 2 is a winner.
It’s 1984 in Hawkins, Ind., and the core group of friends are trying to keep it together. Life has returned to normal. Sort of. There are some new and welcome players, including Paul Reiser, a shady scientist at the head of the Hawkins laboratory that is investigating the phenomenon. There is also a new member of the group, tomboy Max (Sadie Sink), who in her own way is as gifted as Eleven — at least to the boys, since she has the high score on the Centipede video game.
Ryder, the It Girl of the ’80s, returns as Will’s mother to deliver a harrowed but entirely watchable performance as she tries to protect her son from an unknowable evil.
I won’t get into specifics, because the nondisclosure agreement critics have to sign before viewing the shows has an extensive list of spoiler topics that can’t be discussed, including where Eleven has been since the first season.
But the beating heart of the show is essentially Spielbergian: it’s about the bonds of family. The family you are born with and the family that you make your own.
Because, in a world of Demogorgons and weird stuff that lurks underneath your bed, your family, always a walkie talkie call away, is what keeps you whole.