Stranger Things Season 3

Assloads of people who are watching a series way out of their mental capacity. Maybe they should have put that on the big bang idiocy so the wannabe geeks could have gotten it. I squeed within five notes because I had that song memorized long before I had it on cassette mix in my first car. OK, and yes I was singing along with the show.

I was waiting for the SJWs to start complaining about hopper being a bit bossy. The lovers quarrels were more moonlighting fodder if you ask me. His protectiveness of El was what you would expect a dad to be like with a girl his age in her room with a boy. He is a cop and they tend to be commanding. It is something they need to do and they probably fall back on it. Plus Joyce does not put up with his shit, gets dominant on her own, and he never tells her to stay behind because she is a woman. There wasn't even an attempt to tell her to stay when they are going into danger.

It is not like the series did not directly confront the male dominated workforce thing with Nancy and how she was treated at the paper. I am not even sure if that would have been proper in the 80's, but I cannot say. The boys talk somewhat sexist at points, but that is addressed, talked through, and shown to be hurtful and wrong with a message.

Spoiler for stranger things 4

I do have to wonder if there will be some sort of attention payed to Advanced D&D in the next season. I am pretty sure this is about the time that was coming out and gaining popularity and the planes and a few of the monsters they are sort of basing all of this on were a big part of that. I do not know for sure how far the original D&D went before AD&D.

But seriously, these are D&D kids going to the mall back in those days, am I the only one wondering why there was no trip to Waldenbooks or kb toys? Waldenbooks carried the basic gaming books for AD&D at the time, and KB was where I found the D&D box set they were playing from when I got it in the 80's. What about the arcade? Those things were packed back in those days. Considering the time of the malls every one of them had an arcade built into it. Great you called out to radio shack which was a good place to pick up radio parts and DIY electronics, but even if you are too old to go to the toy store of the time you know you are going to fucking Waldenbooks as a geek or nerd.

TSR Wizards Of The Coast is really dropping the ball if they haven't adapted Stranger Things into a campaign book by now.

That would be great, a whole party of Hoppers and els. Are there any chicks at the mall? If there are I want to do them.

Finished watching it last night. My initial thoughts concerning the characters -

Eleven - still the star of the show. It was fun watching her break out of her shell and become more like a normal teenager, trying on 80's outfits and having sleepovers.

Mike - somebody give this kid a couple of sandwiches and a protein shake, he looks pale and anemic. As a character, he's pretty bland.

Dustin - this kid has loads of personality, he's fun to watch, has nailed the obnoxious, hyperactive middle schooler schtick.

Will - they didn't really seem to know what to do with this character this season, after featuring him in season 2. He wanders around wide-eyed, grabs the back of his neck and says "he's here." That happens about 150 times. His realtionship to his mother is barely acknowledged, and his realationship with his older brother (a central focus of season 1) is virtually non-existant. The haircut is horrible. I never knew anyone with hair like that in 1985.

Lucas - I hate to write this character off as the token black, but that's what he is. There's just no significance to this character, and if he weren't there, nothing about the story would change. There are no sub-plots involving him, instead that all gets handed to the young girl who plays his sister. And with all the kissy-kissy face going on between Mike and Eleven in the first episode, I found it conspicuous that not once did we see Lucas and his alleged girlfriend Max kiss, not even a peck on the cheek. Are they afraid of showing kissing in an interracial teen romance, or are they scared because the young actress who plays Max threw a fit at the end of season 2 when she claimed to have been traumatized because a last-minute script change required her to kiss Caleb McLaughlin and this was apparently too much for her to handle?

Nancy & Jonathan - Nancy is saddled having to deal with a boring #metoo girl power subplot involving laughably boorish male co-workers who won't take her Lois Lane aspirations seriously. And in any scene where she's required to run, she looks embarassingly unathletic. Jonathan seems to have had the memory of his little brother wiped from his mind, as he spends most of season 3 failing to acknowledge Will's existence. You know, the siblings who has already been abducted, possessed and tortured by the Mind Flayer? The little brother Jonathan risked his life to save in season 1? Also, Charlie Heaton looks terrible, like he's still high on cocaine.

Steve "The Hair" Harrington - I like this actor and the character, I found myself wishing the writers could have had him figure out some sort of direction in life. He's a hero who has repeatedly risked his life to save the world, maybe he should go in to law enforcement?

Chief Hopper - I just don't care for this actor or the character. Any scene he's in is a chore for me to get through, and I found the romance sub-plot with Winona Ryder boring. He's a psycho-obsessive over-protective dad when it comes to wanting malnourished beanstalk Mike out of the picture, but then ran around the entire season unconcerned with where Eleven was and what she was doing.

Winona Ryder - I wonder if she's the same kind of frazzled nutcase in real life she plays on this show. And I hated the cameo with Sean Astin, because he's gotten so fat with a huge pot belly. Eat a salad and jog a couple of miles, Samwise!

Billy - so the culprit isn't spirit possession by the otherworrdly Mind Flayer, but his toxic masculinity dad who yelled at him during baseball and slapped his mother around?

Max - why does she give a shit about Billy, the step-brother who violently abused her last season, both emotionally and physically?

Will's real purpose was only coincidental. He was just a victim in the first two seasons and now that he is free he is too wound into the group to not be around. I agree he is a bit pointless, but it would be hard to write him out without killing him. even if you killed him he would be way too obvious death fodder to make an impact on the audience.

This seemed very forced as there is little to no developed reason for her to care about him at all. He is written as a complete dickhead and abusive evil guy. We did not see any redeeming characteristics in him at all.

Small nitpick, Dawn of the Dead came out on July 19th.

Me thinks Back to the Future is a bit of foreshadowing for next season.

Worse, the action figure of Ultra Magnus didn't come out until 1986 to coincide with "Transformers The Movie".

Finished it last night. I loved the First Season and greatly liked Season 2......but this 3rd Season is fucking awful. Most of the characters became obnoxious, and the situations were so cheesey and ridiculous as to piss on the greatness that came before it. Both Hopper and Steve were victims of character assassination, as was whiney Mike. Dustin didn't have nearly enough cool moments, and the entire Russian plot was painfully corny.

The show has jumped the shark, and they really need to get back to basics for the fourth season, or they will start losing viewers like the Walking Dead.

Season 3 had Netflix's highest viewership ever.

That doesn't mean it was good.

Come on man. That's a terrible argument you're making. Lot's of people wanted to see it and when it came out they binged watched it and now that they are done they've concluded it's bad.

I'm going to be watching it this weekend. I just re-watched season two. Hopefully it's not as bad as BD says it is.

It shoots down the "losing viewers", part of the argument.

I thought it was excellent. And yes I questioned whether it’s plausible that the Russians could build a secret underground base in the Midwest and concluded that the mayor was corrupt and it’s a small town in the Midwest, the FBI wouldn’t be looking and it could all be done under the cover of night and the Kremlin would give them the best support to do it. We had Soviet spies living in this country for decades and nobody knew. And at the end with the news report, I remember seeing shit like that all of the time, so the cover up was plausible as well.

The show is a deliberate 80's fest, I saw it as a tribute to stuff like "Red Dawn".
Mixed in with the "John Carpenter's The Thing", tone the goo-monster represented.

No it doesn't.

His meaning is if they don't get back to basics for season 4 they will lose viewers during season 4 and future seasons.

I'll be sure to be a sore winner when he's proven wrong.

Oh we all know you're quite skilled at being a sore.

Imagine watching a show like Stranger Things through the same lens that Flashlight does, how sad would that be

It's sad how desperately Lubak wants my cock in his prolapsed ass.

First two episodes of season three were funny. Almost more comedy than horror.

Looks like Steve and Dustin are destined to be BFF.

And Mike's mom...

Shoot, I am only 3 episodes in as I decided to binge watch season 1 & 2 again. I will read the rest of the thread when I finish watching season 3. I hate watching something when I know it is just going to end again!!!! GRRRRR!!!!!!
Will there be a season 4?!

Looks like it.
The Duffer Brothers have hinted pretty strongly it'll be the last, even though their original plan in season 1 was for 5.
For damned sure, Netflix will beg them for a 5th.

Funny how the obvious Russian trolls on this board disliked this newest season.

Alexei would be so disappointed.

I just finished it. Watched it over the course of week.

Very entertaining and well done, but definitely the weakest of the three seasons. A lot of characters were under-utilized. I agree with @Diacanu ... the Russian stuff (amongst other elements of the season) were quite clearly nods to the paranoia of the mid-80's.

Also, the end-credits scene pretty much confirms that Hopper's coming back.

Also, I topped off the season with a visit to my local Scoops Ahoy today.

Yes, I totally geeked out.

Well, that's the thing, the characters multiply each season, so there's more to service.
They pulled an Infinity War by breaking them up into more manageable chunks.

There was not a lot of expansion of knowledge or real character development on the upside down and what it was. In the first season we were learning all about the characters and the second season we learned a lot more about the upside down and eleven's powers. In those two seasons we also get to learn about all of the relationships and dynamics there. The thing we should have learned a lot more about was the Russians, but we did not learn much aside from they are here which as the audience we knew from the opening. Maybe it would have seemed more developmental if they kept that development secret a little bit longer, but you pretty much put together everything about the Russians and the key from the first episode and the characters were catching up to us.

Thinking about it I really did want to fast forward the Russian parts because I wanted to see more of the mind flayer and about billy and what was going on with eleven. I really did not care much about hopper and Joyce because they were fooling around with the Russians and I knew what that was leading up to. It is sort of what drove me away from TWD. I watched TWD to see a zombie survival thing, not this big war between camps of humans with the occasional zombie moment. In the case of stranger things I want to see more of the upside down, monsters, and eleven and not Hopper going rambo and taking down a secret Russian base on his own.