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Notes -
Woke Trappings versus Woke Story
I thought Stranger Things wrapped up nicely and the finale was great. The pre-final episode received the lowest ratings and reception in the entire series, with a lot of commentators claiming the entire series was ruined, but the finale was great television. It's true the pre-final episode was not great due to the fact it was dedicated to setting up the 2 hour finale, but the overreaction to that episode is mostly driven by one of the characters named Will coming out as gay, and making that central to his personal story and character growth needed to win the entire conflict. The surface-level criticisms are true, the scene was terrible, it was LGBT propaganda, sure. And my woke radar is as fine-tuned as anyone, but I find anti-woke observers become too hung up on woke trappings rather than critically analyzing the story itself.
The Stranger Things story itself is not necessarily woke, it's 1980s nostalgia blended with fish-out-of-water, heroes journey, coming-of-age, revenge, fantasy, and all the elements that audiences tend to like and that is carried through the end. I would contrast that with IT: Welcome to Derry in which the story itself is Woke and it ruins the series.
But I think those complaining about Woke elements in Stranger Things - this never would have happened in the 1980s!, the multiple LGBT characters and their acceptance by everyone in the story, the feminism, etc. They miss the point that 1980s culture did lead to these things. Sure, the transition was slower than is symbolically represented in the show; in the show the transition happens rapidly, without resistance, and faster among the characters in the story than it did in American culture. But the fact is American culture did follow the cultural trajectory depicted in Stranger Things which warps up 1989. So the show depicts an accelerated cultural trajectory going out of the 80s into the 90s and 2000s, which are cultural changes that actually happened.
Although I do like a lot of parts of 1980s American culture, the vapidness in that culture which triggers our nostalgia reaction did lead to these things the anti-woke commentators are complaining about being featured in the show. 1980s culture led to 90s culture, and so on until we are right here. The lesson isn't "Great Hollywood will just wokify everything" the lesson is that 1980s nostalgia is not a good source of inspiration for those who oppose the cultural forces that came out of the 80s and further developed since then. Of course that insight can be backpropagated, is a 1960s muscle car a symbol of a pre-woke culture we must retvrn to, or is it a symbol of cultural decay representing vapid status games, siphoning masculine energy into meaningless pursuits, and materialistic national identity that led exactly where we are?
Whhhhaaaaat? I couldn’t have been more disappointed. It was a more sterile, uninspired, cgi repeat of the season 3 Mall fight with the MF. Vecna was just Billy except without an actual personality or complexity. Instead of an interesting set it was a boring CGI desert.
Stranger Things was a barely above garbage show from seasons 2-4; and an exercise is bloated nothing in season 5
There's the large complaints about the CGI and horrible dialogue.
But over the last couple days the people pointing out little nitpicky things has really ruined it for me, because the nitpicks show that the writers don't even care about their own show and keep ignoring/forgetting little important details.
One of the ones that occurred to me: in the big final battle, they started unloading firepower on the mindflayer/spider, setting it ablaze. WHILE the abducted children were inside it. And this is utterly glossed over.
On top of that, the squad of Demogorgons which had, a few episodes ago, demolished a small military base, were nowhere to be found.
Clearly the Duffers didn't feel up to the task of writing a way for the main gang to fight the final boss and deal with all his minions running around in support too.
The show's handling of the Demogorgon post-S1 has been so dumb that this would probably be the least of my criticisms. Remember when Hopper literally beheads one with a sword?
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Imagine that there is a crackhead armed with a knife trying to kill you. You are armed with a garden hose. You try to fend him off by spraying him with your little 10 psi water stream, which of course does nothing and he stabs you to death. You probably would have been better off trying to take the hose and beat him with it or strangle him or fend him off somehow.
This is about the relationship between government troops and demogorgons in ST. The troops are all armed with garden hoses, they do zero damage, and they all die. They would be orders of magnitude better off taking their M16s and swinging them like clubs. Drunk Karen Wheeler armed with a broken wine bottle is more effective vs demogorgons than entire squads of elite troops.
Now imagine that you had to fight that same crackhead, except now you have a flamethrower. You win this fight every time.
You are the US government. You are going to fight demogorgons. Do you give your soldiers the garden hose or the flamethrower? It has been 6 years, since the first scene in the first episode of the show, that the US government has been fighting demogorgons and they still have not figured out they need to give everyone flamethrowers and not garden hoses.
Also note that they figured out a perfect counter to the psychic kids in the meantime. They just didn't bother to adapt to the other creatures.
Also also note that based on Brenner's notes (loved that asspull) they could close the portal at any time.
That was another 'hilarious' nitpick. "Oh, so Vecna is going to combine our world and his, creating a literal hellscape on earth, probably killing most or all humans... and we just figured out how to instantly sever the connection so he can't do that. Problem solved."
"No, you see there's like 12 kids we have to save first."
"Yes yes very heroic, but did you miss the part where everyone dies if he does this? And we have an easy solution? We'll just tell their parents the kids were already dead if that helps."
Blowing up the exotic matter solves the entirety of the problem, and the only reason the kidnapping was really part of the plot was to give them something to actually fight. It wasn't even explained how the kids helped him with this plan.
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