#idk i’m phrasing this really badly but just shoutout to my friend who i can be a massive hater with & then move on | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

renee-walker · 6 years

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Yet another super incomplete, entirely incoherent, and most definitely not chronological list of my thoughts, this time on Stranger Things 2 eps 4-7

I will never be over my feelings about Joyce Byers and her love for her children. Obviously Will is the focus at this point, but omg the raw ferocity of her love and concern just leaps out of my tv and murders my mom heart. And wow, I could do this in every ep, but the most major shoutout to Winona Ryder’s acting chops. She never overdoes it for a second, which I think is a feat when she constantly has to convey so much desperation and terror. Amazing.

ALSO. Noah Schnapp, holy shit. I mean we didn’t honestly get to see hardly any of him in the first season, but wow I will never stop yammering about what a great job this show did in choosing the kids who make up the main cast. There’s not a weak link, and the scene where Will tells Joyce that the monster/shape/what the fuck ever that thing is got him pretty much broke me.

Ew, Dustin’s bizarre affection for his slug toy turns out predictably badly, but how awesome is it that by pure serendipity, he winds up with Steve? The second they got in the car together, S says, “I love the way this show always sticks together the characters you wouldn’t really expect to hang out,” and YEP, he is so right. And I mean, can we talk about Steve’s face when he asks Dustin how he knows it’s not a lizard and Dustin’s like, “I know because it’s face opened up and it ate my cat.” STEVE’S FACE. Just like, “Okay, fair.” I am die.

Tbh I really don’t see the point of Max’s brother. He’s a dick and apparently a giant racist and I guess he could be there just so Max can have that heart to heart with Lucas on the bus but idk. I just really don’t find anything about him interesting or compelling and I’m super confused as to why he’s always so goddamn shiny. Also did I just hang with the wrong crowd in the ‘80s or did all parents just let their kids sit around in their living rooms, smoking and drinking beer while lifting weights? I didn’t know any of these parents, but my best friend’s mom did let us have wine coolers when we were 13 so clearly I was a giant fucking rebel.

Hopper and El’s fight sucked a whole lot of ass, and although I love Hopper, I seriously wanted to hit him myself when he called her a brat. Yes Jim, I get that you have manpain AND I LOVE YOU but holy fuck this is a traumatized child who’s entirely isolated from the world. I don’t blame her for taking off.

And then of course we have another episode of Poor Life Choices With Jim Hopper, in which he decides the best idea ever is to dig into the upside down all by himself, without telling anyone what he’s doing or where he is, and that’s bound to turn out super great, RIGHT? Spoiler alert: It does not turn out super great. I still freaked when the vines got him, ngl.

Omg, Bob. I know what’s going to happen to him and I hate it so much I can’t deal. HE’S SO FUCKING CUTE. And as @faith5by5-1013 said in a comment on my last post, I just love that there’s no love triangle bullshit here. Like Hopper is (more or less) happy for Joyce and Bob and Bob accepts Joyce’s history with Hopper and it’s just refreshing is all. ANYWAY Bob breaks me because of course he figures out the map since he’s Bob the Brain and his ridiculously adorable instant acceptance of all this wild fuckery is the stuff that dreams are made of. Get yourself a guy like Bob Newby, is all I’m trying to say.

The entirety of everything with El and her mom was just well, the worst. I’d assumed that Brenner had done something like electroshock on Terry, but assuming and watching are two different things. And for fuck’s sake, Eleven is a CHILD, which I think is something that’s very easy to forget with Millie Bobby Brown’s precociousness and her wild acting skills. Watching Eleven pretty much relive her mother’s horror is the worst, and it only makes Eleven’s eventual choice NOT to kill Otis (oops wrong show, lmao) even more meaningful and poignant.

Erica Sinclair is everything. The end.

MAJOR ASIDE. I could not get over the gajillion ways in which this show is using Paul Reiser’s character to remind any viewer familiar with Aliens of that movie. I mean, shit. He repeats phrases that are almost verbatim dialogue from Aliens, there’s the motion tracker stuff when the demodogs attack the ambushed lab dudes, there’s the “Stay frosty.” Yeah, Aliens was 1986 and this is supposedly 1984, but nobody can convince me that all this wasn’t intentional. That said, I’m starting to have the feeling that Dr. Owens isn’t going to turn out to be as awful as Carter Burke.

I used to use Faberge. Like, I was DYING.

SO, both my kids pretty much hated ep 7, and while it certainly isn’t my favorite of the eps I’ve seen so far, I really appreciated a number of things about it.

Like, I never stop thinking about the fact that Eleven has spent her entire life in a lab. Her face when she sees the city lights at night is just everything. There are so many aspects of life this child has never had the chance to touch, and it makes me hurty inside just thinking about it.

I do think the ep was too long, but whatever, this isn’t the kind of issue I’m gonna be mad about. Since the beginning of the season, the show has been riffing on what could possibly be “home” for El. This ep is so important if only because it answers that question for her in a deep and final way. Kali’s gang was honestly pretty dull and I didn’t give much of a shit about them, but I did give a lot of shits about El finally answering some very specific questions about her past and learning to make her own choices with this new information.

Look, one of my greatest fictional kinks ever is That Person Who Chooses To Be A Wonderul And Good Person Even Though Every Single Thing In Their Life Suggests They Should Absolutely Be An Axe Murderer. And of course El is exactly that. There’s nothing in her past that should make her choose mercy, but when it counts, that’s exactly what she does. And I could not love her more.

Also lbr. I pretty much died when she figured out that Mike, Hopper, and everyone else were in danger and was just like, peace out motherfuckers, I gotta save my friends and family. Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them wear a lot of eyeliner and hair gel:)

Final thoughts: I’m super surprised they waited this long to reunite El and Mike. I really do not want to watch Bob Newby die. I’m glad Jonathan and Nancy are together but I still find my interest waning whenever they’re the focus. Omg WHY AM I LOVING STEVE HARRINGTON?

#stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things spoilers #eep i can’t cut this because mobile #sorry!

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