Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 4: Will the Wise
(Yeah I'm using quotes from Lovecraft's works for the titles of all my Stranger Things 2 episode reviews)
So yeah, this episode isn't horrible, but it features more of the problems endemic with this season that I described in the previous episode -- the plotlines are way too separated from each other that it doesn't seem to be forming a properly cohesive story the way that Will's disappearance and the Demogorgon serial killer was last season. It's still not bad, of course, and the cast is amazingly charismatic and someone needs to give these kid actors like all the Oscars or something, but I really felt that they could've done better.
Hopper and Eleven's scene is probably the highlight of the episode, for no particular reason that they truly encapsulate how painful it is for a parent and a child to actually have a fight over something that you can sympathize with for both of them. Hopper's projecting losing his biological daughter to losing Eleven, and considering the sheer amount of shit they went through, he's not wrong to be overprotective. And Eleven, a young girl learning that what 'Papa' Brenner did to her was wrong as all fuck, realizes that she can tell Hopper that, fuck you, she wants to go see her friends. And some things were said that were probably left unsaid -- Hopper faux-threatening to send Eleven back to the lab, or Eleven comparing Hopper to Brenner -- and it turns ugly. And it's painful to watch, and kudos for the scriptwriters and the actors for making it so. The fact that Eleven has been going around town to look for Mike, despite the agreement that the two made -- causing a fair bit of ruckus since she was seen using her powers -- well, it's really hard to take sides in this fight.
By the end of the episode, Eleven dug around in the depths of Hopper's cabin, and finds out that, once more, Hopper is keeping secrets from her -- and secrets have been a great theme throughout Stranger Things if the constant 'friends don't lie!' screaming that the kids like to say are anything to go by. She manages to focus and find her crazed 'mama', but 'mama' disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving Eleven once more alone.
Max is another character who's pissed off at people keeping secrets from her. Of course, she and Bob are the only main characters who haven't actually been involved in any of the grisly paranormal stuff, and while last episode she did see Dart the weird demon frog, it wasn't quite as supernatural as Eleven's telekinesis, the parallel universe of the Upside Down, people communicating with christmas lights or the Demogorgon ripping its way through a wallpaper. To Max, the boys are keeping secrets from her and not really accepting her, and it's frustrating, especially when Mike lets it slip various times that he sees her like an intruder trying to besmirch Eleven's memory. She also leaves in a huff,, despite Lucas's attempts to make nice -- all the talk about it being live-and-death and national secrets and all that doesn't matter to Max, who just sees this as dumb boys being dumb boys.
Easily the weakest new character is Billy, though. Max's jackass and probably abusive older brother, whose only purpose is to be a dick to Max, and later on be a dick to Steve, and be a dick to Steve some more. Considering how the first season of Stranger Things deconstructs the alpha jock trope and gave us a far more three-dimensional character in Steve (by far one of the biggest surprises in the first season) seeing them basically play up all the tropes for a total dickbag in Billy seems a bit too amateurish for the showmakers.
Of course, I'm still far more invested about Will and his situation. The kid was largely shoved off-screen in the first season, and I do approve of this episode giving Will much more prominence. From the seizure as the Thessalhydra pours itself into Will in the Upside-Down, to the gradual revelation that the strange creature has seemingly placed part of itself inside Will, causing him to go "he likes it cold" and behaving more and more strangely over the episode, there's an amazing slice of horror that mixes possession, Alien-style parasites and Lovecraftian assimilation tropes all into one. Is it particularly creative? Probably not, but it's still very chilling as poor Joyce has to deal with a completely different way of losing her child. Not abduction or death this time around, but the fear that her kid is slowly transforming into something else and there's nothing she could do. Will's acting is also top-notch as he walks around shirtless because like the eldritch thing within him, he's trapped between the compulsion to give the parasite what it wants, and the realization that he's not entirely in control. His description of how the now-memories are consuming his mind is definitely well done.
The best part, of course, is Dustin beginning to draw. I'm not sure how long the kid's drawing and how much duct tape that Joyce and Hopper use to make that intricate set-piece of the Thessalhydra's tentacles moving all throughout the town, but Hopper quickly figures it out as vines emanating from the location of the breach between two worlds, and Hopper goes off to dig at a location of where the 'vines' are, finding a tunnel made up of vines, and apparently the Upside-Down has bled into the real world through subtle tendrils that corrupt the land. Very Lovecraft. I approve.
Dustin's plot with d'Artagnan is perhaps my least favourite due to how dense Dustin is... thankfully, the kid actor playing him is so charismatic it's hard not to go d'awwww every scene he pops up in. But he leaves Dart in his own terrapin aquarium, while his friends are under the impression that Dart is still loose somewhere in the school. Again with the lies, and this time it claims a life -- poor Mews! Dustin is lucky that all Dart attacked was the family cat and not his parents. I did like the little subversion, again, from E.T.-style tropes where, nope, just because Dustin befriends this otherworldly demon frog creature doesn't mean that it's suddenly not going to be a predator.
Oh, and Dart is apparently either the larval stage of the Demogorgon from the first season, or a similar enough creature that it has a faceless head that opens into a fanged flower.
So yeah. Dustin knows he's absolutely fucked up real time, and that Dart's another horror unleashed upon Maple Street. Again, I just wished that the plotlines are more connected than "Will deals with Cthulhu, while Dustin deals with a frog from Cthulhu's world" while the whole Eleven subplot and the Jonathan/Nancy stuff is going on. Which... oh yeah, Jonathan and Nancy. I like their actors, the characters are charismatic enough, but I really just don't bring myself to care about their little subplot of trying to expose Hawkins Lab's evil to the world, and ends up being captured by the Hawkins' Lab people and kind of given this long speech about how secrecy is paramount or they'll be burnt up like weeds. Considering, y'know, the fact that the government people could very well murder the two of them and not give them a nice tour that they can happily record, I felt like this particular plotline felt a bit too silly and illogical, and I hope Nancy and Jonathan joins any of the other main plots sooner rather than later.
Overall, though, while the themes and acting explored in this chapter is pretty great, I do feel like Stranger Things 2 is declining somewhat due to the rather inconsistent pacing. That's not to say I don't enjoy it immensely, though, because for sure I do.
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