Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 5: Dig Dug
Not a particularly glorious episode. It's still decent, but it does kind of feel like things just kinda sorta happened. The episode started off pretty well, mind you, with the surreal horror of Hopper lowering himself into the hole of vine-tunnel things that seem to be alive... and instead of calling for help from Hawkins Lab and their inexhaustible amount of flamethrowers, he just hops down and journeys through the cave of vines. It's... a bit odd, and while we do learn the fact that the vine-plant things do seem to be weak to fire (something any kid that plays Pokemon can tell you) he gets his ass completely handed to him by the very much alive plants. It's a bit silly, to be honest, and only serves to take Hopper out of the equation so Eleven feels lonely and Will will have something to do.
Will's 'Truesight' apparently allows him to see into the mind of the Thessalhydra-Shambling Mound creature and actually see where Hopper is. With some assistance from Bob the Brain (who is remarkably chill about the whole thing -- freaking out somewhat but not enough that he's not unhelpful) they find out the location where Hopper is trapped, and they manage to dig him out. I do like Bob! He's just so likable -- so helpful and kind of trusts Joyce to explain everything in the end. Mind you, I do hope someone tells the poor dude just what the fuck's going on. Bob just sees that Joyce and Will are clearly in distress, they need some help, and while he doesn't buy the whole 'riddle' shit one bit, he's willing to play the game until someone at least explains to him. And predictably, the large, elaborate vines drawings all over the Myers residence is a map of the vines all under the town.
They rescue Hopper, and the Hawkins Lab people arrive to burn the vines all to hell with their flamethrowers, only for Will to collapse and make a horrifyingly inhuman screech, showing that he's apparently already one of the plant hivemind. Or something.
Eleven's storyline now takes her as she heads off and actually finds her mother... who's still catatonic and half-crazy. We get to see the fragmented minds of her brain and we remember once more how fucking evil the Hawkins Lab people are, as much as the members we see this season seem to be the reasonable parts of the organization. It's a creepy backstory, and seeing Eleven go through all this (even if, again, it has nothing to do with the main Will plot, or the Dart plot...) is pretty heartwrenching. We also get to see that there was another girl with little Eleven (or rather, "Jane") in that facility, so it's totally leading Eleven to meet with Kali (a.k.a. Eight) who we saw in the prologue in episode one, something I completely forgot about. Eleven's grief when she saw her mother, and her desperate "Mama? I'm Jane" is just easily the highlight of the episode.
Meanwhile, Dustin's plot with Dart now involves him tricking Dart into falling into an outdoors cellar while bull-rushing the demon frog-wolf dressed in hockey outfit. If played by an inferior actor I'd decry this as a shitty sub-plot that is so removed from everything else going on, but Dustin's actor is just so goddamn lovable it's impossible for me to stay angry with him.
Nancy and Jonathan's sub-plot involves them going to the conspiracy theorist from episode one and basically telling him everything. Which... man, I just really don't give much of two shits about their subplot at this point. They make euphemisms of watering-down the story of Barb's disappearance to make the public believe that something's going on, and stuff like that and I just don't really care. Oh, and apparently they were about to date but then didn't, because Jonathan's a bit of an antisocial emo kid or something. I do not care.
Lucas apparently goes and talks to Max, about to reveal the whole truth about season one to her, which is yet another unexciting plot point -- although I am definitely a big fan of keeping Max in the loop simply because I like the kid. I just wished it happened like in episode 2.
So yeah... while I feel that the Dustin, Max/Lucas and especially Nancy/Jonathan subplots are particularly weak, the rest of the scenes are pretty well done. The Will and Hopper stuff are some gripping action-horror tropes, while Eleven's storyline definitely hits all the right emotional beats for me. The thing is, once more, the episodes of this season feel more like a tableau of multiple unrelated plotlines, and the only thing really keeping me going is my love for the characters and the hope that there's going to be a payoff where everything is interwoven at the finale. I suppose it's a bit weak for apparent main characters Bob and Max to really be only brought up to speed like halfway through the season? I dunno.
No comments:
Post a Comment