Stranger Things, Season 1, Episode 5: The Flea and the Acrobat
As we begin the second half of Stranger Things, we also finally get some payoffs and some escalation of things. All our characters who know that there's something seriously fishy about Will and Barb's disappearances are starting to wise up and doing something about it. And things fall apart -- each group go on their own journey to attempt to uncover the mystery, and they all fail. And I do kind of like it, somewhat. On one hand, it might be called a forced prolongation of the plot, but there is also no real reason why the three different groups: the kids, Nancy and Jonathan, Joyce, as well as Hopper, would work together on this.
Hopper's plan is perhaps the most stupid of all involved, where he does the cool action hero man thing, sneaks into the Hawkins Lab, witnesses the 'doorway' they have in the deep recesses of their facility... and proceeds to do nothing but call Will's name out very very loudly, despite being warned before (and also this episode) that the facility has 100 cameras. It's a good thing that the Hawkins Lab and their massive government resources are apparently far more interested in cover-up instead of eliminating loose ends. Between returning Hopper back to his trailer (bugged, of course) and making up excuses to explain Barb's disappearance, I'm curious what the end-game for the Hawkins dudes are.
Will's funeral takes place this episode, and we see Joyce's ex show up and act like the supporting ex, helping to board up the wall and talking to Jonathan to stop feeding Joyce's hallucinations and everything. Yes, we also get the revelation that he's actually looking to cash in on the insurance money, but at least he's kinda-sorta trying to make Joyce calm. Joyce ends up telling him to GTFO, and his desire to get Will back ends up being stronger and ever. I guess Joyce's big ordeal is whether she'll be spun around to 'normalcy' by DoucheEx? At the end of the episode, Hopper shows up at his house and makes the first 'alliance' among our main characters with Joyce, telling her that he believes her.
Nancy and Jonathan bond over initially calling each other shits. Jonathan calls Nancy out for being every 'I'm such a rebel' teenage girl stereotype, and Nancy calls Jonathan out for being every 'emo introvert that can't fit in' teenage boy stereotype. And yes, thank you, Nancy, for calling Jonathan out on his pretty creepy photograph-taking of Nancy before she has sex, and his quick damning of Steve just because he's a jock. Again he didn't have to smash Jonathan's camera, but considering the dude was photographing Nancy...
Still, they are the only ones who believe each other, and after a brief montage of gun training and backstory-sharing, they wander around the 'Mirkwood' at night, and Nancy finds another gateway at the bottom of a trunk, leading to, well, the Upside-Down realm, as 11 calls it. Which we'll get to later. After a pretty harrowing moment with a dead, gutted deer, Nancy follows the hole in the tree to the Upside-Down, meets the Demogorgon face-to-faceless, and apparently that faceless face is actually a big, radial mouth. Nancy screams, and she may be dead, while Jonathan runs around searching for another missing person.
The kids finally discover the existence of the reverse world, the Upside-Down that the Demogorgon hails from and where Will and Barb (and now Nancy) are trapped in and possibly dead. I did love how flipping the D&D game board in the first two episodes is apparently alluding to the existence of this dark realm on the flip-side of ours, too. Eleven gives us a bit of a backstory on the Upside-Down... or, well, tries to not do so because she knows it's dangerous. The Vale of Shadow* from D&D, a parallel realm of darkness that exists parallel to our own. Their absurdly geeky teacher, Mr. Clark, further explains the common theories associated with parallel universes, which involves the titular acrobat and the flea, as well as the requirement of a particularly large energy source to go through between two worlds. The acrobat only being able to stay on the top side of the tightrope, and the flea being able to crawl on all sides of it is a pretty cool description, for sure (can we call the Demogorgon the flea?).
*My D&D geekery status is somewhat screaming -- while an alternate parallel realm of death does exist in most D&D settings, it's called the Plane of Shadow (or Shadowfell in 4E), not the Veil of Shadows.
And, well, their journey to use Dustin's plan to follow where the compass goes (because the 'doorway' would emit a pretty huge amount of energy) gest foiled when 11 fucks with their compass and has them basically return to where they began. This causes Lucas to snap, shouting at how this is all a stupid idea, and that they shouldn't be trusting 11 at all -- mean things to say, but again, completely valid considering what they've been through and how little they actually understand about 11. This causes an argument between Mike and Lucas, and for 11 to reflexively throw Lucas onto the side of a car... Lucas, thankfully, survives but walks off angrily, and the episode lingers long enough on Lucas's unconscious body long enough for me to go "noooo they didn't."
We also get more flashbacks to 11's time as Brenner's pet lab rat, working in the horrifying 'bath' tank thing that allows her to... access the Upside-Down Vale of Shadows thing and listen to some dude talk in some other language? I'm not sure what the fuck it all means, but it sure as hell is creepy.
There were a couple of great moments and gems throughout all this too. Mr Clark instantly repeating the D&D manual's definition of the Vale of Shadows without prompting is amazingly delivered, Nancy and Jonathan's motive rants could've been painful to listen but is actually well-delivered, Steve isn't a total douchebag and last episode he was just panicking, Hopper's call with his ex is well-delivered, Dustin's optimism once he realizes that there's still a chance that Will is alive, 11's frustration and panic at keeping a secret (something she knows to be taboo), Lucas's frustration in general... great stuff.
So yeah. Great stuff as we go through the whole journey as they go closer and closer to the mysterious realm of shadows. Again, I do love how much this series actually focuses more on building up the characters as they each inch closer to the mystery (D&D references definitely is a big bonus for me). I'm not sure if it's the mixture of the mystical with the sci-fi elements like parallel universes and the military facility that got me so hooked, or if it's simply the pretty neat writing and acting, but I do like Stranger Things. It's not the best show out there, but I certainly do like it.
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