Stranger Things S02E07 Review: That Which Was Never Spoken Aloud, Only Whispered

Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 7: The Other Girl

So this episode focuses almost entirely on Eleven and her meeting with Kali, a.k.a. "Eight". As she escapes from her catatonic mother and suspicious-but-well-meaning aunt, she ends up looking for the other sister which she saw in a dream. And it's... absolutely distracting. I really do approve of giving Eleven more screentime, and I also feel that both character and actress are easily some of the best parts of the show. And it is enjoyable enough to see Eleven wander around in a punk getup. And it's just... strange. Again, everything that happens here is relatively well-written, and both Kali and Eleven's actresses are good enough that I didn't mind watching 40 minutes of them... but it all feels... unnecessary, I suppose is the right term? 

In any case, Eleven finds herself in the seedy underbelly of Chicago (I think?) where she meets Kali and her friends, one of whom sports a pretty awesome mohawk. Kali's apparently built up a bit of a cult of personality around her friends, who are all rejects of society like herself, and it's never really explained just why Kali went from 'we're rebels that steal stuff because we're cool, let's make use of my telekinetic sister to get more dough!' to 'we shall punish and take our telekinetic vengeance upon those who had wronged us!'

The idea that Kali was one or the other would've worked reasonably well, but her huge, abrupt 180 (and the way everyone just followed suit) is absolutely bizarre, and I thought wasn't delivered quite well. I'm not really sure why we went from having Eleven assist in robbing a convenience store (she stole Eggos!) to ordering Eleven to kill that sunnuvabitch who tortured Eleven's mother. Which Eleven doesn't do, because the dude has kids. She also throws Kali's gun out of the window, and in the huge chaos as the police arrive to arrest Kali's punk gang, Eleven gets visions of the horrors happening in Hawkins Lab, and decides that her home is with her friends. They do a remarkably decent job at giving 11 a personality, but this final scene sobers me up that she's just as likely to deus ex machina the whole problem away in the finale, something I'm not particularly that huge of a fan of.

It's an episode that could've been a great standalone spotlight episode if it was executed better, I think, but as it is, I really feel like this is an absolutely unnecessary distraction that both took away from the huge cliffhanger in the previous episode, as well as simply existing to kind of show what Eleven has been up to in the past few days moreso than anything.