Full disclosure, I am the only one I know who still uses Netflix for DVDs and doesn\u2019t stream.\u00a0 Oh, the shame of it all!\u00a0 So last month the first season of Stranger Things became available to rent on Netflix (or as it\u2019s now known DVD.com) and they sent me the two discs.\u00a0 I was busy with life and the holidays so I watched it after the Christmas during some time off from work.\u00a0 For anyone who hasn\u2019t seen it but is interested or for anyone who wants my opinion here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n
Let me start with the strongest impression the show left.\u00a0 Almost everyone in the show is not particularly likeable.\u00a0 Let me expand.\u00a0 Many of the characters are annoying or worse.\u00a0 In particular, the character who should most attract our sympathy, the mother of the missing boy, played by Winona Ryder, is hands down in the top three of the most annoying characters I\u2019ve ever seen in a movie or tv.\u00a0 Several times I was hoping the town sheriff would pull out his gun and shoot her or at least pistol whip her to make her shut up.\u00a0 There was one character I liked.\u00a0 He was a strong, caring, humorous, warm, responsible, regular guy who used good judgement and compassion to help a troubled runaway pre-teen.\u00a0 He was shot in the head about six minutes after his first screen appearance.\u00a0 After that it was annoying nerds, arrogant jocks, clueless suburban parents, alcoholic lawmen and nefarious government officials all the way down.\u00a0 Eventually the hell-spawned creature makes some appearances, and interestingly, I found myself kind of rooting for him.\u00a0 At least he didn\u2019t blather on.<\/p>\n
The season is eight episodes long and I finished them.\u00a0 After reading what I just wrote, you may be wondering why I did finish them.\u00a0 Well, surprisingly, I found myself sucked into the story.\u00a0 Maybe this was an artifact of having all the episodes in front of me, time available to watch them and post-Christmas-Feast stupefaction.\u00a0 But for some reason, at the end of each episode I wanted to see the next one.\u00a0 And even after I knew how it would go I wanted to see it through to the end.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s my recommendation?\u00a0 Well, guarded at best.\u00a0 The plot is some kind of bastard spawn of Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and the X-Files.\u00a0 The tropes are hackneyed and the characters, as mentioned, are mostly stereotypes and annoying ones at that.\u00a0 Two episodes in you know how it will go and who will do what.\u00a0 Honestly if someone had told me this ahead of time, there is no way I would have watched it.\u00a0 But now that I have watched it I\u2019m wondering if I should wait the year and watch Season 2.\u00a0 My gut tells me that there is no way to make the next season even as mildly interesting as this first season.\u00a0 And the thought of listening to Winona Ryder screeching at her unfortunate neighbors again is hard to justify.<\/p>\n
I was starting to like how the sheriff usually settled difficult negotiations by punching people in the face.\u00a0 His timing was really good.\u00a0 The sheriff, played by an actor named David Harbour, is a big guy who drinks too much and sleeps around with the various lonelier ladies of the small midwestern town where the story takes place.\u00a0 I found him the only character that I actually believed might exist in the real world.\u00a0 But is seeing Sheriff Hopper pummel various \u201cmen in black\u201d enough of a reason to sit through this thing again?\u00a0 I doubt it, but it\u2019ll be a whole year before I have to make that decision and pickings are so slim, so who knows.\u00a0 Anyway, consider yourself warned, if a review that\u2019s a year behind the times can be considered a warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Full disclosure, I am the only one I know who still uses Netflix for DVDs and doesn\u2019t stream.\u00a0 Oh, the shame of it all!\u00a0 So<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240],"tags":[200,631,44,265,630,154],"class_list":["post-2042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","tag-fantasy","tag-netflix","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-stranger-things","tag-tv-review"],"yoast_head":"\n