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It's insane how quickly this show has become part of the cultural landscape. I honestly can't think of another show in recent memory that had this level of instantaneous attention

Absolutely. Until I'd seen the trailer this had completely flown under my radar.

What's more, this is the first time a show from any of the newer platforms of content has reached such status.

domino harvey wrote:It's insane how quickly this show has become part of the cultural landscape. I honestly can't think of another show in recent memory that had this level of instantaneous attention

Game of Thrones would probably be the closest, though that attention was slowed by having a traditional release over a season.

Weren't the books quite popular already?

They were popular among fantasy readers, but that's a pretty small niche. The show managed to break out and became a part of the mainstream consciousness pretty quickly.

Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad certainly became a huge part of the landscape (and bigger than this show), but not nearly as quickly

domino harvey wrote:It's insane how quickly this show has become part of the cultural landscape. I honestly can't think of another show in recent memory that had this level of instantaneous attention

Empire

flyonthewall2983 wrote:What's more, this is the first time a show from any of the newer platforms of content has reached such status.

Haven't House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black been pretty big culturally? Unless I misunderstand your meaning.

Those shows became popular instantly too, but not as intensely as it has with this.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Those shows became popular instantly too, but not as intensely as it has with this.

How are you measuring this? Personally, I'd disagree with your statement. Game of Thrones, Empire and Orange is the New Black were both instant cultural talking points across media and the internet when they first came out.

Has there been any proof that this show has been popular with younger audiences? I would not doubt it, and if so that definitely puts it above at least 2 out of 3 of those shows.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Has there been any proof that this show has been popular with younger audiences? I would not doubt it, and if so that definitely puts it above at least 2 out of 3 of those shows.

We're talking about different things. I was sticking to the general theme of the thread discussion about recent shows and their impact on the cultural landscape. I do not think that younger audiences are the singular guiding force behind that.

A friend of mine posted on FB she was a few episodes in, but the show hadn't passed the Bechdel Test saying she's angry male creators still get away with this and asking whether or not she should continue watching. The floodgates then opened, people were aggrieved by the show's 'patriarchy', 11 was offensive because she's the typical 'super girl' for boys to gawk over a la 5th Element, Star Wars, Garden State and another person said it's incredibly frustrating because the show could easily have been fixed with casting. How you ask? Make the sheriff a woman, the single mom a single dad and two of the boys into girls.

I was stunned to read all this so I made an attempt to explain how 'tests' are arbitrary and should never be used to judge art one way or the other, with Bechdel being problematic even towards feminism. I said their desire to recast the show is literally asking for a different show.

Naturally I was denounced as being 'anti-Bechdel' because I'm a man. Then it became pretty clear that unless you agreed your insight wasn't welcome and so I exited the discussion frankly as disappointed in my friend's narrow mindedness as I'm sure she is with my 'misogyny'.

I've never seen it, but you guys seem to have forgotten about The Walking Dead which was huge right out of the gate.

So it sounds like I'm alone in thinking this was one of the worst acted series in recent memory?...

You are not alone. I hated every minute of this. Like, hated with a capitol "H". I'm going to go easy on the actors here because even an assembly of the Royal Shakespeare Co. All-Stars would not have improved this much...and Sweet Winona, you know I'll always love you but you are not cut out to play a single mom.

If one watches this as a knowing pastiche of 80s sci-fi/horror/supernatural films, then it's possible to accept most of the performances as exaggerations of earlier ones given by Corey Feldman, Henry Thomas, Josh Brolin, Dee Wallace, etc. However, there is an inconsistency here in that both David Harbour (Sheriff Hopper) and Millie Bobby Brown ("Eleven") are mostly underplaying their parts while everyone else is shooting for the moon. I gave a pass to all the child actors, but Winona Ryder's hunched-over, arms-extended, one-note hysteria wrecked every scene she appeared in, especially given how often she was paired with Harbour.

I see Stranger Things as good fun for eight short episodes, but with the homages quickly adding up to outright rip-offs, I'm not all that excited about a second season continuing with the same characters a year later.

The script and the direction were the biggest problems with the series. The scenes felt awfully mechanic and familiar, but did not feel organic or original at all. It felt like the script was written by AI. And silly little "mistakes": kids start to yell out loud their secrets despite the mother who left the room, just nanosecond before closed the door behind her. Also kids are talking loudly in the abandoned bus when the secret agents roam nearby. But these are just two tiny pieces in an iceberg of illogical, unconvinging pile of... the psychology is weak weak weak everywhere. Some of the acting is good (David Harbour + Millie Bobby Brown), but it's painful to watch it wasted in such stupid material

For me, the sum is greater than the parts for this show. I don't have as negative feelings towards any one aspect of the show, but apart from a few of the performances (The kids, Harbour, and I even think Winona was good too), some of the story aspects and special effects I wasn't completely swept away by it either. I think some of the choices of music were smart here as well, particularly Peter Gabriel's "Heroes" and a few other very non-80's tracks.

Black Hat wrote:I said their desire to recast the show is literally asking for a different show.

Speaking of recasting the show, I'd been thinking about the progenitors of some of the characters, and had some fun spending my lunch breaks at work the past couple of days making this alternate universe TV Guide ad

Spoiler

Uh, Goonies-era Martha Plimpton 4 Barb 4 realz

Brian Dennehy for the sheriff

domino harvey wrote:Uh, Goonies-era Martha Plimpton 4 Barb 4 realz

Oh yeah, that's a good one. Truth be told, I've only seen The Goonies once. The only movies I can remember my mom expressly forbidding me to watch when I was a kid were Beetlejuice & The Goonies. I know Beetlejuice was because of the seance, but at this point, she has no recollection of why she wouldn't let me watch The Goonies. I only saw it for the first time like 4 years ago when a friend lent it to me.

On the other hand, when I started college (many years ago) & moved into the dorm, I had cable for the first time and one of the first weekends, Comedy Central showed Beetlejuice twice in a row one day. I watched it both times as kind of a "Take that mom! I'm an adult now, I can watch Beetlejuice if I want to!" stab.

Beetlejuice is almost a joke in our family now. It scared the hell out of my brother, and me and my sisters still taunt him about it. I might have seen The Goonies in passing on cable once or twice.

If I have to admit one gripe about the show, is that I knew from the get-go there is no such town in Indiana named Hawkins. Not really a gripe but more of a fact of life that if a certain kind of movie or TV show is set in a generic fictional midwestern town or city, it'll be Indiana. There's of course Eerie, Indiana and also when David Cronenberg repurposed the town in Ontario he shot most of A History of Violence in to Indiana.

domino harvey wrote:Uh, Goonies-era Martha Plimpton 4 Barb 4 realz

Or AD Miles. Look at that, all of the kid cast is there and Fallon's staff couldn't even do more than beat a dead in both worlds horse