An UPDATE on Nov. 5: We watched episode 7 of Stranger Things 2 tonight, so I now get the "apocalpyse-chic street-punk gang" reference. It was an unusual episode in that it focused strictly on only one of the regular characters, who got caught up in the gang in question. If you recall the very begining of the first episode of this season but haven't yet gotten to episode 7, you'll probably have a good guess which character I mean. But that's all I'll say.
We also watched the first episode of The Big Family Cooking Showdown on Netflix. I enjoyed it. The competition between the two families held my interest, and it was fun seeing Nadiya Hussain, one of my favorite Great British Baking Show contestants, as the co-host. Tony thought the show(down) was only OK but held out hope it would get better.
My friend Stacy texted me a link to this, in her words, "sloppily written" New York Times review of the second season of Stranger Things on Saturday and suggested I use it as the basis for a post on this blog.
I concur that the piece, written by James Poniewozik, has some issues. I emailed Stacy a list of what I'd found that bugged me and asked her what she'd seen that had gotten her riled.
We both found some annoying repetition: I pointed out that season was used three times in two sentences in the sixth paragraph, and two of those times, it's preceded by the word first. "That's a mite too repetitious for me," I wrote. Stacy was worn out by all the uses of it, which appears 32 times in the story, including in its possessive form. (See what I did there? Do bloggers still ask "See what I did there?"1) The third and final paragraphs are especially it-heavy, with five apiece.
In the sixth paragraph, Stacy thought this sentence was poorly constructed: "Will is back in our world, but tormented by visions of the Upside Down, which, as the first-season epilogue suggested, still has a hold on him." (I don't think we need the comma after world.)
We both called out the seventh paragraph: "Eleven, who went missing at the end of Season 1, is still in hiding. So Will's D&D buddies—Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo)—find a new cool girl to be group-infatuated with, Max (Sadie Sink), and a new creepy-crawly menace to battle. As a new extradimensional threat arises, Mr. Modine's conspiracist scientist is replaced by Dr. Owens (a credibly straight-faced Paul Reiser)." (Actor Matthew Modine's full name had been given earlier in the story.) Stacy called the first two sentences of that passage "messy." I wrote in my email:
- I would have connected the second sentence with the first and made a new sentence about the creepy-crawly menace (and lowercased the first s in Season 1): "Eleven, who went missing at the end of season 1, is still in hiding, so Will's D&D buddies—Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo)—find a new cool girl to be group-infatuated with, Max (Sadie Sink). Given that Eleven defeated the Demogorgon in the final episode of the first season, it shouldn't exactly be a spoiler to mention there's a new creepy-crawly menace to battle. And Mr. Modine's conspiracist scientist has also been replaced, by a doctor played by a credibly straight-faced Paul Reiser."
Since I wrote that email, Tony and I have started watching the show, so I now realize Reiser's character is also a scientist, with a Ph.D., and not a medical doctor, as my wording would tend to imply.
In the fifth paragraph from the end, I would have added the 2 in the show's name, like we see again in the penultimate paragraph. Earlier in the review, Poniewozik had made a point of noting the correct name of the show is now Stranger Things 2—"like a movie rather than a season of TV." And I would have put an an in front of apocalpyse-chic in "complete with apocalypse-chic street-punk gang." That phrase comes up in a reference to the classic 1980s film The Outsiders, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred a bunch of young men who went on to great success as actors: C. Thomas Howell,2 Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise. The writer mentioned that film in the context of providing a list of movies ST2 cribs from, including two childhood favorites of mine: Gremlins and E.T., which, to be hypercorrect for a moment, should officially be called E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at first reference. (And the NYT piece gives that full name at its first reference to the film, in the first paragraph, in an interesting tidbit about a horrific-sounding potential E.T. sequel that, thankfully, never saw the light of day.)
In my email, I added:
- I don't quite understand what's meant by "an apocalypse-chic street-punk gang." Maybe I will after I watch the episode in which it appears.
In the penultimate paragraph, I would once again lowercase the first s in Season 1. And I would put a comma after and for several episodes in this sentence: "I'm not sure 'Stranger Things'3 creatively needed a second season, and for several episodes it seems like 'Stranger Things 2' isn't convinced of it either."4
Stacy was annoyed by what she saw as an overuse of parentheses and specifically called out this sentence, in the penultimate paragraph, as one that shouldn't have been made parenthetical: "(The ingenious device of having Will speak from the Upside Down via Christmas lights is replaced by—well, you'll see.)"5 (That particular use of parentheses doesn't bother me, though I would note I tend to use them a lot. Like right now.)
My final catch, in the last paragraph, was:
- There's one two many a's in "But it's a still a good time."
Tony and I are very much enjoying ST2, but we were both disappointed in episode 4, the one we watched last night. Tony felt that several of the characters' actions weren't realistic or keeping in line with their motivations (even while, of course, acknowledging we're talking about a show with supernatural elements). I won't give any more details for fear of providing spoilers, but I'll say that I agree with his assessment. I didn't like that there wasn't much in the way of comedic or uplifting moments to offset the tension in this rather heavy episode (even while acknowledging ST2 is first and foremost a horror/suspense show that was bound to get really heavy eventually).
1At one point, I added a second question mark here, after the end quote mark:
- Do bloggers still ask "See what I did there?"?
But I ultimately stuck with my initial inclination that that would have been excessive.
2I left Howell off that list at first because he doesn't have the name recognition the rest of that crew has, but I see from his IMDB page that he's worked steadily ever since that film.
3Newspapers understandably tend to use quote marks in lieu of italics for TV and movie names because italics are harder to pull off on a printing press than on the web. I don't think I can use italics in headlines in the theme I'm using in Squarespace, so The New York Times and Stranger Things 2 are in roman in this post's headline. (There were five in's in that last sentence, but they're all totally justifiable. 😛)
4At one point, I added a second period here, after the end quote mark, like so:
- And I would put a comma after and for several episodes in this sentence: "I'm not sure 'Stranger Things'3 creatively needed a second season, and for several episodes it seems like 'Stranger Things 2' isn't convinced of it either.".
But I decided it was pretty obviously excessive. And that decision led me to delete the second question mark referenced above, in note 1.
5Here's another place a second period could maybe, possibly, be justified, especially given the closing parenthesis:
- Stacy was annoyed by what she saw as an overuse of parentheses and specifically called out this sentence, in the penultimate paragraph, as one that shouldn't have been made parenthetical: "(The ingenious device of having Will speak from the Upside Down via Christmas lights is replaced by—well, you'll see.)."
But I think it looks ridiculous before the quote mark and like a mistake after it:
- is replaced by—well, you'll see.)".
So I'm leaving it alone.