Of all the brazen influences that Stranger Things wears on its sleeve, one of the less apparent ones is the effect the works of David Lynch has had on the show. Now, while you may counter that a show concerning a sci-fi conspiracy effecting an American community doesn’t have much in common with the director renowned for searing dream logic, haunting visuals and the sight of Dennis Hopper huffing amyl nitrite, but if you were to cast an eye over to his groundbreaking mystery show, Twin Peaks, the dots quickly start to add up.
Obviously the first similarity you’ll notice is the woodsy surroundings and a disparate cast of memorable faces, but beyond that, Stranger Things has managed to harness the act of the central mystery slowly managing to effect the cast one at a time in vastly different ways gradually creating a web of intrigue. Spiebergian influences and Carpenteresque vibes are one thing, but the Lynchian intrigue is the glue that holds this episode together.
While Hawkins continues to search for the missing Will Byers, two major pieces of the puzzle have already managed to connect in the form of the trio of Mike, Lucas and Dustin mamage to stumble across the shaven headed girl with the eleven tattoo on her arm. Being kids and all, their first instinct is to go fully E.T. on her and smuggle her into Mike’s house in secret while trying to figure out what to do next; but this manages to create a slight rift between Mike and an increasingly jealous Lucas who just wants to go back out and keep looking for their friend.
As Hopper leads the search party to no effect, Joyce sanity is taking an expected beating as the stress from her son’s disappearance visibly takes its toll – but while her eldest son, Jonathan, drives out to confront his estranged father, Joyce has more supernatural experiences that prove that her boy is experiencing a more unearthly form of abduction. Lights burning super bright and ethereal phone calls which blow out the receiver are one thing, but when a malformed creature attempts to push through her wall like it’s made of rubber, Joyce knows that things are truly bad.
But while Joyce deals with sanity searing revelations and the boys continue to hide the girl who calks herself Eleven, on the more normal end of the spectrum we find Mike’s older sister, Nancy, gearing up for a big date with voluminous-haired, local dreamboat, Steve. But while she’s ready to cast off her reputation of being an overachieving teachers pet and rebel by shotgunning a beer and giving up her virginity, tag-along friend, Barb is relegated to a miserable fifth wheel who soon becomes the newest victim of the creature that’s been stalking Hawkins.
However, the mystery takes another turn when Mike and the gang not only find that Eleven has seen Will and might know where he is, but she’s packing some pretty impressive powers of telekinesis.
To double down on my little Twin Peaks comparison earlier, as the full form of the mystery elements still swirl and form in the peripheral of our vision, the show further presses ahead by making the beleaguered town of Hawkins as alive and as layered as possible to make us care when whatever is happening finally comes knocking on their door. Much how Lynch’s seminal TV show kept many plates spinning when it came to the denizens of the titular town, it made sure that the central death of Laura Palmer gradually effected every one of the characters in some sort of way. In many ways, superhero show Heroes did something similar by slowly linking a group of people who would never ordinarily gave anything to do with one another with the central issue. Even though the wheels are turning slowly, by the time the episode ends, a small sub-section of the cast now, already know how deep into weirdsville Will’s disappearance truly is.
First to catch on – as always in these kind of things – are the kids. Be it the Goonies or the Losers Club, you can always count on a troupe of precocious youths to inadvertently plough head first into some life threatening adventure long before anyone else has cottoned on, but once again, some deft writing by the Duffer Brothers coupled with how well the young actors truly gel as a group means that what could be as irritating as hell becomes an engrossing slab of television. Yes, the aura of E.T. comes off this thing like waves of radiation off an atomic bomb, the the line between homage and ripoff is confidently trod. Plus, while Dustin and Lucas do their usual argumentative bickering, the almost instand bonding between Mike and Eleven really does work extremely well. Of course, Eleven isn’t a benign, turd-looking alien looking to phone home; she’s a confused, scared and volatile child who not only has been experimented on by Matthew Modine’s grey hair scientist, but she displays the worrying ability to move things with her mind which effects each of the boys differently.
Elsewhere, away from the boyish glee/terror of discovering a girl with superpowers, Winona Ryder’s Joyce sees her mental well being take another dip as her smoking habit kicks into high gear, but through the murmurings of other, less kindly members of Hawkins, we discover that the tortured single mother has been carrying the stigma of being perceived a little unhinged for quite a while. We also discover that before her disastrous marriage with her ex, Lonnie, she once had a thing with Hopper. But while this is all handy, it doesn’t help Joyce much when, instead of the E.T. style adventure the boys are on to find her son, she’s taking a one way ticket to Poltergeist town as she discovers she can communicate with Will via certain electronic appliances. Thing get even more dire when the beast that spirited him away (now dubbed the Demogorgon after a creature from a Dungeon & Dragons campaign) suddenly pushes through a wall like Freddy Krueger in that early moment from A Nightmare On Elm Street. It’s a neat little shock moment and it slowly turns the crank on the horror themed stuff that’s coming down the pipe, but none of it would land if we didn’t give a crap about these people.
In the non-spooky parts of the episode, we get a little more insight into what makes the rather awkward Jonathan tick as he confronts his alpha-male father and reminisces about introducing Will to the Clash (a neat way of keeping Noah Schapp in the show, rather than him becoming an off-screen enigma); and elsewhere, Nancy finds herself falling for the sharmy charms of Steve Harrington and his douchebag pals. But while she makes the cardinal, but understandable sin of ditching her best friend in favour of “getting some”, it’s ultimately Beth who pays the price when the monster newly christened the Demogorgon claims it’s newest victim.
With two episodes down, Stranger Things continues on its winningly solid pace, gradually heaping on connecting mysteries to slowly ensnare more people into the otherworldly shenanigans that’s going on under their very nose. Once again, we have to tip Dustin’s cap to the legacy of Twin Peaks for providing the basis for such gripping stuff – and then seemingly dropping Ridley Scott’s alien and a prepubescent Carrie White into the middle of it.
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