A good mystery is kind of like a set of lungs, nestled neatly within a human chest cavity. To do their job, the lungs, like a mystery must expand, slowly drawing us in as the questions and suspense fills our consciousness like life-giving oxygen as anything and everything could happen at any moment. But then, inexorably, the mystery must contract as the explanations and reveals come rolling in, causing the ones caught in its web to be drawn ever closer as these scattered people all zero in on the same goal from multiple directions. While my analogy may be as laboured as a punctured lung as I desperately make the connection with human anatomy in order to fit in with this episode’s title, you’ll find that I’m not totally making this shit up. You see, as we reach the halfway point of Stranger Things and we recover from the gut shot twist at the end of the last episode, everyone caught up in the bizarre goings on that’s been plaguing Hawkins is starting to connect the dots and figure stuff out. It’s time to contract those lungs and get to the bottom of things.
The case of the vanishing of Will Byers seems to have come to a tragic close after the body of a child matching his description is pulled from the local quarry and everyone caught up in his disappearance all seem to be having different reactions. While Will’s brother believes this nightmare is over and starts the gut wrenching task of planning the funeral, his mother, Joyce, defiantly refuses to accept what seemingly is right in front of her, even when she goes to view the body. Similarly, Mike and the gang are devastated at their friend’s death and even blame Eleven for foolishly raising their hopes, but after she pulls some of her telekinetic mojo on a walkie talkie, she manages to patch into Will’s voice broadcasting from wherever he is. Given renewed vigour, the boys figure our that they’ll need the school’s ham radio to get a bigger signal, but have to endure the mawkish awkwardness of a school assembly about Will’s “death” before they can find out for sure.
Running parallel to this is Nancy’s search for her missing friend Barb and after scanning Jonathan’s creepy photos taken on the night she vanished, notices an ominous figure lurking behind her. Jonathan then recognises her description from the stories his mother told about a monster pushing itself through a wall in her house and just like that, we have another couple of people closing in on the central mystery.
However, while brain power and faith are the tools of other, a suspicious Hopper finds that interrogating people with his first works just fine. Figuring out that nothing about the discovery of Will’s body makes sense, he’s even more shocked when he breaks into the morgue and finds out that the corpse is a fake. But just as Joyce is about to give up, Eleven’s attempt to contact him helps create a slimy, gooey window into another world where she finally lays eyes on her boy.
So we’ve established that Will is still alive, but where the fuck is he?
So it turns out that that whole “dead Will” thing was just a fake out, but while some other shows might have used this as a cheap ploy to throw off an audience’s scent or, worse yet, drag out the mystery, Stranger Things uses what could have been an insulting gimmick to impressively light a fire under every characters who is directly involved. Entering the fray with the force of a million 80s, deatbeat action heroes is David Harbour’s Hopper who is effortlessly becoming evermore awesome with every passing episode and as his deceptively keen cop mind slowly shakes the rust off, you can tell that even though the guy is searching for Will Byers, he’s actually doing for his late daughter who we know tragically passed due to cancer. In fact, as much as I am truly digging the show, watching Harbour’s action schlub spring into action and rough guys up and lay them out like he’s in The French Connection is fast proving to be the highlight of every episode, buy that’s not to say that the other characters are being under served.
I know I’ve been fairly dismissive of Nancy and Jonathan’s arcs up until now, but aside from the typical high-school melodrama and the creepy teen angst of a tortured outsider with an artistic streak, the pair have been bringing up the rear when it comes to the overarching plot. However, with a bit of sticky tape, an inquisitive nature and a bit of time spent in a dark room, the two have managed to Scooby-Doo themselves back into the game by being the first of the groups to realise that a lot of this freaky shit is actually a) real, and b) connected. The good news is that Jonathan, who was already balls deep in organising his brother’s funeral, now realises that their may be something in his mother’s erratic behavior after all and it’s not a moment too soon either.
Despite instantly refusing to believe the bogus body that’s been palmed off as her son, Joyce has hit a metaphorical and emotional dead end – but after Eleven manages to create a connection between Hawkins and whatever H.R. Giger inspired hellscape Will has found himself in, Joyce finally gets the visual confirmation she’s been longing for. OK, so the window between worlds may look like Will’s been swallowed by the Blob (88 version, just so we’re sure), but it’s everything Joyce needs to know that her frenzied determination has a basis in reality and you can’t help but feel a sense of triumph for her, even if ex-husband Lonnie shows up at the end.
However, as gripping as all this headway is, it only truly works because of the little personal moments that gives it a foothold in your emotions. Even if you’ve tuned in for monsters and government conspiracies, the sight of the boys dressing Eleven in a dress and blonde with and seeing herself as a little girl for possibly the first time in her entire, miserable existence is genuinely touching and better yet, she manages to lay the telekinetic smackdown on one of Mike’s bullies by making the dude piss himself in public and her sassy wipe of her bloodied nose is a “fuck yeah”, punch the air moment worthy of the 80s themselves. In fact, when you dig deeper into her flashbacks, it’s easy to forget that despite the superpowers, Eleven is not much more than a child who has been terribly mistreated by the goverment and a man who tortured her daily while indisting that she call him Papa. Elsewhere during the episode, we also find Joyce looking eerily like Jack Torrance from The Shining thanks to a well swung axe and a memorable moment where Hopper discovers that Will’s body is fake by cutting it open and pulling out fistfuls of cotton wool which proves to not only be rather surreal, but incredibly unsettling to boot.
The pedal’s to the metal now and as each of Hawkins’ citizens find themselves solving each of their own personal puzzles, the momentum of the show is shifting accordingly. But tellingly, just because the action in Stranger Things is hotting up, it doesn’t neglect the smaller moments that make all the difference. Still, we’ve still a long way to go and lots of surprises still to reveal themselves, but can the show still carry on onward and upward?
Stranger things have happened.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 