Well, it certainly seems that Stranger Things 3 has gotten over it’s early stumbling blocks to get back to where it needs to be, but in a weird quirk of fate, Chapter 5 seems to somehow lay out exactly what those problems were, while simultaneously forging down the same path with suddenly fantastic results – allow me to elaborate.
It seems that thanks to the fact that Stranger Things is now comfortably a household name, the Duffer Brothers were hoping to push those all important 80s references further than they’ve ever been pushed before, thus making earlier allusions to such touchstone as Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and Stephen King seem incredibly subtle by comparison even though they really weren’t. This meant that it seemed like the show’s influences had run wild and taken over its host with the ferocity of a section of the Mind Flayer subjugating the will of a unwilling victim, but now that the third season is now firing on full cylinders, those references are coming at an even faster rate. However, we get a far different result this time – what gives?
Once again, the sprawling plot of a Stranger Things season is beginning to contract as all the players get ever closer to the central conundrum and now everyone has found that their own little corner of chaos is now spinning wildly out of control. The quartet of Steve, Robin, Dustin and Erica find themselves trapped in the secret lift located in the Starcourt Mall as it rockets down multiple storeys underground to eventually spit them out in a subterranean Russian research centre where secret Soviet experiments are carrying on to once again crack the secrets of the Upside-Down. But despite discovering that those funky green vials contain some sort of acid and forcing their way into the comms room (Steve wins a fight!), their progress gets everyone more hopeless.
Working an angle from the other end of the secret Russian experiment angle, Hopper and Joyce have followed their leads to discover a smaller hidden laboratory and take a scientist named Alexei hostage, but before they can make a clean getaway, they are once again attacked by the gargantuan Grigori who obviously acts like some sort of cleaner for Starcourt. Barely escaping with their lives and having to cover a sizable distance on foot due to Hopper blowing up their car, they head for the only man Jim can think of to translate anything that Alexei has to say – the conspiracy inhaling Murray Baumam.
Meanwhile, Nancy, Jonathan and the remainder of the kids have united after they both have had disturbing run-ins with the acolytes of the Mind Flayer (aka. The Flayed) and cook up a plan to locate it by setting the deranged Ms. Driscoll free. However, all they find instead is a “flayed” Tom and Bruce from the local newspaper office who prove to be a far more dangerous foe once defeated when they melt and fuse into something from John Carpenter’s worst nightmare.
For better or worse, it seems that the main issue plaguing Stranger Things 3 all along was that all those 80s references was overloading the plot, which in turn was causing the humor to be off balance, which in turn made things just feel weird. It probably didn’t help that the Duffer Brother were now trying to riff off of all 8ps pop culture and not just the genres that directly synced with the type of show they were trying to make back in the early days. Maybe it was the extended (and genuinely sweet) prom sequence at the end of the precious season that did it, but the onslaught of references from chick flicks, comedies and rom-coms seemed way too heavy handed while the plot was just getting started.
However, now that the plot is whipping by faster than Vin Diesel’s car freshener, the show now is in a place where those endless in-jokes now have the momentum to work in favour of the story, rather than against it. Are there too many per episode? Probably – the final sequence references Night Of The Living Dead, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Blob and The Thing all in the space of about 2 minutes – but now it’s finally managinh to enhance things rather than just using the nostalgia card to beat you into unconsciousness. Benefiting most is the Hopper/Joyce plotline which has gone from practically nothing, to giving the pair their very own mini 80s action movie complete with Midnight Run banter, Magnum P.I. hawaiian shirts, comedy explosions, a surprisingly adorable hostage in the form of Alexei and a Russian killing machine who looks and acts very much like the Terminator despite being very much made of flesh and blood. If that wasn’t enough, we even get the triumphant return of Brett Gelman’s Murray who seems tailor made for this plotline – but things don’t stop there.
Not to be outdone, the Steve/Dustin/Robin/Erica thread somehow gets even more ludicrous as they now essentially stumble upon a literal Bond villain lair lurking under their mall. To be fair, this whole section hurled itself over the shark episodes ago and is probably the silliest the show has ever gotten – but goddammit, I just can’t stay mad at this ridiculous quartet, no matter how far along this story decides to go; but if nothing else, we’ve now established that the experiment we witnessed at the start of the episode is linked to this endearingly stupid storyline.
But if Hopper is starring in his own action flick and the Starcourt Four are working their way through a sci-fi conspiracy film, everyone else is stuck in the middle of a dark, brutal horror flick that pulls no punches when it comes to dishing out some gooey, Lovecraftian body horror. Benefiting massively from some great lighting and some top notch CGI, after the Flayed forms of the guys who have been giving Nancy shit at work are finally beaten and stabbed to “death” (that’s got to be liberating), they melt into a fleshy mass that sudden becomes a smaller, tangible version of the Mind Flayer to deliver possibly one of the coolest creatures Stranger Things has delivered yet.
Of course, even though the season is now sprinting approximately at the rate of Robert Patrick in T2, director Uta Briesewitz shows that on her first outing in Hawkins, she has a better grasp of the material than either the Duffers or Shawn Levy have thanks to their rather inconsistent entries. Yes, bodies may melt and Hopper may pull his gun on virtually everyone he sees, but the episode still takes the time to show that the frayed relationships of Eleven and Mike, Lucas and Max and Nancy and Jonathan are healing after all the harsh words have been dispensed with.
Unless the next episode suddenly veers back into some random, season 3 bad habits, I think it’s safe to say that Stranger Things is out of the woods, figuratively speaking. Is the show now leaning too heavily on those increasingly unsubtle 80s references? Almost certainly, but as long as it can keep up using them in such entertaining and wild ways, this more summer blockbuster feel for the show has finally found its misshapen, gruesome, screeching form once again.
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