Netflix Netflix Series - Stranger Things 4 (1 Viewer)

[JasonRoer]

Episode runtimes revealed:

• 4x01: 1hr 16min
• 4x02: 1hr 15min
• 4x03: 1hr 3min
• 4x04: 1hr 17 min
• 4x05: 1hr 14min
• 4x06: 1hr 13min
• 4x07: 1hr 38min
• 4x08: 1hr 25min
• 4x09: 2hr 30m

Wow. My wife and I have our work cut out for us this weekend between Stranger Things and Kenobi! Throw in a possible game 6 and 7 for the Celtics, as well as this week's episode of Strange New Worlds, and we're going to have us a good ole' fashioned butt-numb-a-thon.

 

[Wayne_j]

Season 4 currently 92% on rotten tomatoes. Apparently the episodes were released to critics two at a time and watching them as movies over 4 nights works out good.

 

[jayembee]

Yeah, the reviews so far seem to be very positive, though a number of the critics do think that the episodes are longer than they need to be.

 

[Clark Green]

I'm all for a longer episodes for this particular series vs. rushing through things.

 

[Tino]

Episodes are up.

 

[ScottH]

Have to admit I forgot this show was even still running and have no recollection of how the last season ended. I'm sure I'll watch it at some point but definitely not pining for it.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Thinking about it, its interesting how my tech has improved as Stranger Things has continued.

1 + 2 - A Sharp 43n6100u with only built in speakers
3 - A TCL 49s405 with HDR10 and Vizio SB3651 surround sound system
4 - A Vizio M55Q8-H1 QLED with Dolby Vision, Yamaha RX-V383 5.1 receiver, and Klipsch 5.1 wired refference speakers

And yet I STILL can't actually watch it in something resembling 4k (only 1440p though) because my internet suckss

 

[JasonRoer]

I just posted this over in the Obi Wan thread, but it clearly fits here too:

Why do I have to be a sports fan?? I can't miss the Celtics game tonight, as they could close out the Eastern Conference Finals in the Garden and they're my favorite team! This means, of course, that my wife and I will have to wait to see Obi Wan until tomorrow. And also - Stranger Things Season 4! I'm SO excited for both of these series. Ce la vie. I look to forward to reading everyone's opinions of the show on Tuesday.

 

[Jeff Flugel]

Somewhat surprised there's not more discussion of the new season of this show in here. Guess there's just too much out right now (Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc.)

Well, I enjoyed episode 1 of S4 very much. The Duffer Brothers seem to become more assured in their writing and directing with each successive season. Nice to catch up with these kids, who I've grown quite fond of over the years. We also get the introduction of a couple of fun new characters, and the new big bad is one creepy mutha.

The first episode flew by for me, despite being 78 minutes long. I am going to parcel these out, though. No more binging a complete season in a weekend. I'll try to get through these a couple episodes a week, to stretch things out to when Netflix releases the final two episodes in July.

Hope everyone enjoys the new season!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Why do I have to be a sports fan?? I can't miss the Celtics game tonight, as they could close out the Eastern Conference Finals in the Garden and they're my favorite team! This means, of course, that my wife and I will have to wait to see Obi Wan until tomorrow. And also - Stranger Things Season 4! I'm SO excited for both of these series. Ce la vie. I look to forward to reading everyone's opinions of the show on Tuesday.

Ironically, the first episode is built around a similar dilemma!

Just finished 4x01, which is definitely almost feature length. The scope and scale of the series has just increased so much this time around; the number of characters and locations is just way up from where the third season left off.

And while supernatural happenings are definitely afoot, nothing concretely related to the Upside Down yet.

The first episode does have a content warning, and it was rather horrific to watch in light of recent real world events:

Spoiler: 4x01 Discussion

Seeing all of the mutilated bodies of young children was kind of shocking so soon after the Robb Elementary school shooting, though of course they couldn't have known that when they made it.

The premiere did a good job of filling the time jump so that our various characters are in a different place than where we left them:

• Eleven/Jane is struggling socially in California, still grieving Hopper's apparent death while struggling socially without her friend group for protection.
• Will is trying to look out for Eleven, and definitely seems to have some sort of passion that he is pursuing in private. On the other hand, he rejects a girl's advances at one point, suggesting that he's either gay or asexual.
• Jonathan and Nancy are still very much committed to one another, but struggling to make the whole long distance thing work.
• Steve's got his mojo back with girls, and his friendship with Robin is stronger than ever. At the same time, his world has been broadened as a result of his experiences over the first three seasons, and the kind of girls he was into before are no longer as appealing to him now.
• Lucas is a jock, who goes from benchwarmer to school hero overnight. But it's created friction between him and his friends.
• Meanwhile, Lucas has been dumped by Max, who has been wallowing in her sense of alienation following the death of her stepbrother, the implosion of her mother's marriage, and her mother's subsequent descent into alcoholism. She's angry and she's hurting and she doesn't really have any outlet for any of it.
• Lucas's little sister, on the other hand, is thriving as the new alpha in their D&D group.
• Joyce is a trendsetter when it comes to telecommuting, keeping a roof over Jonathan, Will, and Eleven's heads by selling encyclopedias over the phone. A mysterious package from the Soviet Union gives her hope that Hopper might still be alive.
• Murray Bauman is way too comfortable in the privacy of his own home.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The second episode put more of our characters together, and upped the stakes of the supernatural mystery further.

Spoiler: 4x02 Discussion

Strangely enough, Max witnessing a brutal and horrific supernatural murder might have been just what was needed to shake her out of her malaise.

She turns to Dustin, who is oddly really dependable on this sort of thing, and Dustin in turn loops in the Steve/Robin dream team. Now the investigation is really cooking with gas.

Elsewhere, Nancy chases different leads to pursue the same mystery. I like that she's a better reporter than she was in the first season; even though she's just the editor of the school paper, she knows how to get where she needs to go without any real authority behind her, and how to get the right people to talk. And as an Emerson journalism grad, I love that that's her dream school.

Eduardo Franco has sort of cornered the market on Gen Z dopey lovable stoners, and his character Argyle here is no exception. He provides Jonathan a sounding board to be emo against.

The stuff with Eleven is moving in more of a Carrie direction this season, but in terms of being tormented by her peers for being weird, and the darkness that brings out in her. There's schoolyard cat fights, and then there's fracturing a girl's nose with a roller skate. It's not the Angela didn't have it coming, but still, holy shit. This episode implies that Eleven was responsible for the season-opening massacre. I'm still not so sure that's so.

It looks like this season is another one where the villain is inspired by a D&D monster. In this case, it appears that Vecna is in service to the mind flayer.

 

[Sam Favate]

Enjoyed the first episode tremendously. We see very little of where this is going, but it’s fun to see them put so many balls in the air.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The third episode really got me pumped for where this season is headed.

Spoiler: 4x03 Discussion

I'm loving the evolution of Eleven's role on the series. In the first three seasons, she did what she had to do. Now she's choosing her path. At same time, she's sort of Superman or 007 when it comes to the threats posed by the Upside Down. And there is a philosophical difference between different covert arms of the federal government whether she is a danger or an asset. Paul Reiser is wonderful as Dr. Owens, who believes deeply in her as a resource, but also understands that she is a teenage girl who has been put through tremendous trauma over the course of her short life. Despite that, he respects her enough to tell it to her straight, including the risks inherent in his proposed course of action.

Meanwhile, Max is taking center stage back in Hawkins much like Will did in the first two seasons and her brother did in Season 3. Her trauma makes her a tempting target for Vecna, but her support system and her prior experience with the Upside Down also mean that she won't go down as easily as the previous victims.

It's fun to see Robin in a different context. With Steve, she seems sort of effortless cool, and cultured in all of the ways he isn't. But around Nancy, we see a different side of her, one that is less confident and more awkward.

I'm glad that Lucas didn't sell out his friends to the basketball team. At this point, the only thing missing from the basketball posse is torches.

Handing over $40,000 in cash to a stranger at a remote location in Alaska seems like maybe not a great plan.

I'm probably going to watch one more tonight and then save the remaining three for tomorrow.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The fourth episode was excellent, and a good stopping point for the night.

Spoiler: 4x04 Discussion

The criminal wing at the insane asylum was very clearly modeled after the cellblock Hannibal Lecter was housed in in Silence of the Lambs. And casting Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund, as Victor Creed was a bit of genius. And the twist this time is that he is the victim, not the perpetrator.

Nor was it a creepy scene for creepiness's sake; Nancy and Robin got actionable intel that saved Max's life. These kids are kind of like hardened supernatural warriors at this point.

Sadie Sink was tremendous in this episode. Max has been carrying around a lot for a long time now, and you really feel the weight of it here.

It seems pretty clear at this point that the government located the laboratory in Hawkins because the walls between the real world and the Upside Down were already thin there, and not because Eleven made them thin. Evil has been coming through since at least 1959.

It's a pet peeve of mine when characters are put into witness protection and then endangered by the incompetent people assigned to guard them. I was happy that this episode swerved away from that; sure, they thought it was a bullshit assignment and treated it as such. But when things got real, they stepped up in a big hurry.

Argyle pulling up in his pizza van only to find Jonathan, Mike, and Will fleeing a shootout with a wounded agent was hilariously jarring, though.

Meg Myers's cover of "Running Up That Hill" got a lot of airplay around these parts on alternative radio a couple years back, so at first I thought it was an anachronism. But no, apparently it was originally a Kate Bush track that came out several months before the events of this season, that only did so-so in the US but charted pretty high in the UK.

 

[Sam Favate]

Episode 2 for me today, and it was also a winner.

I initially groaned at the longer episode lengths but I like how they've used them for character development.

 

[jayembee]

Somewhat surprised there's not more discussion of the new season of this show in here. Guess there's just too much out right now (Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc.)

I was planning on getting started on the new season this afternoon, but the weather is, while not overly hot, muggy. So my wife was already set up in the living room with the A/C going by the time I got up. She's not interested in watching Stranger Things, as she's been told (by me and others) that it can get scarier than she likes. We ended up watching Catherine Tate's women's prison mockumentary, Hard Cell (also on Netflix), which we both liked. After the evening news, the latest 2 episodes of Murdoch Mysteries started. My wife's a big fan of that, so I ceded the TV to her until they finish in...40 minutes.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The fifth episode again moved each storyline along in significant ways:

Spoiler: 4x05 Discussion

For Eleven, regaining her powers means facing "Papa" again. A pretty dick move on Owens's part not to give her a heads up. It seems clear that the mental block affecting Eleven's powers is related to the repressed memory of the massacre in '79. At a moment of intense emotion near the end of the episode, she was able to knock three trained operatives against the ceiling, so her powers are still there is some form. But getting control of them means facing her trauma, something she chooses to do by the end of the episode even though it means willingly walking back into the belly of the beast.

The Scooby gang back in Hawkins has figured out that Vecna is based out of the Creel House, only on the the other side. They remembered that light bulbs would light up marking Will's movements when he was trapped on the other side, and use that knowledge to track Vecna in the Creel House. Max and Lucas start to rekindle their feelings, as Max begins to regain some control over her life.

Meanwhile, out West, things take a decidedly War Games turn as the federal agent dies in the back, but not before passing along a pen hiding a secret phone number that connects to a mysterious dial-up modem. The only hacker they know anywhere close to the desert where they hastily buried the agent is Dustin's girlfriend Suzie, so now they're off to Utah. I have become steadily more convinced over the course of the season so far that Will is in love with Mike, and he doesn't know how to express it -- especially because he knows Mike is in love with Eleven.

Elsewhere, out on Crystal Lake, Vecna claims another victim. Will this convince the basketball team that Eddie is innocent? Or leave them more convinced than ever that Eddie is a satanic menace that must be stopped by any means necessary?

In the prison in Siberia, Hopper and his would-be savior hear monstrous noises as they await their fate. The revelation that Hopper had high exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam, and that the Agent Orange is the likely cause of his daughter's fatal cancer, was heartbreaking. It's bad enough to bury a child, especially one so young. It's even worse to believe that you're responsible for it. I was gratified to see him express remorse over dragging Joyce into his mess, however; it was totally irresponsible, especially given that she's responsible for three minors -- including Hopper's own adopted daughter.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) Murray wasn't lying about his karate skills. On the plus side, Yuri wasn't able to deliver Joyce and Murray to the KGB. On the minus side, they've crashlanded somewhere in the vast Siberian wilderness.

 

[Joe Wong]

Finished all 7 episodes tonight.

An excellent season (so far), much better than the meandering season 3 (or at least what I remember of it!).

I liked the breathing room the story received, given the longer episode runtimes. Given the investment we have in these characters, it was compelling just to watch them.

Spoiler

When Hopper was recaptured after escaping, I thought, well that chunk of the first few episodes (ie., deciphering the mail from Enzo, the preparations for escape, Joyce and Murray travelling to Alaska, only to be foiled, etc.) was a waist of time. The eventual arc involving Hopper was redeemed somewhat, and it was good to see the bond develop between Hopper and Enzo. But still, I would have liked to see Hopper rescued earlier and be reunited with the kids. Why? The most enjoyable part of the ST series for me is seeing the adults (Hopper, Joyce, now Murray) band together with the kids, or at least have larger groups working together (which we have in this season with the team of Max, Lucas, Dustin, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Steve, and now Eddie). This was somewhat missing from season 3, hence my lower appreciation for that season.

I did like the reveal of the person behind "Vecna", and how it was tied in to the Hawkins lab (I was successful in deducing that it was 001). Very good story development and backfilling of history without it feeling like it was retconning.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The sixth episode gave pretty much every group of characters their marching orders:

Spoiler: 4x06 Discussion

It sure looks like Eleven murdered all of the kids back in 1979, although the fact that it's been so heavily foreshadowed leads me to believe that something else actually happened. It's telling that the camera in the Rainbow Room was off (because the older kids wanted to torture Eleven in secret) so I'm not sure Brenner or the others actually know what happened. They just know that Eleven was found covered in the other kids' blood standing amid their twisted corpses. I'm wondering if it was Vecna who actually committed the massacre and Eleven was the only one strong enough to fight him off.

The flashbacks via sensory deprivation tank provide backstory into Eleven's childhood that I didn't think we'd get. The whole thing has an eerie effect. According to the credits, Martie Blair played the eight-year-old Eleven, and she does look uncannily like a young Millie Bobby Brown:


I'm not sure if they just used her as is, or if there is some facial replacement going on. If visual effects were involved, it's the most successful digital deaging I've seen yet. And the buzzcut and hospital gowns make the comparison much easier than normal between younger and older versions of the same character. Brown is obviously taller and has a more mature body shape, but even then the show plays with the audience's understanding by putting the grown Eleven in scenes at the eight year old Eleven's height. I'm not sure exactly what it signified when we saw one versus the other, except to maybe give us the same disorientation that Eleven was feeling in that tank. The windowless nature of the floor where the subjects were kept adds to that sense of disorientation.

I was also wondering where Eight was at first, before this episode clarified that she'd already escaped by this point. It also might be the reason that she's the only other one of Brenner's kids we've seen: Because she was already out in the wild, she wasn't there to be slaughtered in the massacre. I'd assumed that the other test subjects were still at Hawkins lab when Eleven got loose, but perhaps she was the only one left at the start of the first season.

Loved the reveal of Suzie's home life. We knew from last season that she was this straight-laced Mormon girl, so I had a certain stereotype in my head of what her home life was like. That being the case, I was completely unprepared for the utter insanity of the Bingham household. At the same time, it kind of makes sense; I'm not sure your average family produces someone like Suzie. Loved the flirtation (and later hotboxing) between Argyle and Suzie's older sister Eden. Eden was sort of like Jennifer Grey's character from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, if she had been played by Ally Sheedy at her weirdest.

The reveal that the open gate was at the bottom of the lake was a nice twist. Things were not looking good for Steve in the Upside Down.

Probably just as well that the police found the younger kids when they did, given that the townspeople had been riled up against the Hellfire Club by the basketball star and were out for blood.

Given how late it is, I'm going to save the last episode of Vol. 1 until tomorrow night.

 

[David Weicker]

The sixth episode gave pretty much every group of characters their marching orders:

Spoiler: 4x06 Discussion

It sure looks like Eleven murdered all of the kids back in 1979, although the fact that it's been so heavily foreshadowed leads me to believe that something else actually happened. It's telling that the camera in the Rainbow Room was off (because the older kids wanted to torture Eleven in secret) so I'm not sure Brenner or the others actually know what happened. They just know that Eleven was found covered in the other kids' blood standing amid their twisted corpses. I'm wondering if it was Vecna who actually committed the massacre and Eleven was the only one strong enough to fight him off.

The flashbacks via sensory deprivation tank provide backstory into Eleven's childhood that I didn't think we'd get. The whole thing has an eerie effect. According to the credits, Martie Blair played the eight-year-old Eleven, and she does look uncannily like a young Millie Bobby Brown:
View attachment 140029

I'm not sure if they just used her as is, or if there is some facial replacement going on. If visual effects were involved, it's the most successful digital deaging I've seen yet. And the buzzcut and hospital gowns make the comparison much easier than normal between younger and older versions of the same character. Brown is obviously taller and has a more mature body shape, but even then the show plays with the audience's understanding by putting the grown Eleven in scenes at the eight year old Eleven's height. I'm not sure exactly what it signified when we saw one versus the other, except to maybe give us the same disorientation that Eleven was feeling in that tank. The windowless nature of the floor where the subjects were kept adds to that sense of disorientation.

I was also wondering where Eight was at first, before this episode clarified that she'd already escaped by this point. It also might be the reason that she's the only other one of Brenner's kids we've seen: Because she was already out in the wild, she wasn't there to be slaughtered in the massacre. I'd assumed that the other test subjects were still at Hawkins lab when Eleven got loose, but perhaps she was the only one left at the start of the first season.

Loved the reveal of Suzie's home life. We knew from last season that she was this straight-laced Mormon girl, so I had a certain stereotype in my head of what her home life was like. That being the case, I was completely unprepared for the utter insanity of the Bingham household. At the same time, it kind of makes sense; I'm not sure your average family produces someone like Suzie. Loved the flirtation (and later hotboxing) between Argyle and Suzie's older sister Eden. Eden was sort of like Jennifer Grey's character from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, if she had been played by Ally Sheedy at her weirdest.

The reveal that the open gate was at the bottom of the lake was a nice twist. Things were not looking good for Steve in the Upside Down.

Probably just as well that the police found the younger kids when they did, given that the townspeople had been riled up against the Hellfire Club by the basketball star and were out for blood.

Given how late it is, I'm going to save the last episode of Vol. 1 until tomorrow night.

How are you able to break after the 6 cliffhanger?