Outside Your Heaven

Escaping the Gravity of Pop-Culture in Stranger Things 2

Posted: 04 Dec 2017 10:46 AM PST

Just finished watching Stranger Things Season 2, or, as the show clearly prefers to be called: Stranger Things 2, like a movie sequel. I can't think of another show that has used this naming convention, and it speaks to Stranger Things's adherence to cinema tropes while being a TV show. If it were a movie it would be a nine hour one, absurdly long. But as a show it's short: only nine episodes. What it gains by being a show, of course, is character development, the ability to let characters grow and breath like in a novel, or other longer-form stories. That's what saves it this time around.

Last year I said I didn't think Stranger Things made sense as a multi-season show. I liked it. A lot, in fact, though I wasn't as smitten as some folks were. I thought it was cute, pitch-perfect in its period detail, and that its main asset was its phenomenal cast. The other elements -- the supernatural stuff, the conspiracy stuff, the mystery stuff, etc. -- didn't seem that interesting to me. While the human aspect easily achieved the magic of 80s movies like Stand By Me and The Goonies, I couldn't say the same for the monsters in relation to movies like The Thing, Alien, or even Nightmare on Elm Street. This is why I couldn't imagine another season, because there seemed to me nothing, no real depth of mystery, to The Upsidedown. It's an alternate dimension of plant monsters. That's... it.

I really liked Stranger Things 2 and it's because the storytellers lean harder on character this time, more than plot or nostalgia gags, to carry the show. I don't find the supernatural stuff much different than Season 1. Upping the ante to a Cthulhu-like entity is an improvement, but the show still mainly falls back on something more mundane (flesh eating plant-headed super dogs) as an immediate threat.

However, what the show doesn't do this time, crucially, is expect you to be impressed by these things alone. And likewise with the references. I did complain about how on-the-nose some of the 80s pop-culture references were in 1, but here the references feel more subtle, and that's probably because they are more organically integrated into the story. There are less references, but they are deeper and have more meaning. For example, the whole middle of the show is Aliens, which means they have some time to play with what that reference means, to turn some of your expectations on their heads. In particular there is one character who is "coded" as evil who turns out not to be. There is also some real charming stuff, like how -- almost entirely through editing -- this season recreates the comic bedroom seduction scene from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. I knew these references were being used intelligently because I often caught them 5-10 seconds after they happened, more like "Hey... was that a reference too..." as opposed to "Oh, well, that's obviously a reference to..."

The reference is like a nice after taste, but the strength of the story itself is the wine. This is the difference between shows (and movies) that use pop-culture references well and those that use them as an empty, Pavlovian trick to make our connection with the show feel personal. This is why I could never stand shows like Family Guy, why I could never watch The Simpsons after Season 4. There came a point when the reference itself was the centerpiece of the experience, the gag, the substance of the thing. It felt like the only reason they were telling a story is so they could make the reference. When you do that, you aren't using a reference rhetorically, you're using empty familiarity to create a cheap connection with the audience. A reference should comment on your story to some degree. It should feel like a metaphor for a story of substance that is already happening. A reference is not substance. A reference is not a story.

I enjoyed the references and the 80s vibe more in Stranger Things 2 precisely because the show didn't feel the need to try so hard to charm me with them. It felt more confident, more comfortable in its own skin. Most crucially, the show seemed to realize just how fucking magical the characters are, and just gave me them growing and evolving in ways that were delightful to watch. The Steve/Dustin nerd/jock stuff, where these two kids on the opposite ends of the social spectrum become friends, feels like something out of The Breakfast Club, only a lot better because it has more room to breath and its not as beholden to stereotype as Hughes always was. It's not 80s, but personally the kids in Stranger Things 2 felt closer to the cast of American Graffiti, in terms of how effortlessly, formlessly real they seem. (To be slightly fair to John Hughes, this might be a bi-product of both Stranger Things and American Graffiti being period pieces made after the fact, whereas Hughes was making movies of the moment.)

The final episode had me wracking my brain to remember the last time I liked a cast of young characters this much. I didn't mind that the genre stuff was only ho-hum, because by the end it seemed like an excuse to show me the most real kids and teens I've seen in years. Season 2 proves that Stranger Things can be a character-driven show, not a gag-driven show, that artfully and sparingly uses pop-culture references to create a pleasant aftertaste. Hopefully it will keep this focus as it evolves.

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