Tonight I rewatched Stranger Things season 5 from beginning to end. The first four episodes were good. Episodes 5 and 6 were also good. However, some scenes in episode 7 that became memes online bothered me. The scene where Millie Bobby Brown raises her eyebrows didn't bother me the first time I watched it; I hadn't watched it carefully then, so it didn't bother me then, but seeing it online made me uncomfortable. Rewatching it from beginning to end made it even more disturbing. I don't know if there was CGI in those scenes, but I wish they had paid attention to that eyebrow-raising scene, which they've filmed countless times, and released a different version. Also, the scene where Will comes out as gay – I'm not homophobic, but I think that scene was poorly written. Aside from that, they left everything to the two-hour finale. I wish they had answered some of the unanswered questions. For example, does Linda Hamilton's character know Vecna? And what does that character have to do with all of this? Also, it was nice that they brought the characters who were mostly in the background to the forefront in previous seasons. But this time, it seems like they've forgotten the main characters. What I don't understand is: Were there some problems with certain actors on set in previous seasons? Or did the writers run out of things to write about the main characters? Either way, it feels like a two-hour episode wouldn't be satisfying in terms of answering the questions asked. I wish they had made two episodes totaling four hours.
Spoilers Stranger Things - Season 5
- Thread starter The Grinch Doctor
- Start date
Linda Hamilton seems like she was wasted this season. I get the throw back, but she didn't do a whole lot.
I'm caught up, and I agree with you that the Will scene was bad. This is also the 80s, so it became really hard to suspend my disbelief for this scene. To put this into perspective Ellen DeGeneres didn't come out until '97. This wasn't a thing back then. The White Collar actor Matt Bomer was told not to come out, and White Collar aired between 2009-2014. This feels more like checking a diversity check box for the show than moving the story along without some heavy retconning. I'm also watching From at the same time that I'm watching this show, and the relationships in From are much better written.
I also agree with the Internet that there are way too many characters. Stephen King did a better job using a big cast in The Stand than we see The Duffer Brothers do for this show.
Finally, Millie's acting is bad. It hasn't gotten any better. Eight's isn't good either. You can definitely tell with the scenes between Millie and David how much better of an actor David is than Millie.
I'll watch the series finale tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath that the ending will be satisfying. So few shows pull off good endings. The last I saw with Manifest, but it's last season wasn't all that good. 4400 was good throughout. White Collar was good throughout. MASH was good throughout.
But for longer running shows with bad endings, Supernatural sticks out as a big fail. Game of Thrones was also a big fail.
Living in a country like Turkey, where half the population is homophobic, I understand what you mean. But I don't like 'that' scene. My reason is that it portrays homosexuality as a disease. And I think not every character in the show should have been there; only their families and closest friends should have been there. They should have said it in a relaxed and natural way. Okay, the show is set in 1987, but it wasn't made in 1987. It was made in the 2020s by liberal Hollywood.
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I don't think the show's aim from the beginning was to be a 1:1 slavish reproduction of the 1980's, nor should it be. Besides, men like Harvey Firestein were intensely and proudly out as gay during that decade, so it's not like it was a completely unknown thing.
They've been teeing up Will being gay for some time, and I appreciate the show finally doing something with his character beyond him being the poor, unfortunate victim from season 1.
I highly recommend you explain this, because your phrasing sounds incredibly offensive and horrible.
That's the problem with historical fiction. In this case speculative fiction. As a viewer, I want 80s nostalgia, not too much of the present rewriting the past.
And doing in front of that huge audience was a bit much for me. It was working when it was only his mom.
I was around in '87 and knew people who were gay, some were already out and some came out at that time. I can see why celebrities might stay in the closet, but it was different for "regular" people depending on their situation.
That's pretty much what I've been expecting, this just isn't the kind of show to pull a Red Wedding kind of scene, even in the finale. But at the same time, I can still see them wanting this big final victory to still take some kind of a price from the characters, even if it's not a death, I'm still not expecting everybody to make it out unscathed.
This isn't meant to be "historical fiction", it's idealized nostalgia that's just using the '80s setting to recapture the feel of things like The Goonies, ET, and other kid's movies from that era. So anybody going into this expecting it to be an accurate recreation of life small town Indiana in the 1980s is going to be disappointed.
At one point, after the fourth season, I was going to make a thread to post all the 80s inconsistencies in the show. For example, there was never one use of the word "gay" as in "that's so gay" which was a ubiquitous phrase at the time. (EDIT: Fag was also a common term in North America, even if the word had a different meaning across the pond.) There was also a scene where somebody said something along the lines of "and then this random guy shows up" which is not a phrasing that has come into popular use until recently. This season Harbour says they're going to watch a Miami Vice marathon, which never would have been a thing. This season also, the kids are using the term "Sorcerer" in its contemporary D&D version. They would not have used that distinction in the 80s. IIRC Sorcerer was the name of one of the Magic-User levels.
Yes, being out was pretty common in the 80s, although many people did choose to be private about their sexuality. There was also a lot of repression where people continued to marry opposite sex partners even though they were gay. It was also fairly uncommon for high school students to be "out".
This is one of things that really bothers me with historical fiction on TV and in books that cover periods I lived through. It's the use of idioms that are common now but not spoken back then. They really breaks my suspension of disbelief since my brain goes: nobody said that back then.
When I said they were portraying homosexuality as a disease, I was referring to the scene.
That's not what I was referring to. You said you liked that scene because they were portraying it as a disease, a notion that is immensely problematic.
The Google Translate error meant I actually wrote "I don't like it."
Okay, that makes a ton of difference. Thanks for clarifying.
It's an interesting interpretation. I hadn't thought of it like that when watching it but in that case, it would actually be more accurate that Will might feel like that given his conduct for the last few seasons. What is definitely true is that he has been wrestling and struggling with his feelings and likely feels even ashamed of him. His arc this season has been developing his friendship with Robin whom he looks up to as an older person. Given how he's learned about her current relationship, and without knowing how she herself struggled with her sexual orientation as a high school student, she has given him a sense of confidence in himself.
Wonderfully fun set tour, guided by Jamie Campbell Bowers:
He visits all of the major set pieces involving Henry/Vecna throughout the season...with one notable exception: The Abyss lair. I imagine they're holding that back because of potential spoilers for the finale.
One curious oddity that came out of it: The same material used for the Vecna makeup was used for the Hawkins lab goo.
He visits all of the major set pieces involving Henry/Vecna throughout the season...with one notable exception: The Abyss lair. I imagine they're holding that back because of potential spoilers for the finale.
One curious oddity that came out of it: The same material used for the Vecna makeup was used for the Hawkins lab goo.
