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LTTP: Stranger Things Season 3

Null Persp

Member
Season 1 is the only good one.
Season 3 was really weird , too much comedy and all over the place , Hopper became a caricature of himself.
The only characters that I liked were Steve and Robin.
 

Airola

Member
On that scene..

The scene itself is cute. A little boy singing some shit 80ies song for a girl. I get it.
The problem is the wider context.
The first season took its theme of being an early 80ies themed horror show and its characters seriously.

In the second season it started to feel self aware of its 80ies nostalgia thing, and played around with these tropes.

In the third season they went on full retard with this and just did it for the sake of pandering for the audience, and the moment where the dam breaks and it's completely getting into fulltard territory is that neverending story song scene.
It's just done for nothing else than people can say 'oh how cute and 80ies is this'.

It's the moment where the series jumped the shark.
There is no essence, it doesn't make any sense, and it's just there for effect.
It's like the story isn't important anymore and the series' main thing is nostalgia pandering without any meaningful base to it.

That here above is the 100% truth.

While the first season had its problems too (Winona Ryder wasn't too good in it, and the monster was CGI garbage with 2000's monster design), but the rest, especially the non-horror stuff, felt like what a good Stephen King book feels like in its non-horror scenes.

In the first season they were doing their own thing but the second season clearly had changed them just doing their own thing to them looking at all the people who say "omg this title font is great and the 80's music is great and hey I get this and that reference, I love the retro vibes" and starting to make things to make those people more happy and in general doing things for certain people instead of just doing a thing of their own. The second season wasn't full blown with that yet but the third season went overboard with it and it just generally wasn't very interesting to watch.
 

sobaka770

Banned
Like with most shows they only had so much creative ideas going into this and blew all their load into season 1.
Season 2 was boring while season 3 i kind of enjoyed but clearly they are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of characters, drama and just basic plot.

Moreover instead of doubling down on what worked, they introduced way too many characters without any actual charisma and diluted the whole thing. I'm also kind of surprised that they totally blue-balled Steve and made Robin lesbian for no good narrative reason other than inclusion? I don't hate it but it feels calculated and the whole thing at this point is basically in need of some fresh ideas. It is held up by good actor chemistry, well-written dialogue and good overall pacing so it's still a show I'd watch, it's just not exceptional anymore and risks becoming simply derivative if season 4 doesn't shake things up massively.
 

kunonabi

Member
Season 3 taken completely at face value is extremely entertaining with possibly the best pacing of the show, some great effects, and pretty good humor humor outside of Hopper and Scrappy Doo.

The problem is all of the actual character stuff is bloody awful. You can really tell they let politics dictate way more of the writing than it really needed to. The stuff with the newspaper and trying to tie the mom into it was absolutely hamfisted as hell.

I'll still take it over season 2 which was just a painful retread of season 1 that did EVERYTHING worse.
 
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