It’s been a while since we last
looked at Stranger Things. Season 3 was released in the summer of 2019. The
trailers had bigged up a new shopping mall built in town of Hawkins, Starcourt.
But there was very little plot actually teased, only the notion that Will
wasn’t going to be put through the mill again this season. So with that in
mind, let’s take a look at Stranger Things season 3 and see if lived up to the
hype.
Chapter 1: Suzie Do You Copy?
We open in some kind of lab, the date, June 1984. The scientists are testing some kind of weapon for what appear to be military backers. The machine is activated by 2 keys, that have to be turned simultaneously, this will be important off later. The device begins spinning in all it’s not great CG glory and begins a firing a blue beam at the wall, creating a portal into the Upside Down, tendrils begins to crawl out from it.
The room begins to shake and power begins to surge, the weapon begins to malfunction, and eventually shuts down and the breach isn’t strong enough to stay open, making matters worse, the machine overloads and sends out a burst of electricity that kills all the scientists attending it, not the backers and key scientists who are a safe distance away mind you, and we see their deaths in all their slow-motion, not great CG glory.
As the survivors survey the landscape what looks to be the head honcho military guy seems disappointed, one of the scientists tries to assure him that they’re close but he’s choked by… the Terminator? They are given one year to complete their work. They’re in a military base in Russia. You might remember there being a lot of… concern about the Russians use of the Upside Down in both previous seasons, guess it’s time to bring that to the forefront. Roll credits
We cut ahead a year to some 80's music and Mike and El kissing and mocking Mike’s bad singing. Hopper is less than impressed, seeing this through an opening in the door. Mike rides straight to the mall where Will, Lucas and Max are waiting for him. They use a shortcut behind the Scoops Ahoy Ice Cream Parlour and a little help from Steve to sneak their way into the cinema to watch a sneak preview of Day of the Dead. Unfortunately for them, power goes off in the entire mall and by the looks of things, most of the city.
We cut to a rat-infested barn where a creature of some sort begins showing its presence. The power returns as quickly as it came but Will senses something, something connected to the Mind Flayer that possessed him last season.
The power outage has unfortunate consequences for Jonathan and Nancy as it shuts off their alarm; they wake up, both running late for work. On the way, Nancy comments that they seem to like Jonathan a lot more than her. As they head down the road, another familiar face is coming in the opposite direction. You might’ve noticed I didn’t mention Dustin in the theatre crowd, he was away in summer camp and is just getting back.
He tries to contact them on the radio but isn’t getting much luck, but when he arrives home his toys seemingly come to life and start leading him away, he gets out hairspray to defend himself as he follows them. Of course, it’s the others trying to surprise him, and it’s Lucas who gets a face full of hairspray. You’re holding a sign, genius, put in front of your face to block.
We cut to a swimming pool, where it’s fun, fun, for everyone, especially the grown women, enjoying the taste of new coke. One lifeguard leaves and it’s time for these grown women to ogle the new lifeguard, Billy. Excuse me while I go puke. And not just from the new Coke. Downtown is almost completely abandoned following the opening of the Mall, it seems there may have been attempts to protest its opening but no such luck.
The general store that Joyce is working it is falling under hard times too, they’ve resorted to marking down prices by as much as 75%, hard to tell if they can even break even from that, it doesn’t really seem to be making much difference as their first customer is Hopper and you can bet he ain’t interested in buying anything. He’s frustrated with the amount of kissing Mike and El have been up to and wants to break them up, yup, we’re going here, this is going to end up causing a lot of problems this season and make Hopper look like a bigger jerk than normal.
Joyce is practical and suggests they talk without raised voices but with honesty instead. Not exactly Hopper's forte so Joyce suggests she articulate his words and create a script for him to follow. We cut see Nancy who’s basically the busgirl of the Hawkins post, getting everyone’s lunch orders. Her co-workers are bunch of sexist twats. I don’t know why I’m surprised.
Dustin’s been pretty busy at summer camp, creating bits and bobs but also essentially a cell-phone tower, in 1985, developed by a child… Okay. He calls it Cerebro because word hadn’t got out yet that Charles Xavier is an amoral prick. Seriously, read Hickman’s X-men run, it’s fantastic. He also reveals he has a girlfriend named Suzie who he met at camp. They head out to go talk to her.
Cut to scoops ahoy, and Steve, who’s made the transition from Jock to Dork so naturally you almost don’t notice, until he starts talking to girls. And we get an introduction to Steve’s co-worker Robin. Who’s the right kind of realist that Steve needs so badly. It’s revealed that he couldn’t get into college so his dad has forced him to work here for $3 an hour, which today is worth approximately $7.19
Cut back to the department store and Hopper is having trouble reciting Joyce’s script. Hopper invites Joyce for dinner but she refuses, saying she has plans. It’s clear Hopper still carries feelings for her. Suzie’s parents are Mormon, so Dustin has to use this means of contact rather than just a phone. Lucas begins to think this is all a little contrived and I would agree with him, turns out we were both wrong.
Half way up the hill, Mike and El part company, claiming they have a curfew. Will begins to feel a prick on his neck again as rats scurry nearby, all heading to the warehouse we see is an abandoned steelworks place. The rats all seems to be exploding on arrival.
Billy’s turn to ogle, Mrs Wheeler, I want to throw up again. He makes an offer of sexy-time under the guise of swimming lessons and she thankfully turns him down, although she is clearly tempted. Max, Dustin, Will and Lucas arrive atop the hill and begin assembling Cerebro. Dustin tries to contact Suzie but doesn’t have any luck, only exacerbating the feeling that he in fact made her up.
Joyce arrives home but neither of the boys are home yet. She makes her dinner of leftover lasagne and watches the TV, thinking of her time with Bob. Nancy is tidying up when the phone rings, Nancy answers and it’s from a woman named Doris Driscoll, knowing something about disease and rats. Mike and El continue to have their kissing time as Hopper prepares to give his speech but ultimately decides on the douchebag approach.
After what seems to be several hours of trying to contact Suzie, even Max is convinced Suzie isn’t real and they all part ways. Will says he’d like for them to play D+D, like they used to. Though he doesn’t hear Suzie, he doesn’t start to hear Russian radio broadcasts, as in hand-radio broadcasts. The Russians have set up in Hawkins and you’d never guess where. Under the mall of course. We don’t yet see what progress that’s been made but…
Mrs Wheeler… what the f*ck are you doing, woman?! She really is preparing to two-time her husband and go on a date with Billy. Billy’s heading for said date, practicing his smooth talk when something hits his car, smashing his windscreen and causing him a head injury. I suppose it’s not co-incidence it’s right by the abandoned steelworks. His car has conked out and upon inspection his windscreen is covered in goo. A vine grabs his leg and drags him into the steelworks.
It’s an intriguing opener even if the subplot with Billy is icky and the whole bit with Hopper is building up to be problematic to say the least
Rating 8.5/10
Chapter 2: The Mall Rats
Billy emerges from the steelworks, seemingly injured but alive, he races to his car, which is miraculously working again and drives straight to a telephone box. He dials 911 but as he does so he’s transported into the Upside Down, where he meets an Upside Down version of himself. Roll credits.
The next morning, El is pacing around the house, concerned. She makes a phone-call to the wheeler house asking for Mike. Mike tells her he can’t see her today as his nana is sick (Hopper had used this excuse to get him out of the house in the last episode, so this doesn’t come out of nowhere) unfortunately for Mike, his mother is still on the other phone and can hear what he’s saying. And I think you can guess what’s happened here.
He gets his mother off the phone, but in the process El can tell he’s blatantly lying. Hopper seems to think his plan is working and I know I’m probably not gonna get any fans for this but f*ck Hopper for this. He goes to tell Joyce how good a job he did, leaving out all the details that we still don’t entirely know yet. He invites her to dinner and thanks to pestering she relents. He’s quickly called to the town hall where there’s a group of protesters protesting the mall, bit late for that I fear but…
On his way out, Hopper nearly trips on some fridge magnets, Joyce tries to reattach them but they don’t stick and we saw the same thing happen to her fridge in the last episode. Nancy gets mocked and decides to investigate the lead from the phone-call last night. She drags a pretty reluctant Jonathan with her.
After some filler to introduce Starcourt, Dustin and Steve meet up that greeting has just officially lost you any credibility as a jock. Welcome to the losers club, Steve. Hearing about Dustin getting a girlfriend makes him kinda jealous. Talk soon gets to the secret Russian communication Dustin intercepted and he believes there may be fame and fortune to be found from this. Dustin needs Steve’s help translating
El has come to Max for advice about Mike. She tells him that Mike is being shitty and he and Lucas are probably playing Atari or something. Lucas advises that Mike is in deep trouble as Max advises El to completely ignore Mike for a while and dump him if he doesn’t explain himself. Lucas is about to give an object lesson on how he won back after she dumped him… wait, 5 times? Teen romances, go figure. They leave Will, who’s been setting up D+D for them. Max decides to take El out to have some fun… I think you can guess where this is going.
At the pool, everything seems normal and Billy arrives. Mrs Wheeler goes to confront him… in the end she didn’t show up for the date either, thank f*cking god for that. Billy envisions knocking her into the wall, but he just tells her to stay away from him and that’s actually solid advice. Of course, Billy is not in his right mind now thanks to whatever happened the night before.
At Scoops Ahoy, Robin is getting irritated with one particular customer, Lucas’ sister, who’s asking for more ice cream samples. She gets annoyed enough to ask for Steve, who’s listening over the message Dustin recorded, Steve notes that the music at the end sounded familiar. Robin bursts in, they were loud enough that she knows exactly what’s going on and knows a little more about Russian than either of them, she doesn’t speak it but is fluent in several other languages so might be able to work it out.
Jonathan and Nancy arrive at Mrs Driscoll’s house and she’s a little bit… not all with it. Even so what she has is interesting, several bags of fertiliser in her basement have been chewed into. But for more conclusive proof she’s managed to catch one of them.
City hall, a full 5 subplots later, people are protesting Mayor Kline. Hopper meets with Mayor Kline, and he brings up some pretty legitimate points about how the mall benefits the economy and most of the people there. However most of the protestors are people who lost their jobs when trade moved from downtown to the mall. Kline obviously wants the moved, bringing up some guff about a permit. Hopper points out that disrupting a protest would backfire and lose him votes but he’s throwing an Independence Day parade soon that will distract people from this issue.
El had been forbidden from travelling to the mall, with some potential risk of being around so many people, especially if she accidentally displays her powers. Max entices her in and we more establishing shots of the mall. Max gives her a whirlwind tour. And as you probably expected, Mike, Will and Lucas are also there, looking for a shiny gift for Mike to buy for El as a means of apology. Max gives some honestly good words to El and thankfully we’re spared the fashion montage, for now as cut back to downtown.
Joyce is doing some reading on magnetism, trying to work out why the magnets have failed but doesn’t get much luck from reading, so abandons her job and goes to see the AV teacher because she can just do that apparently.
Jonathan is struggling to get a photo of the rat whilst Nancy is making calls to see if there have been any other sightings. As Jonathan Is about to change the film, the rat stops squealing and begins having a seizure or something. This has Jonathan’s attention but before he can see what happens next, Nancy says she’s drummed up a lead and they head off. Just as they do, the lights begin to flicker and the rat explodes into goo. The goo moves through the cage
Billy has a vision in the Upside down, of his other self, telling him to build what he sees. He’s in a bit of a haze, and hits the showers, finding a black mark moving around his elbow. Someone comes to check up on him but it doesn’t entirely help.
Guess we couldn’t escape the fashion montage forever. Ha, the boys are scared of lingerie. So, does El have money, she’s not allowed in the mall, does Hopper give her money? The boys have little luck with their present hunt and El uses her powers in public to make a drink explode. I think we need the Don’t be Stupid rules back.
The girls get ice cream from scoops (FYI, thanks to Robin, they’ve got one sentence) and then the inevitable happens and the two groups meet, exposing Mike’s probable lie as a definite one. El dumps him there and seems rather cheery about it as she and Max head home.
Hopper evicts the protestors and heads to his date as night has suddenly decided to show up on the show. I swear it was daylight like 2 seconds ago. Hopper waits patiently for Joyce to show up, ordering half the alcohol on the menu before she’s even arrived. Joyce on the other hand is a bit busy with the AV teacher talking about magnets. How long did this last? Anyway, the short version is someone has a giant machine creating a magnetic field that’s cutting off the magnetism for the fridge. I know they say theoretically, but this is Stranger Things so, you know.
Back at the now closed mall, Robin, Steve and Dustin have finished the translation but it’s gibberish, at least it’s meant to sound like gibberish, both Robin and Dustin theorise it could be some kind of code. But Steve manages to score an even bigger win with his realisation that the music he recognised was from a child’s horse-ride machine, meaning the message likely came from within Starcourt itself.
With Joyce a no-show, Hopper is drunk and decides to take his leave, bumping into our terminator knockoff on the way out. Billy heads back to the Steelworks, with the woman who checked up on him earlier tie up in his trunk. He carriers her in as she begins to come to. Billy removes her gag as a creature that looks disturbingly like the Mind Flayer makes its move on her.
This episode is a bit all over the place. There are so many plot threads it’s hard to keep track of them all. Still, that means the pacing isn’t as slow as other Netflix shows tend to be.
Rating 7/10
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