(“Who is everyone, and how does this world work?”) When a TV show first debuts, its pilot episode has a lot of work to do.įor an audience to get hooked, any series’s very first episode must: (ALSO: I’ve only seen the first 3 episodes of this season as I type this, so I may revise this post once I see all 9.) Why Stranger Things 2 Episode 1 Is Near-Perfectĭarkness falls across the land… the midnight hour is close at hand… ******** WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things 2 Episode 1 “MADMAX”. What I wasn’t expecting was to write this post explaining why Stranger Things 2 Episode 1 is one of the best television episodes of the year. Maybe season two… er, sorry, “the sequel”… would succeed where the original sometimes fell short. I figured the Duffer Brothers must have learned a lot from their season one experiment. This season already looked like more confident filmmaking just from the trailer alone. I actually got excited about what the next chapter of this story might accomplish. Then I watched the “Thriller” trailer for Stranger Things 2 and… I was surprised.
(Plus, there’s the iconic moment with Steve and the baseball bat.)
It stuck the landing in a way that almost made up for some of my frustrations with the series as a whole. The pacing was tighter, the acting was solid, and its multiple storylines dovetailed into a pseudo-ending that was thematically appropriate. However, I did think the first season did a good job of paying off its final episode. I was rooting for it, but nostalgia alone wasn’t enough to keep me hooked. I liked the concept, the characters, and the ’80s homage, but I just couldn’t get past some of the flaws. But that was my own problem.įor another, I thought the writing was a little obvious and the acting was a bit stiff.
But I had my reasons.įor one thing, I didn’t watch it until months after it came out, so its hype was impossible to live up to. Seriously, how did Joyce not get fired during all this?