Stranger Things - an 80s-gasm

Pam writes:

James and I had different views on this one. I doubt I would have watched past the second episode of this mini series if it weren't for the fact that Our Winona was starring in it. James was more interested from a D&D perspective, and will write about that below. It did keep my attention from literary, and nostalgic standpoints, but the story itself really didn't pique my interest. The show takes place in the magical year of 1983 (the year James and I met). It has some cool, 80's props and plays on a lot of '80s film motifs, starting with Poltergeist. We also picked up themes from ET, Stand by Me, Firestarter, The Goonies (honestly, I cannot understand why so many people love that film), with a sprinkling of Fast Times at Ridgemont High thrown in. 

Natalia Dyer as Nancy and Charlie Heaton as Jonathan in some ways echo
the Heathers characters of Winona and Christian Slater. 

I did like that there was a juxtaposition of the horror show meme in which the virgin always survives. In this upside down story the virgin (Barb, who the directors must have modeled on my sister's yearbook photo) is made toast while her best friend (Nancy Wheeler) gets busy (and survives to tell the tale). I also really want to believe that Nancy's character was named for the best friend in that great American novel, Judy Blume's Are You there God? It's Me, Margaret, the character I would have voted "most likely to be the first to lose her virginity".

The show also made good use of the "four smart friends motif" in which there are two white boys, one black boy, and one white girl. Well done Duffer Brothers.

The Four Musketeer nerds. Not sure which one would have been James.

James writes:
Pam is right -- I liked this miniseries more than she did, and Dungeons & Dragons had something to do with it. I was thrilled to find D&D featured in the very first scene.  It brought me right back to those days when -- several years older than these kids -- I played for hours on end, sometimes five days a week. I did not realize until hearing Ethan Gilsdorf's interview on Radio Boston that the D&D scenes were a Spielberg reference; I thought they were just a reference to my adolescence. (Free new word I just invented for nostalgia lovers: adolreference -- things relating to one's long-ago teenage years.)

In our recent Noni's Return post, we set the context for Noni's role in this series, the first in which she plays a mother that is not a "mom" in the way that word is generally used these days. In his Salon article about this series as a nostalgia trip, Ethan Gilsdorf hints at why this role may have been so successful for her -- she plays a mother from an analog era, before the launch of helicopter parents. This seems a better fit for her than some mothering roles set in the present would be.

Millie Bobbie Brown shines as Eleven.

In addition to Ethan Gilsdorf's article and interview about nostalgia in general, we read an interesting article about the props in particular. Writing for Wired, Tim Moynihan describes the care taken in buying or making all of the props used in the series on a budget of just $220,000. The film is set during that brief window in telephone history when it had become possible to buy phones (not an option when I was a kid), but not yet impossible to buy a rotary phone. The props people could have reached out to my family. Perhaps because my grandfather worked for the "real" telephone company, this is not just the phone of my youth; it is the phone I still use when visiting my grandmother.

Final Verdict: Four balls


Pam did not like this much more than a three-baller, but we agreed that ties are decided in favor of Noni. And we agree that her role in this was strong.