Stranger Things Watch Notes S04E01 – The Hellfire Club

I held off posting this, just in case I spoiled a bunch of shit, but I don’t think anyone is reading, so it’s not like it matters. 😂

These were just my thoughts as the episode progressed. I now know some of it is wrong, but I’m not going to go back and correct anything.

Apologies if this gets a little nitpicky, but I can’t help where my brain goes while watching something. Little nitpicks about production design or anachronisms don’t, in any way, ruin a good story. They are just observations.

Intro takes place on September 8th, 1979, but we see a bunch of houses with flags out in front. This is a bit of an anachronism. Prior to September 11th, 2001, very few Americans flew a flag in front of their house unless it was a holiday. September 8th 1979 was a Saturday (I looked that up, I didn’t just know that), and it was after Labor Day, so it’s unlikely someone would have left their flag up for the entire week. I don’t want to say it’s impossible that someone would have a flag up year-round, but it was pretty rare in those days.

Did I forget some backtracking on “Father” in previous seasons? I seem to remember him being an unrepentant villain. Or is this the start of some backtracking on him?

I do love how this show is unafraid to show murder and gore. Even to children.

CGI faces/de-aging looks so much better when the person isn’t speaking. The 8 year old (?) version of Eleven looks really good.

Writing a letter to someone who isn’t there; classic device to catch up an audience.

Showing us one thing and telling us another is a good device too.

They hinted last season that Will might be gay. I hated this decision because he is, by far, the most traumatized character. So having him be gay just feeds into an old myth/stereotype that abuse/trauma leads to homosexuality. Eleven’s narration hints further into this in the most ham-fisted way. “Maybe (his painting) is for a girl. I think there’s someone he likes because he’s been acting strange.” Then show us him staring longingly at his painting. You can argue these are words coming out of a developmentally stunted person, but it’s still an ugly way to do it, in my opinion. But maybe that’s just because I hate that decision. Also, for the love of God why does this kid’s hair always look so awful?

Was that lotion on Jonathan’s nightstand? Well, he’s a teenage boy and we all know what that’s for. California is very arid. His hands are probably cracked and dry.

Jonathan has a The Evil Dead poster… which nobody had back then. I mean, maybe he got a one sheet from a theater somewhere after the movie was taken out of circulation, but I doubt you could just buy that somewhere. It’s definitely just there as a reference because the filmmakers like the movie. We saw the same thing in an earlier season where someone had a The Thing poster. Again, the movie tanked, nobody saw it or cared until it grew legs (get it???) on home video.

Oh, another hint about Will being gay. His project is on Alan Turing.

The wacky California stoner friend has uttered one line and I already hate him.

For all my gripes it’s actually good visual story telling. “At first I missed all the flowers, but now I think it’s real pretty here.” As Eleven looks sadly out the window at the rocky, mostly lifeless, southern California terrain.

Wait. Jonathan is still in high school? I think the time between seasons has my thinking these shows are also years apart.

Ugh… 80s stereotype overload. Everyone, and I mean everyone, at the school is wearing prototypical clothes of some 80s clique. Look, there’s a metal guy with a denim vest full of patches, there’s a surfer/skater dude, there’s a valley girl! Yes, of course these fashions existed, but most kids were wearing Montgomery Ward discount rack shit, or their older sibling’s hand-me-downs.

Well, this blonde bitch classmate has a slappable face. Let’s hope she isn’t a throwaway character and she gets slapped.

Having Mike read the letter is a nice way to transition between the two sets of characters.

Back to the stereotypes. Mike’s mom has a perm and headband… like a 20-year-old might have on a workout poster. Isn’t his mom supposed to be in her 40s?

At least the dad still looks like a typical dad of the 80s.

Ah, the classic Wargames/Ferris Bueller setup where the school is not only advanced enough to have everyone’s grades entered in electronically, but accessible via a modem… for some reason? This is a small town in Indiana, right? Having a computer to track information is reasonable enough, but why would it be accessible remotely?

STEVE!!! Wait, is Steve still in high school? It sounds like Robin is.

Great line from Robin “You ask out the wrong girl and maybe your ego is bruised. I ask out the wrong girl and I’m the town pariah.” BTW, there’s a movie, more or less about this same subject, called Pariah. It’s excellent. Check it out.

Steve uses the evidence that a girl Robin is interested in paused Fast Times and Ridgemont High at the infamous pool scene with Phoebe Cates. This must mean she’s a lesbian because she likes boobies. I get that they need some device for meathead Steve (and I say that lovingly) to boost Robin’s confidence, but that’s super weird and smacks of a man writing about lesbians. “Well, I like naked girls and pop-off to them… so lesbians must do the same thing, right?” Of course. Lesbians are humans too, with human needs, but how about giving a lesbian a swing at that dialogue? Particularly one in her late 40s/ early 50s, who was a teen in the mid-80s. Even if the line is still delivered by Steve, having him observe something more natural, which makes him think Robin’s crush might be a lesbian, would come off much more convincing.

I love Steve. It’s not his fault he was given such bad dialogue there. He is a blameless holy creature. 😇

Look at how diverse this school is. It’s like a perfect demographic melting pot from the students up to the teachers… like literally no school in Indiana’s history has ever been.

Ok, Robin is still in high school. Again, I think my sense of time is thrown off by the production schedule.

OF COURSE Lucas, the black one, plays basketball. I mean, that practically writes itself. “He’s black. He’s good at sports, right?”

Shamelessly using a legit tragedy to pump people up about a meaningless distraction, like a high school sporting event? That shit is timeless. I approve.

All these kids look 3 years older than the last time we saw them, except Max, who looks exactly the same.

Lucas makes a case for not wanting to be bullied and part of the nerd crowd. Total missed opportunity to bring up the fact he’s black. But the show hand waves away that racial tensions exist in the United States (outside of one comment in an earlier season when they were dressed as Ghostbusters), so that’s not surprising. Imagine if Lucas’s plea was more in line with “It’s easy for you guys to be nerds. That’s only one strike against you, but look at me! Being a nerd isn’t even the first thing everyone sees about me. I need all the help I can get for people to just let me be.”

I love how brown Joyce’s house is. Classic.

A parcel… from Siberia. HOW STRANGE!

Was that even a thing? Gorbachev is already party leader by ’86 and perestroika was ineffect, but I don’t know if they had a free flow of packages from the USSR to western countries. I suspect the doll has some secret inside it, which was miraculously hidden from Soviet mail snoops, but it still seems really out of place. It would have made more sense if the package came from West Germany (smuggled from East to West) and inside the box was another box with Cyrillic writing on it, to let the audience know it was Russian. Then inside that was the doll.

The smackable bitch is back. She’s going to be a character. Let’s hope she gets smacked.

Eleven says she chose her dad as her hero and everyone chortles. Why? I could see one or two bullies (who it appears they are setting the smackable bitch up to be) smirking or rolling their eyes, but why would the whole class chuckle? And then they full on laugh at her when a student insults her display. Why the fuck is this teacher allowing this? I went to school in the 80s. Teachers didn’t put up with shit back then, because they could get away with laying into kids. Maybe not physically, but definitely verbally.

Oh look, a girl is trying to play footsie with Will and he’s not into it… because he’s GAAAAAAAAY!

This teacher lets this go way too far.

So… Will seems to be a-ok. Being trapped in a nightmare dimension for weeks and weeks and then being possessed by a demon hasn’t affected him too badly… I mean except making him GAAAAAAAY!

Painted cinderblock walls. That clock on the wall in the counselor’s office. I’m having flashbacks.

That’s right, Billy, the guy who committed a hate crime and was a monstrous piece of shit and rapist, got a hero’s ending.

Dual taps on a sink? Was that a thing anywhere in the US? Probably. I just don’t remember it.

Spooky monsters trying to get into people’s heads would have a better time if they didn’t flash all the lights and bang on doors.

This D&D group has two black kids in it, assuming Lucas is normally part of it. I don’t know what’s less realistic, that fact, or all the supernatural monsters and evil dimensional stuff.

They all seem surprised that Lucas can’t make the game and that he’s on the basketball team. That has never come up before this?

Ok, this D&D guy has failed senior year twice. So he’s like 19 or 20?

Oh the wacky bearded guy who knew about Soviet stuff is back. Shouldn’t they be pruning characters?

Wait, the doll is clearly cracked and glued back together? There’s no way that makes it past Soviet mail snoops.

God I hate Jonathan’s stoner friend.

Nancy has a giant head. Or maybe she has a tiny body. Not sure which. Shame on me for commenting on that, but it really stands out. Poufed out curly hair just exacerbates the situation.

Oh, the stoner friend mentions whackin’ it. So maybe that lotion wasn’t for Jonathan’s dry hands?

Wait… why did Mike look around the school newspaper room like that when he called out for Nancy? Did he not recognize his sister? What was that all about?

Alright, so Steve isn’t in school. He’s at work while the kids are at school.

A montage set to the mall montage music from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A bit on the nose. Though that movie came out in ’89, is that song anachronistic for ‘86? I get that it’s meant to be non-diegetic, but still, you typically want to use period accurate music, even if characters aren’t listening to it.

Dustin yells to a kid on a skateboard to wear a helmet. What a square. Nobody wore helmets or pads back then.

Ok, who puts a picknick table in the middle of the woods? No path. No other markings. And even in ’86 what teenage girl goes there by herself???

The D&D guy sells drugs. Of course. She was going there to meet him and knew he’d be there. I’ll allow it.

Wait… the D&D guy knew the cheerleader in middle school? I thought he flunked senior year twice? How does that work? Maybe their middle school is grades 6 – 8 or 7 – 9 and she just got there as he was in his last year? Still and odd thing. Why have him be held back twice if you’re going to make this a plot point. Having him held back once would have been sufficient to establish the character’s flaws.

I kind of like the D&D guy’s performance. It’s surprisingly natural for playing such a weirdo.

What teacher says out loud “very disappointing” to a student regarding their test result? Even back in the 80s.

Smackable bitch about to get smacked! DO IT! Well… that was embarrassing. I was hoping Eleven would explode her head.

Oh, now the teacher gets involved? Fuck this teacher.

How can this show ignore that Will is, by far, the most traumatized? Is his actor really bad or something? Is he a jerk and they don’t want to write for him?

Joyce doing Joyce shit in her front yard. That’s good.

Where did the Russian gets access to a newspaper or magazine with Latin alphabet?

Was this singer someone from a previous season? They’re talking about her like we should know who she is.

Oh, and apparently Robin can just blurt out that she’s a lesbian and not have to worry. And luck would have it, the girl she has a crush on is also not too worried about revealing she’s a lesbian. The Reagan years sure were a great time to be gay!

Lucas’s sister is back. She was fun, but we need to be pruning characters.

The sister’s babble about her D&D character has me wondering if that’s all legit to 1st Edition AD&D (which is what they would be playing. 2nd Edition was 1989). I don’t know enough about that edition to say for sure.

Two black kids in this D&D club and one of them is a girl? This is a fantasy program.

Photographer stands at one end of the basketball court taking photos, rather than moving around. Great coverage.

I don’t think Vecna was an actual villain you could fight in AD&D. Though this guy might be going off book here, which is awesome, if so.

It still blows my mind that these kids play with miniatures and a battle map. That really didn’t become the norm until 3rd Edition (circa 2000). It wasn’t totally unheard of. D&D spawned out of war gaming. It just wasn’t the norm.

Dustin rolls a single D20, but it clacks in his hand like he has multiple dice.

I think dice in ’86 were still the sharp edged kind. Though I could be wrong there.

I can’t be mad at the inclusion of Lucas’s sister. She really is great.

Max cleaning up after her drunk mom. More 80s magic. Was Coors available in Indiana in ’86? I thought that was a Colorado and west coast thing?

Is D&D guy about to get some tail from the cheerleader who is at least 3 years younger than him?

No, looks like she’s just there to buy drugs. Don’t make this guy be a rapist. Please.

The cheerleader wandered into A Nightmare on Elm Street! Like… almost shot for shot from an Elm Street movie.

Creepy visuals on the monster.

CHRISSY’S FLOATING! HOW’S THAT DONE THEN?!?

Cool idea on her getting all distorted and bloody, but it just looks CGI and fakey.