1x05 Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat

[7.1/10] My wife pointed out that Nancy and Jonathan are basically the two main teenagers from American Beauty, and now I can’t unsee it. Their dynamic of the soulful artsy boy from a hardscrabble family and the girl from the boring suburban home who’s tired of her parents’ comfortable life didn’t originate in that film, but Stranger Things is definitely deploying the same tropes. It’s hard to take the two of them or their whole routine seriously. (Though Jonathan’s burn about Nancy trending toward the life and relationships she claims to disdain so much in her parents is pretty good.)

The two of them training for battle and discussing the ins and outs of life is pretty meh. Though at least they have a plan. It’s not necessarily a great one -- go out with a single revolver and a poorly-swung baseball bat to try to fight some monster in the woods where all these mysterious events are happening, but it’s something. Granted, Nancy just crawling through a treehole into another world (“What’s this? What’s this?”) isn’t the brightest thing in the world, but there’s some good horror in the wounded deer disappearing before their eyes.

Still, it’s a better plan than Hopper’s. I figured his initial idea was just to snoop around the Hawkins Lab, get whatever info he can, and then try to beg off if he’s caught. Instead, it seems like his plan, even after he gets a gun trained on him by a security guard, is to just lumber in there, punch whoever he needs to punch, maybe find Will, and then hope he can blast his way out. It’s a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid plan. It’s also a miracle he didn’t get killed.

But hey, in both stories, we get our first glimpse of the “Vale of Shadows” and/or the “Upside Down”. The show does a good job to visually distinguish it, adding some color grading and particle effects, in addition to crafting some unique alien flora and fauna that mark this place as scary and off.

Despite wandering into that zone and getting taken out by the agents, Hopper wakes up in a setting that suggests he just had a bender and/or drug trip, and starts going nuts to find the bug the feds planted in his home. He does the same for Joyce, and you get that cathartic moment where he confirms she’s not crazy, but that there really is something hinky going on. Again, the pieces are starting to come together, which is good as we embark on the back half of the season.

That said, I didn’t really like Joyce’s story in this one. The big struggle I’ve had with this show is that it’s chock full of a lot of clichés. Sometimes, you can use archetypes and expectations to good measure, but Stranger Things doesn’t really find any new wrinkles or angles on the “deadbeat ex comes back during rough time” storyline. Lonnie is still a shit, and the reveal that he likely only came back to try to collect a payday on his son’s death isn’t terribly shocking or surprising. The whole thing plays out as expected, and aside from the high volume at the end, is no more compelling or original than the teenagers’ story.

Things fare a little bit better with the middle-schoolers. While the science teacher’s explanations of the many worlds theory and parallel dimensions feels weirdly calibrated and jumbled, it probably passes the smell test for a supernatural T.V. show well enough. (I’ll admit to cringing during various parts of it -- the writing in this one wasn’t great.)

But it gives the kiddos a direction, almost literally. They realize that this “gate” must have some kind of effect on the magnetic fields which allows them to use their compasses to find it. It’s a good episode for the non-Mike contingent of the kid crew. Dustin gets his time to shine for figuring all of this out and how to use the compass, but Lucas has a really reasonable response that they don’t really know Eleven or what her aims are, and they could be flying blind here and probably need an adult. His fight with Mike, the scare after Eleven wipes him out, and his angry storm off afterwards are emotionally strong material.

We also get some cool stuff with Eleven (who I’m still convinced is likely to be Hopper’s supposedly dead daughter). I like the idea that she used her powers to mess with the boys’ compasses because she thinks it’s too dangerous for them to cross into the Vale of Shadows. Likewise, we get another fantastic flashback sequence. We see not only what the government might want to use Eleven for beyond assassinations -- plain old espionage -- and we see (or at least see the suggestion) of her first encounter with the monster in the other realm. (Feels like shades of Nightcrawler and the dimension he crosses to teleport, which works for a show that name-drops X-Men on a regular basis.)

Visually, there’s also something striking about both her being put into the water tank in a strange costume and apparatus, and about the blackness she walks through to spy on the agency’s target. (Shades of Under the Skin!)

Overall, this one is a definite step down from prior episodes, mostly for its focus on the rote storylines with Nancy/Jonathan and Joyce/Lonnie, as well as the stupidity of Hopper here. But there’s still some quality material, and we’re moving closer to our heroes zeroing in on what’s really going on, which is a good thing.