4x02 Chapter Two: Vecna's Curse

[7.3/10] Let’s start with the stuff I care about. It’s nice to see Mike and Eleven reunited. The sweetness of their reunion, and Eleven wanting to impress Mike, and the general tenor of the two characters who’ve been separated for months getting to be together again is heartwarming and infectious.

But I also appreciate where it goes wrong. One avenue of problems is Will, who feels like a third wheel, is miffed at how Mike doesn’t seem particularly invested or excited to see him, and is bothered by how Eleven’s lying to Mike. The subtext is that Will has an out-and-out crush on Mike. (The “What about us?” scene wasn’t particularly subtle.) And that's an interesting angle on the teenage love triangle you don’t see very often. Will working out his feelings in real time, in an era when there would be very little acceptance for that sort of thing, has lots of potential. (See also: Robin’s storyline.)

The other avenue is, of course, Angela. I’m not a fan of Angela, and I don’t just mean because she’s utterly horrible to poor Eleven. It’s because she’s cartoonish levels of mean, and the rest of her friends and every kid seems to be in on it. On’ get me wrong, kids can be awful to one another, but this seems too carticatured and absurd in its terribleness, to the point that it feels cheap and manipulative.

And yet, Millie Bobby Brown is a good enough young actress to make it work. You cannot help but feel for her, in the distance between the perfect day she’d planned with Mike, to the horrible humiliation that Angela and her goons inflict on her. It’s easy to pity and sympathize with her, and even to feel righteous anger on her behalf.

That's the cinch for when she socks Angela with a roller skate. On the one hand, it’s cathartic, given how craven Angela acted, going so far as to make fun of the fact that Eleven’s father is dead. On the other, it’s horrifying to see an act of physical violence that results in blood pouring down a young woman’s face, replete with flashbacks to Eleven’s murderous rampage from when she was a young child. It feels like we’re building to something in all of this -- Eleven having legitimate grievances but going too far -- and I’m curious to see where it all goes.

Likewise, I’m on board with the Family Video detective crew. Steve and Robin are already a great duo, and their conversation about wishing they could merge -- to form someone who knows what they want and has the gumption to go after it -- is endearing. Dustin and Max make a good duo as well, as surivvors of previous Upisde Down nonsense who, given Max’s proximity to the murder, know that something supernatural is up. And Dustin and Steve are already a great comic team, with a dynamic as funny and solid a give and take as any in the show. So the quartet using their quips and smarts and video rental histories to track down Eddie (via one “Reefer Rick”) makes for a good crew to follow.

The scene where they find Eddie is solid as well. The detective work checks out, and Eddie being understandably freaked by what he saw and unable to explain it in a way where any rational person would believe him is a good lead-in to the future supernatural chicanery to come.

That said, I’m not super into Vecna, or the explanation for him. I know we’ve been doing “real life monsters as D&D characters” for a long time now in Stranger Things, but how they’re able to piece together that the guy who killed Chrissy is an undead “dark wizard” laying curses on people seems too big of a leap.

Speaking of which, I don’t care about Nancy and her junior journalist/detective routine. She’s just not an interesting character, and her implausibly poking around the murder scene and talking to witnesses and bystanders feels like it’s only able to happen because the plot needs it too. We find out from Eddie’s uncle that Vecna is, potentially, some incarnation of a guy who killed his family years and years ago, adding to the Freddy Krueger vibes of the piece.

His latest kill is Nancy’s nerdy managing editor, Fred. And the scares that lead up to it are fine. The idea of a kid who was in a car accident and ran and becomes consumed by guilt is alright. But after Chrissy, the novelty has already worn off a bit, and we barely know Fred, so it’s tough to be too shattered by it. The actual death remains unnerving, with cracked bones, sunken eyes, and a body collapsing in a heap. But ghouls yelling “murderer!” and corpses in graves is pretty standard stuff.

I also don’t give a damn about Jonathan fretting over his relationship with Nancy. Sure, there’s something to the idea that he doesn’t want to repeat the cycle of his parents, and also doesn’t want to leave his mom and brother behind after all they’ve been through. But it’s flat teenage drama with nothing particularly novel or interesting about it. The only decent part is Argyle calling him out for lying and doing the “slow motion” break-up routine. A big meh.

I’m also come-see come-saw about the Satanic panic/D&D thing with the basketball star kid. It’s good for Stranger Things to play on real life hysterias, particularly when it overlaps with actual dark supernatural things occurring. But as with Eleven and Angela, the execution is too cartoony to really make an impact. I do appreciate that Jason seems genuinely broken up by his girlfriend’s death, but it’s still a pretty cheesy subplot so far.

Last but not least, I’m not nearly as invested in the Joyce/Murray/Hopper business as I could be. We’re moving slow and steady on Joyce and Murray following the trail to Hop. Their actual interactions are amusing enough, but we’re two episodes in, and their misadventures are already dragging, which isn’t a good sign.

As for Hopper, it’s all teases at the moment. It’s pretty cheap that they faked out his death, even if they already hinted at it at the end of last season. The torture scenes aren’t pleasant, but like a fair amount else in this episode, also don’t feel real enough to move you. The production design, costumers, and make-up team do a stellar job, and David Harbour continues to perform well. We just don’t really know what anybody wants from Hopper or what the point of this is, so it comes off like wheel-spinning before an inevitable reunion. It’s good that they want to try to earn what is effectively bringing back someone from the dead, showing how much crap they have to go through before it happens, but the crap isn’t particularly interesting so far.

That's where I am with “Vecna’s Curse.” Some material here is worth holding onto. But a lot of it, however well intentioned, isn’t real or interesting enough to care about.

I somehow found this episode less interesting than the previous one, though a lot of happens here, too. I guess the episodes should be shorter, I like to watch an episode in one go and it is really hard with this show. Also, there is some filler stuff like Jonathan's conversations with his friend about his love life.

Chrissie is found dead, so police investigation starts, but our characters investigate as well. There are several teams:

• Max tells Dustin what she saw and that there was some static in the tv so perphaps the supernatural powers are involved; they go to Steve and Robin and together they found out where Eddie might be hiding as they want to help him and do not believe he killed Chrissie. Eddie tells them what happens and they reveal the truth about the other side; though what Dustin says about their D&D games implies that by playing these games, the gang can somehow summon these sinister creatures from the upside down which feature in the game? Something happens every time they play, so maybe they'll just stop, OK?

-Lucas is with the baskeball team and the guy who is the captain of the team dated Chrissie and now believes that Eddie killed her so he and his team decide to hunt Eddie down and revenge Chrissie.

• We have the second victim in Nancy's nerdy assisstant, who starts seeing creepy people accusing him of being a murderer and at the end he has his arms and legs broken and is dead just like Chrissie. Nancy shows some journalist skill in questioning Eddie's uncle who tells her the story of a local psychopath.

• Mike comes to visit El but instead of having a romantic date with her boyfriend, she get humilitated by Angela and the rest of the buddies. El takes revenge on Angela by hitting her on the face with a rollerskate, with the callback to her past when she supposedly kills all other kids who participated in the experiment (what about these gifted kids whom she met when she escaped from Hawkins in I think season 1? they couldn't have been killed as she wouldn't meet them otherwise)

• Joyce and Murray investigate the letter Joyce found in the doll and decide to call the number given in the letter (Murray uses some kind of pre-VPN to hide their location) and get in touch with a guy who is a guard in a Russian prison where Hopper ended up. And monsters will be monsters but the real scary thing in the show is the Russian prison since this is what is really happening to some Ucrainian people right now who ended in Russian prisons. The Russians are the real monsters here.