Stranger Things 2: Episode 2 “Trick or Treat, Freak” Review

Darkness crawls across the land…

★★★★

Stranger Things, for lack of a better term, is pulp. This tends to get buried underneath the sheen of the production, the Stephen King allusions and the ‘quieter’ writing style that Netflix jerks off to so consistently. But the truth is that, under the hood, Stranger Things is a pulp beach novel of a television show. Season One never quite seemed to understand that which both totally mucked up the pacing and entertainment value whilst also convincing its fans it was way more ‘deep’ than it actually was. That’s harsh, sure, but happily Stranger Things 2 already seems to staking more of a defined identity for itself that is more in-keeping with its more colourful inspirations. We get this on a more surface level with the warmer cinematography, but Episode 2 makes it clear that each character is going to pack more of a punch than they did last year. As a result, even though Episode 2 doesn’t quite achieve lift-off in terms of the main narrative, it maintains Episode 1’s achievement of being a solidly entertaining hour or so of television, more so than anything it achieved in Season 1.

We'll start with Eleven, whose storyline is probably the weakest element of the episode, in terms of dropping the ball and no going for some stronger story beats. Her exit from the Upside-Down lands with a severe thud that even the ensuing ‘On the Run’ scenes can’t quite recover from. It just seems so…easy. She’s there for, what, two minutes then tumbles out? It ends up not being the point, given how the real world is just as isolating for her as the Upside-Down is, but imagine how much more gut-wrenching that revelation could have been, if Eleven had to go through a super-shitty time to escape first, only to be rewarded with government agents hunting her down. The flashbacks littered throughout the episode don’t really do a whole lot more, but the writers at least seem to acknowledge this by not drawing them out all that much. If this was Season 1, it probably would have taken up half the episode.

I do want to quickly shout-out to Millie Bobby Brown, however. I actually confess that I wasn’t totally on the hype train for her last year, not because of her acting, but because Eleven was too thinly sketched for me to really latch on to anything. Here, though, she’s already displaying a subtle range that’s way more interesting than the myriad of stares she had to deliver last Season. So, yeah, I’ll hop onboard the hype train now, if that’s okay with people.

The actual Upside-Down/government part of the episode doesn’t exactly electrify, but everything else here keeps up the same, almost leisurely, pace from “MADMAX”. The episode just about avoids treading into repetition, largely because it’s happy to muck around with the general dynamics even though the supernatural stakes still aren’t all that high. Max joins the group in a little storyline that’s more satisfying than I thought it would be, even though we’re still left hanging as to what’s up with her and the guy (her brother?) who drives her around. Her entrance into the group upsets Mike which could have been built up to better, but then Mike has always been a bit of stealth-egotist when it comes to the group (check out his Venkman argument in which he gets super-pissed about not being uniquely the leader of the Ghostbusters for Halloween).

Most interesting is Nancy and Steve’s storyline which is easily the most emotionally messy of the series so far. Nancy (understandably) cannot leave Barb’s death behind, blaming herself whilst also distraught that seemingly no-one in the school seems to care. Steve, for all his good-intentions, is still unable to fully acknowledge the bigger picture and tries to simply ignore Barb’s death as well as all the complications that come along with it. We saw this last week with his “It’s finger licking good!” deflection but here it’s a lot more nakedly obvious.

The conflict comes to a head when Nancy, drunk and with a shirt drenched in red (a beautifully unsubtle bit of ‘blood on the hands’ imagery) calls Steve out on the bullshit that they are trying to peddle to each other, including their previously professed love. Steve leaves in confusion and Jonathon drives Nancy home. It’s refreshing to see the conflict tackled so transparently after last season never quite got a handle on communicating it clearly to the audience. The show may have to pick up those pieces now, but at least its moving fairly effectively on them.

Really the only other thing for me to call out in this episode is Will’s vision towards the end of the episode. Obviously, information is scarce right now, but on a purely technical level, the Xenomorph/Cthulu/Smoke Monster creature that chases Will through the Upside-Down is impressively realised and already far more unsettling than the fairly generic Demogorgan.

It’s unclear at this stage exactly what Stranger Things 2 is really about. Where the last Season offered some half-hearted commentary on the monstrosity of Cold War tactics, we’re not really far enough in to get much of a handle on the big themes this time. If we’re a little in the dark as to the show’s core focus, then, at least the show finally embraces its own identity by doubling down on its own elements. The show is funnier than before, the sci-fi is more unsettling and there’s less to suggest that the show is spinning wheels now that each beat is more economical than they have been previously. The show finally has the courtesy to be entertaining and if we haven’t got to the meat yet, I’ll take the escapism for now.

Episode 3 "The Pollywog" review here.

Other Things:

• Jonathon's status as 'The Nice Guy' is still a little weird given how we as a society have kind of wised-up to that idea and have attached generally negative connotations to it. The lack of proper justification and exploration of his stalking and photographing is probably not going to be addressed any time soon, which unfortunately leaves it hanging over the show. I'm not looking forward to if/when the 'love triangle' plotline between him, Nancy and Steve rears its ugly head again, but hopefully the writers keep it brief like they did with Eleven's flashbacks.

• The non-existence of the main storyline may be irking some, but I much prefer it to last Season, where the ball got rolling straight away but then they didn't know what to do with it so plotblocked for about four episodes. At least here it's entertaining to watch the characters go about their business whilst the big bad simmers in the background.

• I haven't talked much about Hopper yet, whose nerves are still clearly frayed from the events of Season 1. I'm waiting for his storyline to come to the forefront before I dive in on him but it's interesting to watch his relative distance to the other characters become almost moot given that Eleven - the one character people are looking for - is secretly under his protection.

• "Presumptiuous!" Yeah, it's not a good thing, Dustin.

• "I hope it doesn't suck!" Me too, Sean.

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