Stranger Things 2: Episode 1 “MADMAX” Review
- Adam Tye
- Nov 8, 2017
- 6 min read
Let's try this again, shall we?
★★★★
(Before we begin)
I’ve already gone on record in the past as being somewhat frosty towards the first season of Stranger Things to the point of zeroing in on the show as one of the prime culprits in television's current 'binge' craze and the way that leads to lazier and plotblockier writing. I’m also on record as being incredibly partial to the general production and idea of Stranger Things; the show had great acting across the board and a great sense of atmosphere. If I’m being honest, though, the latter only made the former all the more frustrating. It’s a sci-fi oriented show riffing off Amblin-era Spielberg crossed with the horror-leanings of Stephen King – how and why was it not one of my favourite shows of last year?!
Anyhoo, there was enough goodness there for me to keep an open mind about the show continuing and once the trailers started teasing maybe-Cthulu for season 2 I’d pretty much accepted that I was going to be on board. Several things about the new season did not sound promising given what previously turned me off a lot of the show, including a nine-episode count (eight was already too much) and the noted inspiration of movie sequels on the story (because who doesn’t love 100 minute movies stretched out to 400 minutes). But despite this, I’m going in with a positive mindset in the hope that ‘Stranger Things 2’ might win me over. I mean, stranger things have happened (#sorry/not sorry).
So does the show get off to a good start? Look, I wouldn’t be preparing to do an episode-by-episode breakdown if it didn’t do something right.
The plot of the episode is pretty sparse and largely sets the stage for a year after Season 1. All the cleanup has been done in the interim so we’re really just catching up with everyone and seeing what life after Eleven looks like. Surprising what is probably zero audience members, that life turns out to be fairly bright and chirpy on the outside, but secretly difficult on the inside.
This manifests itself in a couple of ways: the friends are all happy to be together given Will’s Season-long vacation to the upside-down, but underneath Will still retains some slither of a connection to the alternate dimension, whilst the rest of the gang feels at least partially distanced from him, given Will’s lingering psychological effects that they just don’t have a window into. That’s saying nothing of how Will’s ‘episodes’ and affected mood also affects his family, with Joyce understandably on constant alert for anything unusual.
Perhaps most gut-wrenching, however, is the revelation that Barb’s parents are planning to sell their house in order to hire a private investigator to find their daughter. Clearly no-one has yet brought themselves to tell the parents that Barb won’t be coming back and the toll it takes on Nancy still hits her as hard as ever.
Then, of course, we have Eleven, whose impact on the narrative is fairly minimal at this stage. The hole she has left in the lives of Hawkins’ citizens seems to only notably affect Mike and her actual presence in the episode is kept intentionally vague, though her eventual reveal to be dining with Hopper at the episode’s end is a pleasantly surprising one. Are we really going to keep the whole ‘Eggos’ thing though? Seriously, we can’t just let one meme from this show die? Whatever, I guess it’s not a big deal.
The good thing about episodes like this one which need clarify for the audience where the characters are since we last saw them, is that the information dump is usually enough to make it feel like a lot is happening, even if your actual narrative is pretty slight. ‘MADMAX’ doesn’t actually have a whole lot going on in it if you break it down, but unlike previous episodes where the plotblocking and extension made the story feel like it was spinning wheels, here the stakes are low enough and the information constant enough to earn the more ‘hang-out’ pace that the episode employs. The result is one of the more pleasantly entertaining episodes the show has produced all pointing to something that even I as someone who didn’t really like Season 1 has to admit; it’s good to see these people again. All the actors give it their all (David Harbour is still my MVP) and it all just adds to that sense of promise that draws me back into this show’s web.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to the show’s direction. Last Season, whilst capturing the steadiness of 80s cinema, couldn’t help but feel very…Netflix-y. What we get here, however, feels a bit snappier, with faster and more interesting transitions (I can’t help but be a fan of the cut between the shaking bin and Joyce moving a pan on the hob) that seem to suggest an inclination to be a bit more ‘interesting’ this time around (this happens even in subtle ways, like the back-and-forth cutting during the scene where Hopper listens to a man warning him about potential Russian spies in Hawkins; there’s a use of direction and editing for humour here that I don’t remember being in Season 1). This is all helped further by a noticeably more colourful picture than was previously used. I personally didn’t have anything against the sort of silvery/greyish tone that the show originally had, but having seen the upgrade, I really hope they don’t go back.
I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t reasonably expect to be as pleased with ‘MADMAX’ as I am, though I find myself tempering that enthusiasm ever so slightly. As noted previously, the episode’s narrative is on the lighter side, but the lack of any meaningful narrative propulsion is a little disconcerting given the show’s previous track record in this area. The titular Max is so unimpactful that I might have forgotten about her had the episode not put her name up in big fat letters right at the beginning. I also don’t really care for the episode’s opening which might be awesome for hardcore fans but errs a little too much on the bland side for me to get properly pumped about it. You also get the sense that there could have been more of a development regarding the main threat to lead us into the next episode, just to lend a bit more urgency to the proceedings. To be totally honest, however, most of these are really pressing in light of the shortcomings of Stranger Things 1. If the rest of the Season can deliver, then most of these problems aren’t particularly problematic anymore.
‘MADMAX’ doesn’t quite convince me yet that the show has started to adhere to any kind of episodic structure, though it feels closer than the show has come before. Setting that aside for the time being, then, we’re left with what I would probably consider to be one of the more pleasantly entertaining episodes in the series so far. I look forward to seeing if the show can keep this up.
Episode 2 "Trick or Treat, Freak" review here.
Other things:
I’m gonna try to keep up these reviews for the rest of the Season (they might not be episode-by-episode and I reserve the right to stop if I lose interest) with a complete Season review at the end for a proper overview.
This episode must have been doing something right because it was a pretty brisk 50 or so minutes.
The episode’s stage-setting doesn’t reach 24 levels of information-overload (when your show covers one day per season, an in-show year can really juggle the characters around), but then what does, apart from 24?
I’m still okay with the nostalgia business. The arcade bits verge on cheap, but even then it feels rooted enough to be at least partially excusable. I don’t know; I hate the nostalgia-craze a fair amount but I’m generally pretty indifferent when it comes to its use in Stranger Things.
I’m a sucker for presentation, so something as simple as changing the titles to ‘Stranger Things 2’ makes me happy.
Sean Astin joins the cast and is just as lovable as ever.
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