Old Man Yells at Cloud: TV Edition - I Just Go Off on Stranger Things Season 5 Part 1 Episode 1

I want you to know two things before going in here. No, three things. One, I kinda liked Seasons 1 - 4 of Stranger Things to varying levels. Two, this article is filled with spoilers. And three, my opinion of Season Five Part One does not reflect the opinions of Pixigonal and its staff as whole because many of them like this and are wrong for doing so.

Let's just tear into this in the order the hits happen.

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Episode 1:

• This intro with Will in the past escaping the Demo is just not done well. It didn't happen in Season One because earlier Stranger Things was REALLY good at just not showing things and letting us have suspense. Instead we get a scene where an uncharacteristically athletic CGI Will runs through an XBox 360 cut scene that had me thinking Master Chief was going to come save him.
  

• No we're going to get a Holly Wheeler scene. She's been recast much older and is now played by Nell Fisher. It seems innocent at first save for the weird man outside, because for some reason the Duffer Bros seem OBSESSED with Nell Fisher and every single scene with her (there are a LOT of scenes with her) are going to suddenly be well lit and have a LOT of work to the point where it's jarring in contrast to the rest of the show. Almost like Season Five is mostly serving as this girl's demo reel.
  

• We then cut to everyone waking up and we find that because a bunch of houses have been destroyed following the events of Season 4's ending that won't really get talked about despite the city LITERALLY getting torn in half, the majority of the main characters are living in the Wheeler house. Lucas's family are once again completely uneffected by the events of this show despite their son almost dying at the hands of the entire Hawkings football team and their daughter having helped stop a Russian plot under the Hawkins mall.
  

• The scene also shows us Holly reading Wrinkle in Time with it's original Animorphs ass looking cover. As someone who grew up in the 80's, I'm going to tell you this flat out, most of us did not read Wrinkle in Time until we were WAY older. I was a huge sci-fi book person back in the day as were my friends and...listen...I hate to tell you but Wrinkle in Time was not as well known as this show makes it out to be when EVERYONE seems to be familiar with it.
  

• We now cut to the Hawkings Radio Station where we find out that in the 18 months since the events of the last season, Robin has her own radio show (which normally takes a lot of college and training) and Nancy is the checks notes STATION MANAGER?! I guess Nancy gave up on the reporter job that pretty much handed her and Jon in the previous season.
  

• The radio job is basically a plot device used to allow Robin to showhorn a TON of exposition in about what little has happened in the city. You're going to come to notice this with Season 5, why work towards something when you can just explain to an audience to move the plot along?
  

• While we're in this info dump, we see that the military has built a base in the middle of Hawkins and it is the worse base. Take a minute and look over this base. They built watch towers about two feet tall when the spot they chose is surrounded by two easily accessible church towers with 360 degrees of view. Look.

The red arrow points to one of their guard towers well below the buildings around it. Where as the blue arrows point to two towers that look over EVERYTHING. And I saw "easily accessible" because holy shit do the main characters use these towers like CRAZY to spy on the entire installation constantly.

• We then cut to Dustin dealing with jocks at the school. Sure, the city is ripped in half and Vecna is a thing, but let's focus on the jocks that should have been over and done with in Season 4. They're upset with the fact that he's wearing a Hellfire shirt to school which, honestly, the school itself should have banned because it's in the middle of a pending murder investigation. Maybe they're just mad because there's a 23-year-old actor that looks 30 infiltrating their school.
  

• Dustin's friends show up and scare off the bullies in a pretty great scene that shows how they developed that will NEVER happen again. But this scene was actually pretty alright and really shows the power that shows what happened if four grown ass adults dressed like kids can have in over powering a high schooler.
  

• We then cut to Eleven training. Much like when they reveal another female character later we find out that the Duffer Brothers handles their actresses becoming adults by hiding them under four layers of clothing. They go from mall fashion to homeless in the winter chic.
  

• The training is mixed with footage of the military chasing a woman that looks like Eleven. This leads to them taking the woman out and saying that it's not her, it's "Another goddamn burnout, sir". I'm sorry, what's happening with burnouts? Don't worry about it, there will NEVER be another mention of this ever.
  

• Meanwhile, back at Eleven training camp at the auto junkyard that's like Hawkin's number one hang out spot, she's doing some really weird parkour training that will never be used. It's weird too because they go through a LOT of edits and cuts to make it look like the actress is pulling this off but...there isn't a need for this scene so it's weird they went so much work to show her doing something that, eventually, just leads to her landing on a roof three episodes later.
  

• Now we reintroduce Murray. Murray had become my favorite character because when other characters start getting into interpersonal drama at the worst possible time, he'd show up and tell them to shut up and stay focused and I appreciated that. But now, for reasons never fully explained he's become a Metal Gear merchant NPC that just shows up in a truck and drops off items convient to the plot. That's LITERALLY what he does. If there's something the show needs to move forward he shows up in his Deus Ex Machina truck and literally just hands it to the characters. Bro literally just hands Joyce a surveyor's wheel in a later episode. In fact, there's a part in a later episode where they have to, essentially, kidnap some kids and he shows up with a little kidnap hut built into the truck.
  

• Back at the radio tower, they need to plug in a cable at the top of a radio tower...for reasons...and it's when we get to see Jon and Steve fighting for Nancy's affection. Remember that plot device that mostly died in season one? Well it's back, baby and it does NOT need to be there right now.
  

• After it's fixed Murray hands the crew their next shipment of plot devices, including giving Steve some Peanut Butter Boppers, a super nasty snack from my childhood that is mostly introduced to give us one of the laziest fucking metaphors later.

• After a couple minutes of high school drama with the "kids" we get a scene in which Robin's usage of the radio station is confirmed. She uses trivia facts about Diana Ross to convey secret information to the gang who all drop EVERYTHING to translate it. It's a pretty interesting way to convey information that will NEVER be used again so enjoy it while you can.
  

• Later we get a scene in which Holly is making people suspicious with how she'll stare off into space and start talking to nothing which reminds me of how, when I was a kid in the 80's, my school also didn't understand autism. BTo bad they notice her talking to nothing more than they don't notice they Derek kid running around bullying everyone.

  
  

• We cut to the inside of a military base where they're storing a crazy tentacle that has never been in the show before in the safest way possible; a glass container in the middle of a mostly glass greenhouse looking building.
  

• It's in this scene that we're introduced to Dr. Kay, the show's new villain that was never her until just the fuck now. She's fulfilling the Duffer Brother's need to reintroduce actors from the past by having her played by Linda Hamilton who I had no idea was 5' 5" until the show constantly films her at angles making her appear 4' 1". They let us know how tough she is by having her randomly cutting into a still beating organ of some sort while not taking any sort of notes, equipment, or using a proper station to catch run off, almost as if she's just...cutting into shit randomly. She then lets us know that there's nothing they can do with their plan without "the girl". We get it.
  

• Meanwhile Hop and El are having a talk about how her training times are getting better as the return to Hop's cabin which is in a much less dense area of woods this time with a much smaller interior than from previous seasons. Joyce gives Hop a really weird speech about how he's beeing too hard on Eleven and maybe should give her more freedom, which would be a really cool speech if the thing Eleven wants to do isn't run ass first into a heavily guarded military facility filled with the most trigger heavy soldier characters I've ever seen.
  

• Shortly after, we cut to the jocks and it gives us my two favorite moments of the entire fucking season. One, this jock talking about how the girls all seemed to have gone up two sizes in the last year which feels like a writer's cry for help:

And then after he discovers the snake we get this random dude saying the wildest shit.

Who is this man who immediately walks into this scene never to be seen again and just identifies a snake by its breed. WHO ARE YOU, SNAKE KING? I just want this dude showing up in other scenes identifying animals. Spider will show up and he'll be like, "It's just a Gooty Sapphire Ornamental Tarantula, dude!"

• Next we get Holly reading Wrinkle in Time yet again. Foreshadowing. They're hanging out after school so that the teacher can be like "Holly is a really good student who's very respectful in a school filled with class cutting violent assholes, but she's got too much imagination to not be a problem"...I assume.

  
  

• In this scene Mike gives Holly what I'm sure won't be a plot device. He gives her a D&D miniature of a Cleric (which dude, you're going to net let someone pick their own first class?) and then gives the weirdest description of a Cleric I've ever heard. He talks about how Clerics can open dimensional doors which, bro, have you had a Cleric in your party? It's hard enough getting someone to be a reliable healer let alone a Cleric that's going to mess with the realms. He mentions that they can teleport to anywhere they can visualize, again, where are these Cleric users in my game. And basically describes a Cleric using every single term and idea they're going to need Holly to pull off in later scenes. He even says it makes her more powerful that Mr. Whatsit before even realizing Whatsit is secretly Vecna.

  
  

• We cut to Lucas visiting Max in the hospital who while still being in a coma looks like she has fully recovered from having pretty much every bone in her body broken.

  
  

• Elsewhere in the hospital we get this really weird scene where Will watches Robin and Vickie realizing that they're gay and sprayed coke everywhere. It's a really weird scene because Will WATCHES them. Like...for a very long time. Also, poor Vickie. To have so much work being put into this character only for the writers to literally have no idea what to do with her come the end of the show. I think they were just so psyched to have someone look like Molly Ringwald.
  

• Then we cut to Dustin visiting Eddie's grave in the cemetery where, apparently, he comes to regularly to clean off vandalism. This will also be the first scene of Paint Thinner which I capitalize because there's so much of it in this show it's practically a character. He then realizes that the football team set up a trap for him and that the paint isn't paint, it's actually blood of the corn snake that they cut up and used as a marker. You know, the guys that were accusing the D&D kids of animal sacrifices now using the corpse of an animal as a fucking Crayola. Dustin makes a big speech that's just a coy way of referencing blindness before splashing Paint Thinner into everyone's eyes leading to him getting the ever-loving shit beat out of him to the point I'm pretty sure the jocks who we will never see again left him for dead.
  

• After this scene we go back to the radio tower where Mike and Eleven meet up, remind us very briefly that they're in a relationship before the show never mentions it again, and then has everyone briefly question where Dustin is before never mentioning it again.
  

• At the end of the radio tower scene, where it is suddenly the blackest of night, we find Steve about to head out in the radio van on a mission to track Hopper through the Upside Down using a radio frequency tracker. Which I'm sorry, why does a small radio station have a bunch of equipment that is absolutely unncessary for even a large radio station to have? Regardless...we also get our first thing of Will volunteering to do something useful and his mom Joyce absollutely blocking him. It's supposed to be because she's being protective (which, her kid has been through hell, I don't blame her) but I like to imagine it's just because people are so thrown off from him being useless for four seasons. I wonder if this will be a thing.
  

• When Hopper leaves to go into the tunnels there's a cute scene with him and Joyce that I actually liked where they just get cute with each other before he has to leave. I actually thought this scene was cute and a return to what made the first season great, but I'm also pointing it out because if you watch the end before the sloppy cut away, it is 100% clear the stick holding the trap door up came down on Hopper's head.
  

• We then cut to the Wheeler house where Holly is fastening a necklace for her plot device, I mean Cleric mini so she can wear it around her neck like a cross when she overhears her parents arguing about her. This is around the time when I start to realize that Ted is actually a very realistic character as he mentions the fact that it really isn't that weird for kid's Holly's age to want to play pretend. The mom said something about it wouldn't be so weird if she was five, despite the fact that 8-10 is the time when 65% of kids that are going to have imaginary friends tend to get them, statistically. The sudden influx in forced drama scares Holly and she goes into her room to cry, clutching the Cleric.
  

• Meanwhile in Hopper's tunnel, he comes up in the Radio Shack (because the Duffers only have a small frame of reference for things in the 80's) and spies on the military camp which, again, the military is fucking AWFUL at guarding. Mike and Will are using one of the aforementioned church towers to spy on the soldiers doing what I can only describe as high scale random meandering as they're all just wondering in random directions, often just stopping and turning while desperately panicking waiting for a "cut" direction.
  

• We then see that the base is built around a massive glowing read portal that needs to be burnt away to enter and is, conveniently, the size of a military convoy. Hopper sneaks onto one of them because, again conveniently, left the entire back of it open despite the fact that in this sort of situation they'd be REALLY worried about having that accessible, especially with convoy trucks being the defacto way for people to sneak in and out of places in movies and shows.
  

• Once Hopper's through, Steve and Jon chase after Hops signature while Steve absolutely stuggles (as an actor) to house a massive Peanut Butter Bopper. Like, he looks like he's going through hell trying to eat that thing. For some reason all the convoys crash into each other. As it turns out one of the soldiers detected something and, instead of radioing it in, slammed on his breaks causing everyone to crash, something no one seems upset about.
  

• While this is doing on, we realize a Demogorgon has found them and we get introduced to two of the show's newest things. One: Will's new brand of E-Girl Ahegao face:

uWu(?)

Two: Violence. See, listen gang, I get that a lot of these shows can be violent and I get that these are nightmare creatures, but when Stranger Things first started it was violent through suggestion. Things happening off camera, us not fully understanding what was happening to people, and via the theater of the mind it made things actually tense because when you think about being eaten by a flower made of teeth your mind can do a lot with that you don't necessarily want it to. But now the Demo is just tearing through everyone Wolverine style. Wet meat ribbons adorn the scene, splashes of meat and blood everywhere, it's basically reenacting the forest scene from the Deadpool/Wolverine movie. It's a LOT.

• It does lead us to a genuinely good scene though once they realize that the Demo has decided to go to the Wheeler house. This scene is actually REALLY fucking good because Ted and Karen Wheeler (played by Joe Chrest and Cara Buono respectively) are absolutely incredible underrated talents. It brings back the thing that made early Stranger Things incredible which is just the fear of what MIGHT happen as we show the characters being home and vulnerable with no idea what's coming. We get two minutes of pure on suspense only LEADING to the start of the actual nightmare as the Demo finally come in through Holly's ceiling and then...the episode ends.