I just finished watching the second season of Stranger Things, and I’ll try to be as spoiler-free as possible, but to cut straight to the chase, I just wanted to say that it was some of the best television I’ve seen recently, and that I believe that it is the bar in which all sequels should aspire to perform to.
So yeah, I liked it. No, I loved it. Stranger Things 2 was fantastic television, and the most astonishing thing about it all, was how seemingly easy the show was executed to where it’s so super easy to enjoy nearly all of the characters, and be engaged and interested in all of the storylines happening concurrently. The acting is so good throughout the show, and Winona Ryder and David Harbour make their characters just so easy to relate to and empathize for which in turn enhances the experience of watching the show.
But the true MVP of the show would have to be Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, who embarked on the face turn of a century that we haven’t seen since The Rock decided he was done with Vince McMahon and the Corporation before ascending into the cosmos. It’s truly amazing, because I remember really hating the shit out of Steve in the first season, and hoping he would die or at least get written off the show. But after the second season, there’s no star that broke through the night and rose to the cream of the crop and broke the glass ceiling and grabbed the brass ring more than Steve did.
I won’t elaborate any further on it since I don’t want to risk giving anything away, but the bottom line is that feel that Steve was the undisputed MVP of Stranger Things 2, and I certainly hope that anyone and everyone who watches it will feel the same way too.
But all things Steve aside, the show as a whole was still outstanding. The writing is so crisp and the pace of the show is so perfectly executed to where there’s a balance of action, plot development, rest breaks and then getting back to the story without ever feeling like there’s any drag, and almost every single episode ends with a feeling that “there’s time for one more” regardless of what time of the day it is.
It’s like Netflix invented the playing next in X seconds and the Skip Intro button solely for the expediting of binging on Stranger Things.
And the most important thing, without giving anything away, I didn’t think the ending to the season sucked. As most of my six readers are aware, I have an objection with the utter inability that most writers/teams have when it comes to writing endings, but Stranger Things 2 does not really suffer in my opinion. The season ends in a manner in which I feel gratification for all the characters, and anticipation on the question marks they leave behind that tease the possibility that there might be more in the future, or there might not.
But I certainly hope there will be more. I think it’s the best Netflix original since House of Cards, and I really enjoyed the early seasons of House of Cards as well as all of Netflix’s Marvel properties.
