I’m flying solo this week! I watched the whole series of STRANGER THINGS this month, roughly 1.5 episodes per day about as close as I’ve ever come to “binging” anything in my life.
Which is one of the arguments I make in the audio: we tend to revere quick consumption and demonize slow consuption as “distraction”. as a symptom of modern people not havign attention spans. But which is better: consuming in a single sitting or allowing time for digestion and consideration between sections? Between episodes? Between chapters? Books are single narratives but aren’t meant to be read in single sittings. So then why are movies?
Films take years to make. Writing is done piecemeal, in fits and bursts, even filming is done in sections, considered, then adjusted. Editing is a lengthy affair, and while yes the goal is to have a final product that flows as a single sitting experience, why is that always the ideal? Two hours of random time and then I’m done with something that took years to craft? When I could slow it down and consider it as I like?
This is me making the case for slow consuption, especially a first viewing of anything (Ellis J. Sutton - this is the shit we were talking about on set the other week!):
Watch Things Slowly
SPOILER FREE! I talk at length about the style, tone, themes, characters, but very little about the plot, as such. There are zero spoilers in this episode, so listen without fear!
One of the coolest parts was recognizing how these 5 Seasons followed the ROCKY films in terms of evolution. Season 1 = Rocky, Season 2 = Rocky II, etc. Skipping Rocky V (mercifully)1 with Season 5 = Rocky Balboa. Will there ever be a CREED style continuation. I suppose time will tell.
I talk more at length about all of this in the episode - so listen to it! I’m going to keep the writing to a minimum since that’s a bit extraneous. But here’s the broad strokes:
SEASON 1
Brooding, surprisingly earth-toned and earth-bound, slice of life meets the fantastic in proper Stephen King / 80s paperback fashion. Plays like a mini-series, with a fairly wrapped up ending. Our protagonists neither win nor lose, but discover what’s most important to them and fight for that.
Themes: Standing together, as a larger group or community is what wins the day. Standing alone, even with super-powers, even with the power of the law on your side, is the surest way to be taken advantage of.
Stranger Things Season 1 is about what happens when different types of people from different corners of a single community come together to embrace the "strange", the strang-ers, the weird ones, the different ones (who sometimes come with psychic powers), and refuse to quietly comply for the sake of normalcy. The world was far stranger, more diverse, and yes, dangerous than we ever imagined back in the hair-gel 80's.
MVP: Cara Buono as Mrs. Wheeler, the mom. She’s the mostly oblivious mother to our core kiddos who in many ways stands as the audience’s POV: she’s removed from the horrors and heroics, but wants to be there for everyone, yet has no natural way to do so. She’s rebuffed by her children again and again, wanting to pull them back from the brink, away from the terrible things, but she can’t reach them.
Near the finale, in a perfectly encapsulating scene, she rages against the “man”, the “authorities” that she senses (deep down knows) want nothing good for her children or community. Her mama bear protectiveness comes out in a tear-streaked rage, and YET...when given calm, clear reasons to comply, when given hope that everything can go back to the way it was, the safety of American suburban middle class nuclear family bliss, she sheds a final tear and grabs at it, giving the villains what they need.
This is America. Especially in the Reagan era. The hope of safety through structure, authority, and conformity.
WINE PAIRING: A surprisngly somber first Season. There’s more darkness than light here. Intense themes of trauma and damage, mixed with the fun of an 80’s horror paperback.
This is the Season for your earthy Italian red (Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Rosso de Montalcino, Sagrantino, Aglianico) or Spanish Rioja or even a Cali Cab Sauv or Syrah. Bring the darkness, the depth, just make sure it’s more than fruity - you need grit, earth, spice, and a touch of astringency/bitterness to match the loss of innocence embedded throughout.
For whites, do dry or “troken” Riesling, something with depth, layers, and seriousness even though it’s a white.
Season 2
More cast, more budget, more effects, more monsters, bigger monsters, more brooding, more melodrama, but also more action.
The mythology gets deeper, the characters become multi-dimensional and less one-note…while also, somehow, leaning into their one-note quirks. Yes, there's a way to do that!
Paul Reiser steps in as he tends to do for bigger badder bolder sequels (ALIENS) and his character is more complex than our previous scientist villain as well. Mad Max (Sadie Sink) is introduced as a second female child character, gives an additional young romance angle to explore, and her brother Billy also becomes a major new character adding an additional dynamic to the mix.
And it all ends in marvelous, over the top fashiion. This is the only season to run 9 episodes instead of 8, alongside Season 4. So like ALIENS and Terminator 2 and all the great sequels of the past, it's longer, bigger, badder, more explosive, and man o man this season delivers the goods with a hearbreaking finale that, in many ways, you can once again walk away from. This is a decisive win, as with Rocky II, though it comes with sacrifice and tragedy.
THE MVP of this Season is unquestionably Sean Astin, who just lights up every scene with his seemingly authentic “gee whiz” energy (I hope he’s like this IRL), intelligence and also ability to think on his feet. His romance with Winnona Ryder’s Joyce is chef’s kiss. Paul Reiser gets an honorablee mention as well, as the much more interesting and complicated head of the governnment operations in the town.
WINE PAIRING: This requires a high-acid red, a Grenache based blend like a Cote du Rhone, also called a “GSM Blend” elsewhere in the world, which stands for the grapes most commonly found in a Rhone - Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. Something to keep things bright and bouyant. This is a Season with more heart, more joy, and more hope than the previous.
For a white, look to a New Zealand Savvy B or French Aligote, something with lightness, freshness, and a little zing.
Season 3
The Rocky III of the series. Now we're candy colored 80's all the way. This was a bit off putting at first - I liked the draber color palate of the previous seasons, which were far more Stephen King-y, but as the kids themselves are entering deeper into the 80's so does the look of everything. Characters now sport 80's HAIR, baby, 80's clothes, and the main setting is, of course, a mall.
The production design here is more of a character than the characters, and the characters are larger than life. We tackle the embarrassment of post-high school jobber life, themes of the push-pull of modernity, of moving beyond childish relationships and dynamics, finding out what survives when we grow older and change.
Billy, Max’s brother, and Cara Buono as Mrs. Wheeler - who gets to do a lot more this Season than her almost complete absence in Season 2 - as she and Billy start to potentially “will they / won’t they” flirtation, with a fun subplot of all the 80’s suburban mom-cougars preening their best at the pool where Billy is the lifeguard.
If previous Seasons focused on collective action, Season 3 is about independence. Thinking for yourself, refusing adults, refusing hive minds, looking past the surface of things. The main enemy is both monstrous on a level we haven’t seen before, but also faceless, as such sizeable threats often are.
MVP is Maya Hawke as Robyn, a seemingly side character who quickly becomes indispensable and even proves to subvert our expectations of 80’s teen romance in the best way.
WINE PAIRING: This one is candy-colored. You need a candy colored wine like a Boujolais Nouveau, a Valpolicella Classico, or perhaps a Cali Pinot Noir, even a Chianti Classico! Something drinkable AF. It’s fun, unchallenging, but never disappointing.
Season 4
The Rocky IV of the series, or the John Wick Chapter 4. This one is so big, so over the top, so massive in scope that it’s ludicrous. Once again 9 episodes in length with most running 1.5 hours, one episode running 1.45 and the finale running an insane 2.5 hours!!! That episode alone is almost the length of John Wick Chapter 4!
This is the creative team spending as much money as they can, sometimes it seems like they’re doing it just to do it. Half the Season takes place in Russia, half in two completely different American towns, the OG Hawkins but then also a California town where half the cast is trying to relocate and integrate into.
There was a 3 year gap between Season 3 and 4 thanks to the Pandemic, so the kids havee aged the most between Seasons, which takes its own adjustment. But more: this is a Season that takes its sweet time in establishing why it’s happening at all. The core storyline of a cursed house and family seems bafflingly arbitrary. The Russian side of things seems overkill in terms of scope and purpose. And through it all, with all that money plainly being burned on screen, we have to ask…WHY?
I will say this: Season 4 pays off big time. Just keep watching it. Nothing is as abitrary as it seems, and eventually it all ties back into the previous Seasons, all the many dangling threads we hadn’t yet covered, and then sets up the series for its final fifth Season.
This Season also introduces Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson a truly memorable performance and I have to say this one hit me personally: when I entered high school and was a freshman, a similar Hellfire Club - in my case it was “The Juggling Club” - was run by these two senior guys who wore trenchcoats and had cool hair and played guitar and to a Freshhman’s eyes were just fucking cool as shit and everything you wanted to be as a relatively geeky boy teen. They were great jugglers, too! And taught us how, kept us disciplined the way Eddie does with the Hellfire Club, were not beloved by the actual popular kids in school, and when these two seniors graduated, we continued their legacy with the Juggling Club our whole 4 years there. So that whole set up and dynamic really spoke to me.
So yeah, Eddie is the MVP for this Season, themes of idolatry, keeping secrets, honesty vs. deflecting im relationships, the things we tell ourselves, relationships are HARD
This is the intense dessert wine season. You need to sip something slowly to make it through these epic length episodes. Sherry, Port, Madeira, Vermouth, Amaro. Sauternes and Ice Wine, maybe, but those perhaps a bit too light and easy. This Season requires depth and consideration.
Season 5
Surprisingly smaller than season 4 - I was wondering where they could possibly go after that!
Turns out, inwward: we’re back to Hawkins as a single location, this is out cast wrapping things up, finsihing up and tying up loose ends. A few new revelations are at hand and in a few ways, the scope is still big, but this is a more intimate Season, more personal. It’s a Coda to Season 4, the way Rocky Balboa was a Coda for that character, helping us tie up those loose ends and allow us to leave these characters and this story with no regrets of unfinsihed elements.
As such, the episodes are once again moderate in length (1 - 1.15 hours) and only eight episodes. I’ve seen 7, as the final ep doesn’t drop until tomorrow, but this is shaping up to be a fine send-off. Mildly anti-climactic, but its treating these characters with repsect, allowing them to grow yet further, relationships both survive and don’t survive as they especially do when you’re young.
Themes here are of letting go, maturing, moving on while remaining close and loving. Taking repsonsibility when you’re the only one who can, and seeing things through to the end.
MVP is Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, one of the main kid characters since Season 1. But Dustin has never needed to change until now: he was the reasonable one, the mostly clear-headed (barring rare occurances), smart, the glue that held the group together. But here, in the wake of Season 4, he’s the one falling apart. Finally, he gets a real arc and it’s one that represents what this final Season is doing: pushing these characters toward real change. There’s no going back, there’s no reclaiming the past. We are what life has shaped us to be, and we all move forward as that. The End.
This is a a red sparkling all the way. Treat it like new years, but go beyond Champagne and Prosecco, get something DARK and FULL like Lambrusco, sparkling Shiraz from Australia, or sparkling Touriga Nacional from Portugal.
Here’s to one last episode dropping New Year’s Eve.
Happy end of 2025, everyone. I hope the New Year treats you kinder.
I actually really like ROCKY V - I know, I know! But it’s so wonderfully anti-climactic, it’s what happens after the height, the glory days. Stallone in fact wanted to kill the character in this entry, but the studio got cold feet, and so we were left with an even weaker ending. I don’t know if Rocky V is that good of a movie, but I’ve always enjoyed it as a late entry that is a perfect follow up to the ludicrous folk hero Rocky became in IV. That said, “Rocky Balboa” is absolutely the better Coda to the series. So I’m glad both exist.
