[WARNING:
Spoilers! But only little ones.]
Well,
summer break is finally over and my little gremlins are back at school. While I
don’t usually like to post about my personal life on this blog , I will say
this: my summer has felt like a journey through the “Upside Down”, that
bizarre, dark reflection of our world on the show “Stranger Things”. Now that
the house is quiet and I sit here in front of my keyboard after a long hiatus,
I feel like I’ve finally crawled through some slimy inter-dimensional portal
back into reality after two months of wandering surreal, supernatural wastes.
Yep, my summer with the kids was a complete blur of craziness.
The truth
is I love my two boys and have moments of absolute joy with them, but the daily
slog of parenting can be so gut-wrenchingly painful, I imagine I feel what Will
felt after staying in the Upside Down for too long (although I’ve never puked
up a giant monster worm – yet).
I mean, my
two little bugbears (bless them) are up at 7am – every single day – regardless
of how late daddy went to bed (sometimes 2-3am). This means I’m forced to peel
myself out of my coffin (aka bed) to prepare breakfast and basically make sure
nothing terrible befalls them (the gloomy crypt in which I make my abode is
rife with unseen pitfalls – some mundane, some unnatural – but mostly I have to
make sure the two boys don’t kill each other.)
Now that I
have returned from that black plane of otherworldly oblivion you call ‘summer
vacation”, I finally have some time to ruminate on one of the high points of my
perilous summer – watching “Stranger Things” on Netflix.
Something
about this unassuming homage to 80’s sci-fi/horror flicks really wormed it’s
way into my brain (sorry Barb). In just about every way, “Stranger Things” hit
the mark of awesomeness. The story was paced well (difficult for a serialized
tv show – I’m looking at you, LOST!), I got to know and root for the characters
(even Nancy’s douche-bag boyfriend Steve, thanks to a redemptive story-arc),
and I was genuinely freaked out by the monster and its habit of crossing
dimensions to stalk its prey. A completely thrilling, mind-blowing ride!
In so many
ways, “Stranger Things” surpassed all of the 80’s movies it honours. I was also
impressed that the Duffer Brothers contained the story in a tight eight episode
run (but of course at the end of it I was crying inside and dying to see more).
It kept the pace moving along well, even during the slow bits with the Nancy
love triangle or the kid’s initial bungling around in the dark looking for
Will.
Since I
love to talk story structure, and I found “Stranger Things” so awesome because
it executed a cool story so successfully, I’d like to change gears and talk
about a story not so successfully executed. Me and the wife decided to fire up
“Allegiant – Divergent part 3” to kill an evening, and about 30 minutes in I
nearly rage quit the thing. If “Stranger Things” is narrative perfection,
“Allegiant” is a big pile of narrative poop.
While I
didn’t expect much from the third part of this Hunger Games knock-off, it was
so utterly confusing that I started yelling at the screen. Why did this weird
experiment in Chicago end up producing a “pure” (meaning genetically unaltered,
I think) divergent person, Tris? How?? And why should we care? We are never
told why this process is so important, so we are left to assume something
terrible will happen. Was the human race on the brink of extinction? Who
knows??
The crux of
the story – Tris being torn between the future dude (Jeff Daniels) and her
friends in Chicago – becomes meaningless because we don’t understand what she’s
doing, or why we should care. If her dilemma was ‘save humanity from extinction
or save her friends’, that might be interesting. Needless to say, the story
fell apart and the action at the end was boring and pointless.
I like to
think that consuming different stories – good and bad – can only help me
improve my own writing, so I won’t beleaguer the point of how bad Allegiant
was. I will say this: I’d much rather brave the “Upside Down” than return to
future Chicago any day.
Thankfully,
the word on the street is that Season Two of “Stranger Things” is in the works,
so I’m looking forward to more adventures in the “Upside Down”. I only have two
apprehensions about this: 1) it’s gonna be really hard to top the first season,
so I’m bracing for disappointment 2) I only have 9 months until NEXT summer
vacation and my own adventures back to the “Upside Down”! I’ve already fitted myself
with a Haz-Mat suit for the occasion!
As always, yours
in horror and confusion,
G.S.
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