Stranger Things: Season Four - Part 2
NETFLIXSo here it is. After a month, the penultimate latter half of season four of Stranger Things finally arrives in the form of two – yes, just two – feature-length episodes to cultivate the beginning of the end for the young folks of Hawkins. While the Duffer Brothers make a few amends with mistakes taken during the first part of this season, the very same issues are either exacerbated or forgotten about in their entirety with Part 2.
For starters, this on gods green earth has no right to have been extended for two extra parts. Quite frankly, it is downright ridiculous that fans have had to wait over a month to see two episodes that could have been boiled down and streamlined into just one gigantic and empowering finale. Instead, the Duffer Brothers give off the strong impression they are milking this piece for as much time and effect as possible, as what commences in over these four plus hours are painstakingly non-committal and stretched-out characters arcs that belate the inevitable anti-climatic end. By far, this season, on paper and in the edit, is hands down the weakest – even going against the sophomore season two slump that felt more retired rather than a continuation of the series, but as these writers undoubtedly realised after season three, there has to be something bigger waiting around the corner. Here, the show runners seem to have rushed and annihilated all manners of pacing and emotional backbone in order to hit single set-piece beats. However, this is not why fans have clamoured to see this dysfunctional group of outcasts, but the opening D&D scene in season one and the internal politics of friendship – with the CGI and horror being a deliciously executed add-on. Nevertheless, here, it would imply that this has now been turned on its head, and it is the bravado of the latter and not the intimacy of the former that the showrunners are projecting.
It is so criminally disappointing because those scenes are here in small doses, whether if it is a part one scene between Will and Mike, part two’s Papa and Eleven climatic finale, or even Will's empowering monologue to Eleven in her time of need about love, of which Finn Wolfhard actually has something to do and not look bemused. This intimacy is why fans clamour to see these characters, not a helicopter or CGI destruction taking centre shape. Undoubtedly, the moments of character above are by far the greatest elements the second part of this season possesses. The partnership of Eddie and Dustin, for one, slowly turns into a fan favourite, but the projection of that arc is ever so evident in how it is going to end; but it is not about them fighting for their lives against CGI creatures but their developing obtuse relationship similar to what Dustin and Steve shared in past seasons that is intensely poignant. However, there are so few of them that the viewer could count them on the one hand, and with eight episodes and over eleven hours of screen time, that is nothing short of pathetic. The balance here of return on emotional investment is deficient; this half of the season has the same mumbling issues, not knowing what and how to use the characters present, and instead of individual storylines, deciding to group three to four storylines that momentarily intertwine. The resulting on-screen narrative is both murky and cluttered, with sequences taking way too much time to progress – Joyce and Hopper are the targets here – and others Mike and Will having so little to do it hurts. The only focus here and, thankfully, the most significant strength is that season four primarily focuses on the development of Eleven, and while it feels it does go somewhere in terms of elevation and traction, sequences and set-pieces involved are by-the-book and 101 principles of her character arc’s tracjection with little left to the imagination and little surprise left for the audience to work with.
Everything is horridly predictable and linear. Granted, this is not Game of Thrones, and the vulnerability of killing off notorious characters will be kept to a minimum, but a show with such a spark and individualism has only come to a predictable, boring halt. Character arcs are hollow and woefully predictable, with deaths easily identified, and when the show has the chance to inject emotional charge and tension by going through and killing off characters that the series toys with not once but twice, yet, on both occasions, bottles out, that is ever so a tale-telling precedent that the showrunners are writing with heir ego and pride, not the organic nature of what this show demands and needs.
Nevertheless, when the viewer finally gets to the supposed gut-wrenching and much-publicised end . . . it is dull and anti-climatic. If this is just a taste of what is to be expected, there are sadly multiple issues that are coming on a technical level, with scene blocking, set pieces, and editing clearly falling foul of showcasing atmosphere and scale. It is ever so painstakingly frustrating to watch, or having to have watched almost half a day of screen-time to eventually watch such an anti-climatic and fever dream of execution, feeling almost hopelessly fed-up and disappointed than the relief and excitement that next year a whole new season is going to drop. Now, this is not the contextual endearment of dread knowing these characters are facing a great danger, but instead, if this manages to stretch on this long again with the vast openness of nothing, then there may be thoughts of the last season of Game of Thrones coming to mind, not in quality but in terms of the showrunners eerily have no idea how to steady the ship when they themselves have rocked the boat. Alas, what annoys and quite frankly pisses on the whole thing is that in the middle of the finale itself, due to the onslaught of Running Up That Hill, they have the audacity to influence it non-diegetically within the scenes themselves woven into the score. Now, this might not sound like the greatest of sins, but the fact they shoehorn this in to reprise public notoriety and not what exactly works well with the scene itself, with Eleven contextually having absolutely no idea what this song means in the circumstance, just proves the showrunners are swaying to public opinion and not once again the organic shaping of where this show should be running. If anything, it sums up and caps off a dissapoitinly strung and stretched out series that has so much potential yet slowly but sadly surely is giving the substantial possibility it is floundering all its might.
