“Stranger Things” already jumped the shark with the third season, and honestly, I was never too fond of it to begin with. As Netflix’s first blockbuster, it might deserve its status from a productive standpoint, but the limits of the writing and especially the poor pacing started to take a toll after a few episodes.
This season was mostly an improvement in all aspects, except for two major things.
First, there’s no way they needed thirteen hours for this. It’s good to take time to explore characters, but the material here was barely enough for a couple of 90-minute direct-to-video movies. This has been my biggest issue with this show since its beginning, and I can’t believe that episodes are getting longer and longer with each season. The finale felt as grandiose as a blockbuster movie and really managed to build momentum, yet two hours and a half feel way too long to swallow for a TV show. At this point, it pretty much became an extremely watered-down movie series.Secondly, the Russian storyline. This was the biggest problem of season three, and here it arguably got even worse. At this point, it’s just the most ridiculous excuse to keep the grownups busy. Judging by the premise, I thought it was supposed to be a way to quickly “undo” an unpopular storyline and bring Hopper back into the game, and instead it just kept getting crazier and crazier.
Other than the problems above, I have to say I enjoyed it. It belongs to a genre where contrived writing and stereotypes become inevitable, and I am fine with the silly moments and suspension of disbelief as far as it doesn’t get too much on the nose like in the previous season. The show has been packaged extremely well, and the ensemble cast felt more balanced than usual. Some historical characters have been put aside, but it's good to see the others getting more screen time and more relevant roles in the story. The new characters were sometimes even more interesting, too bad that they mostly serve as cannon fodder for the horror scenes.
Is it worth going through seasons two and three? No, but if you already got to this point and were unsure about continuing, go ahead and enjoy these overlong episodes little by little. It’s pretty much a 13-hour feature film chopped into pieces, so watching 30 minutes at a time won’t change your perception much.
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@manicure I felt like season 3 was significantly better than season 2, but it was still only okay. They haven't matched the quality of season 1, and this season was way too self indulgent. They think they're writing Shakespeare when it's more like something that was rejected by Mad Magazine.
