Night of the Living Dummy: Part 2

So this episode could have been a semi-decent start to a new season: exploring Nathan Bratt's history, with some fairly strong character motivations that lead to bad decisions. But it's a weird move to start this arc after a fairly conclusive episode 8.

Bratt's story is at least moderately interesting, and Justin Long has great screen presence. The evolving teen romance-drama, on the other hand, is just tedious. They're obviously going for the same vibe Stranger Things attempted in S3, though that was equally tedious. Yet Stranger Things had far more interesting characters than the rather flat five we have here.

Overall, this entire season could probably have been done in 6 strong episodes, rather than a needlessly protracted 10.