drael64

Stranger things has a strong first season, which admittedly starts out a little slow, but crescendos into a fantastically bingeable retro fantasy story with characters that might be a little shallow, but are absolutely characters you will feel something for, love or hate.

The appeal here is partly in the mystery/thriller, but also in the dynamic of the main characters. The first season largely wraps everything up, and each successive season looks for new wedges to drive between the main characters, new tensions, and new ways to revive the threat.

It's not so much that the following seasons are not entertaining, they are, it's just that they don't quite hit the high notes of the first season, and the process of resetting things becomes a little formulaic. That said, there is still some coming of age, and nostalgia to enjoy as additions as the story unfolds. The acting is all pretty decent, and the fx high calibre, but for me actually, and this is probably personal taste, there's a heavy emphasis on soundtracking, and this show doesn't quite land that for me.

Suffers from a lil netflix style girlbossing, but still manages to be mostly enjoyable despite that. Still, if I was to make a recommendation, it would probably be to watch the first season, and leave it at that. First season is probably more like an 8/10.

This commodity TV show is clearly suppose to be some form of comedy, but there's no real humor in the writing. It's more just a series of strange/awkward things happening around our unlikeable protagonist, bad decision making held together by a poor gimmick of flipping between time as the story gets told out of order.

The sci-fi premise, which is really another one of these poorly thought through mish mash of concepts from silicon valley which don't make a lot of sense. Although in an absurdist or black comedy that might be forgivable, were the story entertaining.

Somehow this got two seasons, when some many other shows went to die. I feel like this is evidence whomever made it knew the right people lol. In any case, a product of it's time I guess.

I have no particularly investment in Rice's writing, or universes. I don't really care all that much for the other shows so far either. But this, despite it's only competent acting, is a very unique premise - supernatural combined with spycraft, and it's reasonably well executed, you can tell some love went into it's creation. I wouldn't say it's top tier prestige tv but it's not really commodity either. There's production value here, some scripting effort.

If you like both genre's, supernatural and spycraft, I think there's good odds you'll enjoy this. It's not as abstract, slow burning, or politically adjacent as the other two shows. It's fairly much just good entertainment.