Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat

This episode just committed three plot flaws that ruin a show for me.

1. Let's not tell anybody. Nobody will believe us.

2. Let's explore in small, easily defeatable groups.

3. I'm a plucky teenage girl and I am going to explore the blood dripping tree where an animal corpse has disappeared that opens up into an ethereal world with that great anti-monster device, the flashlight.

Combined with the tropes of "evil scientist". " government cover-up" and "Bullies and nerds", the show has a lot of lazy writing.

There is a photograph with a shadowy faceless figure right where the friend disappeared by the swimming pool. That would be sufficient to, at least, get someone's attention.

Numerous things take place here. The Sheriff invades the facility where the experimenting is going on, but finds himself back at his trailer. He now knows that Will's body was a fake. It is a dummy, filled with cotton. Of course, the coroner was one of "their" guys. The boys explain the dark vale that is the parallel universe. They take El and start to look for a magnetic center. Will's father shows up for the funeral and we realize that he is after insurance money for the death of his son. After the funeral, Nancy and Jonathan go off on their own, looking for the faceless man. They make some startling discoveries. The boys get in a fight and El uses her power to separate them, but one of them is hurt. During all this, El is having flashbacks of how she was being used.

Having found the corpse of Will Byers to be a fake, cop Jim Hopper (David Harbour) decides to break into Hawkins Institute, where he discovers an inter-dimensional portal in their lab. Will's nerdy pals also resume their search for their missing friend after hearing his voice over the radio.

Netflix's supernatural series continues to entertain, with a little more exposition about the other-worldly realm into which Will has been cast, a few laughs at the expense of the 'mouth-breather' who has been bullying Mike and his pals, and some effective chills as Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) enter the woods in search of answers. With only three more episodes left, it'll be interesting to see how satisfyingly all of the plot threads are wrapped up. I hope they do it justice

While Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat may not be in the same league as the third and fourth episodes, it's still another great episode and shows a sign that things are getting better.

The story, while not in the same complexity as the previous episodes, is still well-written in a scene where Mike and Lucas argue whether or not El is reliable or not that she's still helping them find Will, the writing continues to be superb, the production values are well spent, the performances are still great and the child actors have been getting better each episode thanks to their chemistry while Hooper and Joyce continue to be interesting adult characters, the pacing never drags and the music score continues to respect the 1980s perfectly.

Overall, not in the same complexity as the third and fourth episodes, but still an addictive episode of the first season.

Well it was pretty decent episode. Interesting plot but something was missing. Maybe it was a little bit too slow, lack of action