Category: TV Series

Dark (Seasons 1-3)

Dark, a German Netflix series, was pitched to me as the antithesis of Stranger Things Season 5–well planned, dense, and thoughtful in comparison to action and nonsense said repeatedly to cater to the second-screen generation. Dark features an ensemble cast of characters who discover they are trapped in a time loop in which events repeat every 33 years. Among other past and future years, it takes place in 2019, 1986, and 1953, hitting the nostalgia and atmosphere of both the 80s and the 50s as is popular in media these days.

How did this time loop happen? In the present year 2019, one of the protagonists Jonas discovers that he is the son of his love interest Martha’s 11-year-old missing brother Mikkel. Mikkel went through a hidden portal in a cave where he found himself trapped 1986. Meanwhile, another boy Mads from 1986 goes through the portal and reappears in 2019 dead with his eyes and ears exploded, intriguing other 2019 characters who knew Mads as a boy. Mikkel would grow up to become Jonas’ father, making his sister Martha Jonas’ aunt. Distraught that he and Martha can’t be together, Jonas becomes determined to rescue Mikkel or otherwise stop the time loop from coming to be.

Despite how it was pitched, I spent most of Dark waiting for something to happen. Yes, yes, there’s a time loop. Then, what happened? Ultimately, the entire show is the most frustrating manifestation of pointless, space-time continuum bullshit I’ve ever seen. The first season features the 2019 cast of characters discovering and investigating the time loop and the portal. At the end of the season, Martha is murdered in front of Jonas by his future self (for reasons) just as another Martha from another dimension appears and takes 2019 Jonas to her world. The alternate 2019 is the dimension where everyone has cleft pallets and emo hair… I mean, it has an identical but slightly different cast of 2019 characters who discover and investigate the time loop and the portal… as if the creators had given up on the first dimension and were rebooting the story in another. It reminded me of that quote from Fairly Odd Parents: “It’s the show about nothing! …How do we know when it’s over?” Instead of “it’s the show about nothing” though, it’s the show where every season is the same plot and same discoveries but taking place in a slightly different world.

Several reiterations of the same explanation later, we thoroughly understand that yes, yes, Martha and Jonas are the origin of the time loop, Adam and Eve, and there is no escape. Then, what? Our 2019 protagonist Jonas is then murdered in front of alternate dimension 2019 Martha. I nearly rage quit when her future self reveals that Martha and Jonas still have an opportunity to be together. There are two timelines in their alternate dimension: one in which Jonas went to their dimension and one in which he remained in the original 2019 dimension from season one. So his death is meaningless, and we go back to the original world’s 2019 where we left off at the end of season one. The creators can reboot this show with as many timelines and dimensions as they want without consequence!

I probably should have rage quit because nothing ever did happen, although I suppose the time loop did end. It’s a clever idea somebody discovering that they are the son of a boy who has just gone missing, yes, but then what? All the show had to do was explain the dead birds and why Mads’ eyes and ears exploded.

If you do watch it, however, German with subtitles is superior to dubbed.

IT: Welcome to Derry (Season 1)

I don’t know if I can fairly judge IT: Welcome to Derry because I was extremely distracted by things that had nothing to do with it for half to a third of the episodes. Does it say something about the show that it failed to distract me from my distractions? Probably not. Getting into a political argument with a friend and ordering Doordash to the wrong address is extremely distracting. I saw enough of the show, however, to have no desire to revisit any of it, so these thoughts are as close to a review as I’ll get.

IT: Welcome to Derry is reminiscent of Stranger Things in that it features a cast of kids and adults in a seemingly normal town until they become entangled in supernatural events. Welcome to Derry, however, takes place in the 50s instead of the 80s, so it doesn’t have the charming nostalgia. In fact, as with other media that takes place in the 50s–such as the Bioshock video games… and Stranger Things–the 50s-theme is instead used to create a creepy, horrific atmosphere. Additionally, while Stranger Things preserves the lives of its cast, Welcome to Derry begins violently murdering and maiming its child characters within the first episode.

Sure, Welcome to Derry is a horror series. I should have expected everything to be gross, horrific, and creepy, and comparing it to Stranger Things, an adventure series, isn’t fair. Still, I didn’t find the horror elements conducive to sympathizing or bonding with the kids or wider cast. It felt like it wanted to be a Stranger Things with a cast that could endure for eight episodes and beyond, but it was also obligated to kill its characters and disgust its audience. Maybe it wasn’t for me, or maybe while I was distracted I missed the good bits.

Shows like Dark, Welcome to Derry, and Stranger Things have evoked the nostalgia of the 50s and the 80s. What someone really needs to do is make a show about the good old days of the mid-2000s when the Internet and technology was young but fun. That seems like prime real estate to piggyback off the popularity of Stranger Things!

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is one of the most well-constructed TV series I’ve ever seen. It follows Walter White on his rise from over-qualified high school chemistry teacher to methamphetamine drug lord. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend getting on Netflix and watching it before proceeding.

The series features many well-developed characters, but Skyler, Walter’s wife, in particular caught my interest. A fellow Breaking Bad fan, and the person who introduced me to the series almost a decade after its final episode aired, however, told me this was an odd choice. The wife of the shady protagonist in crime dramas like Breaking Bad (e.g. The Sopranos) tends to receive a lot of hate from viewers. They’re either submissive to whatever their criminal significant other wants them to do, making them seem weak or unrealistic to the audience, or they are antagonistic, making it natural for the audience to dislike them for getting in the “hero’s” way.

As Walter White’s wife, Skyler is no exception to the rule of being a commonly disliked character. She begins the series oblivious to Walter’s criminal activities. After she discovers them, she transitions between reluctantly or unwillingly supporting them, trying to separate herself and/or her kids from them, and finding herself hopelessly ensnared by them. Walter reasons that his actions are for the good of his family. He wants to provide them with wealth and safety for after he dies prematurely from terminal lung cancer. Skyler similarly reasons that her actions are for the good of her family. She hides Walter’s criminal activities partly to protect her son, who would be devastated to discover the father he admires is a criminal, and partly to protect her brother-in-law DEA agent Hank Shrader, who would be devastated to discover a criminal mastermind in his midst.

While Walter is willing to sell drugs and commit murder to provide for his family, Skyler is willing to go to equal extremes to protect them. She concocts a clever explanation for Walter’s wealth for her sister and brother-in-law. With her former career in accounting, she insists on overseeing Walter’s money-laundering operation to ensure no one discovers it. She pays most of Walter’s accumulated fortune to her former employer when she discovers he is at risk of being investigated for tax evasion. Fearing her household and money laundering business will also fall under this investigation, Skyler insists he use the money she forces on him to pay his bills and shutter his business, even sending goons to scare him into doing so. Unfortunately, she does this at a time when Walter needs his accumulated wealth most, unwittingly creating a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for him.

Admittedly, after watching the series a second time, Skyler is most interesting during this period of reluctant acceptance, which peaks in Season 4. Her prior period of revenge sex with her former boss in order to punish Walt for hiding his criminal activity and post period of deep depression and antagonism after she discovers Walt is not only a drug dealer but a murderer is less interesting. Perhaps this is because in both cases she reaches the contradictory conclusion that she must split her family apart for the good of the family.

Still, she was the character I didn’t know existed and yet needed for inspiration. I’d never watched a crime drama before and was unfamiliar with her archetype. It turns out I’ve been writing a novel with a loose crime drama sub-plot for over a decade, and the “crime boss’s” wife was my weakest character. Unknowingly following the trend of crime dramas, I’d never had a good idea of what to do with her to make her likeable or even interesting. Skyler made me wonder, “How far would this supporting character go to protect her family?” While I can’t say I’ve solved the problem of the “crime boss’s wife” archetype, finding an answer to this question resulted in a much more interesting character.

Stranger Things (Season 5)

I remember thinking when I watched Season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022, “Oof. They should have stopped there.” If they had increased the pace a little and been more definitive with the ending, they could have done it, and it would have felt complete. Instead, an interdimensional rift split open Hawkins to create a cliff hanger to a final season that somehow the creators were going to fill with stuff, despite the series feeling like it should have ended.

When Season 5 finally came out, I started by rewatching all previous seasons, as I did whenever a new season was released. I started late though and then ended up spoiling myself by watching a couple of my go-to commentators complain about how bad Season 5, and one episode in particular, was before I had even started watching the season. Still, when Red Letter Media and Sydney Watson had the same reaction for the exact opposite reasons (RLM leaned toward the season being pointless, action-packed nonsense while Sydney Watson leaned toward the season being pointless, mundane nonsense), there was still some hope to form my own opinion.

The first episode is a bizarre mix of 80s nostalgia and stopping Vecna. Despite the rift splitting Hawkins and its military occupation, the characters pretend to have a normal year in high school. Somehow, I made a connection to the final Harry Potter book. Unlike episode one of Stranger Things 5, which attempts to be another year in high school in the 80s and also defeating Vecna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn’t about another magical year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and also defeating Voldemort. Too much had changed by the end of the previous book. Too much has also changed by the end of Stranger Things 4. Stranger Things 5 does quickly abandon the pretense of normalcy, but that means it also abandons what made the show charming: 80s nostalgia combined with a science fiction, fantasy adventure. Season 5 can’t have such charm because the right-side up is so devoid of 80s normalcy. Nobody is nostalgic about military occupation or making plans to infiltrate the upside down in a bunker. In contrast, Harry Potter never loses its charm despite the drastic change of pace in the final book because its charm is magic in general, not tied so strictly to Hogwarts.

Will’s sudden super power to defeat Vecna kind of works and kind of doesn’t. Unlike One, El, or any of the children raised in isolation in Hawkins Lab, Will didn’t have to do anything to attain or unlock his powers. He didn’t even have to come out as gay. So, his abilities appear to manifest from nowhere and also belittle El’s experiences. It also kind of works. Vecna made his first official appearance in Season 4, and Will was nowhere near Vecna or his minions for the entire season. His abilities could have always been dormant, and Will has had a fair amount of suffering. For how much Will suffers from his experiences in the upside down in the first two seasons in particular, he never has a moment of power over the monsters that tormented him. From this perspective, it feels fitting for him to develop super powers. This could have been done more cleverly though rather than simply turning him into a second El or One. For example, he could have been given a second opportunity to spy on Vecna or the Mindflayer except this time, he’s the one in control and feeding crucial information to El and the others.

All I can think when I see El in that wetsuit with the triangle cut out of the neck is, “What a stupid costume.”

Nancy has killed monsters before, but she’s also perfectly fine with killing people? When did this happen?

The final episode reminded me of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, the final book in the four-part Inheritance series. I know this show is supposed to invoke 80s nostalgia, but for some reason, my thoughts kept going to books that I read in the mid-2000s. Anyway, Inheritance had something like 120 pages of pure epilogue. In a similar vein, almost half of the two-hour finale of Stranger Things is epilogue. After Vecna and the Mindflayer appeared defeated, I was shocked that there was still an hour of the episode remaining. I remained shocked when El said goodbye to Mike and disappeared, and there was still 50 minutes left.

While getting to those last fifty minutes was as full of filler as I feared it would be four years ago, however, it felt fitting for all the characters and brought back the 80s charm that made the series great. I’ve never seen the end of Game of Thrones, but I doubt this was comparable or worse, especially (tying this back to books) when the book series Game of Thrones is based on will never have an ending at all.

Stranger Things Subtitles

I usually watch everything with subtitles when subtitles are available. For Stranger Things, occasionally, I find them hilarious.

In Season 1, Nancy admits to her mother and the police that her friend Barbara went missing while she and Nancy were attending an unsanctioned party at Steve’s house. When Nancy’s mother is more outraged that Nancy was at Steve’s house than upset about Barbara, Nancy shuts herself in her room. She sits on her bed, sniffling slightly and accompanied by the subtitle:

[Crying]

In Season 3, Joyce and Hopper fight the Russian Terminator in the large Russian base under the mall. Joyce makes a variety of sounds during the fight, each one of which are subtitled:

[Joyce yelps, grunts]
[Joyce squeals, pants]
[Joyce screams]