Hopper is great lmao, every bit the action hero when it counts but undeniably a total bonehead also The shirt + jeans combo from this season is already iconic to me
Yeah, I'm not personally getting the hopper hate. I've seen it everywhere. I feel like I'd probably be a drunk asshole too for a bit if I went from a small town cop to a parent of a super-powered 14-year-old who is always under threat from interdimensional monsters who I literally saw up close tear a person limb from limb lol idk, a lot of the way he acts seems to check out with me. He's a dick to the Russian but obviously...this is the eighties. He's a dick to mike because mike is a fucking sociopath. Like, what teenage kid has the nerve to just openly mock their gf's father. Mike is a lunatic.
He and Mike were both terrible at the beginning of the season, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
The real villain of the season is every fan blaming and attacking Suzie for Hopper. One of many times I’m glad to have this forum for discussion because so many other options are so incredibly toxic.
lol right, but I don't think hopper is extraordinarily awful. He's always kinda a curmudgeon and well, being hunted by demigorgens and now dealing with evil Russians just made it worse.
No, he’s still Hop for sure. Having him move back into the action cop Magnum role and explaining how he just wants life to go on was fitting for him, but the early season decisions really were baffling. He’s always been able to maintain his likability despite the tougher edges, but this just went way too far in the negative direction. I guess it may have been done to make the end sting more, but I don’t think that aspect worked. We all know subtlety is not something this show deals in, but this is one time where it might have made things more effective.
lol that's fair. I'm watching the "talk" now and kinda loving how uncomfortable he is with it and trying to push through because he knows Joyce is right. I get people not loving his arc this season i suppose, but i can't think of anything during this other than rage when mike whispers in elevens ear while Hop is trying to get through this.
That scene was fine and in character, it’s the earlier scenes where he is gleefully shouting about how he’s going to ruin the only positive thing in his daughter’s life solely because it makes him uncomfortable that made me want to tear my hair out.
Ahhhhhh got it. I always thought it was the like rage monster aspects people were bumping on lol. Yeeeeah, that part was weird, i'll give ya that one.
The whole Billy in the Upside Down was so freaking cool. I wish we got more of that. More billy, more upside down, way less Erica please.
I wanted more of that weird mirror Billy and whoever was with him. I thought the story was going to be that the upside down was trying to actually replicate people and bring a truer version of “life” to that dimension, but then everyone just turned into a big goo monster instead.
Oh man, we are friendly enemies right now. i want so much more Upside Down. I wanna know every damn thing about the Mind Flayer.
Alexei and Billy's deaths both got me. Definitely teared up during Billy's though I feel like that would have been compared to Us too much if that ended up happening haha
Ah that’s true, that connection never occurred to me. It reminded me of a few different things but that wasn’t one of them. As far as I remember we haven’t seen the upside down project anything like that before and I was hoping it to be explored more. I enjoyed how the mind flayer trying to take a physical form was definitely in an unholy, doesn’t have any understanding of what physical life and form is really like kind of way, so the mirrored versions coming into that would have been cool.
Racism isn't okay just because it was in the 80s. Mike was being 14, not a sociopath. Talk to his parents about his lack of respect, don't threaten him. All Hopper's action did was get Mike to start internalizing Hopper's own shitty toxic attitude towards women. They didn't help anything at all. Hopper also even went "oh of course its not a date" when Joyce mentioned she didn't want the thing at Enzos to be a date, and then get Very Mad that she stood him up for their whoops it was actually totally a date. Was there anyone this season he didn't act like an asshole to?
Cary Elwes was such a slimeball in this, it was great. Prior to watching, I kind of thought they were hinting at him playing more of the role of the mayor in Jaws, though, like he was going to push forward with the July 4th carnival no matter how many people were dying to the Mind Flayer, but what wound up happening was cool too. I guess I just thought he'd have a slightly bigger role in the story than what he wound up having.
I agree that the mayor and the celebration both felt like they were leading to a big climax that never happened, outside of losing our sweet, sugar-fueled friend.