Stranger Things
My wife and voraciously consumed all of season 1 of Stranger Things this week.
The series is very familiar in an odd way.
It pays homage to *so* many 80s classic movies that it transcends the standard wink and a nod, and becomes more like a new type of emotional vocabulary. Like someone dusted off Speilberg's emotional harpsichord and began plucking at it a new, the notes still perfectly in tune after decades.
The writing and dialog are also really good. The characters, many of them straddle the line between familiar 80s archetypes, while also being very real and grounded, believable people. Sort of a nod that yes, 80s archetypes were a little silly, but many of them were reflections of real life to begin with.
I really enjoyed it, the fact that it just came out of no where with little fan fare also made it more of a secret delight.
Between this, and Netflix's amazing Voltron reboot, from my perspective Netflix's ability to figure out what type of shows to produce from analytic data is nearly indistinguishable from me being able to mind-control their executives.