'STRANGER THINGS'....WE ALL BID GOODBYE TO NETLIX'S HARDY BUT WEARY BAND OF SCOOBY KIDS

  

    When it comes pumping out those profits, Netflix acts no differently than any major movie studio.....

       If they catch lightning-in-a-bottle with a zippity zeitgeist whammer, a pop culture cash cow, you can bet the farm they'll  milk that sucker dry....until the very last penny drops from its udders.....

        So it's fitting we closed out the misery-filled 2025 with the fifth and final season of,,,,,,

Stranger Things (2016-2025)

       Like almost everyone else in the U.S. and around the world, we embraced the Duffer Brothers deep plunge into nostalgic Spielberg-ian, small town suburban sci-fi/horror......a series much like what J.J.Abrams  accomplished with his 2011 film 'Super 8', in which quirky kids right out of the 1980's Spielberg playbook take on an alien monstrosity. 

        So we all gathered 'round our various sized screens for "Stranger Things", as season after season regaled us with the perilous adventures of these charismatic kids from the once sleepy burg of Hawkins, Indiana. Every other year they slugged it out with Lovecraft-like monstrosities from the alternate 'Upside Down' nutty-verse,  and dark Deep State pseudo-scientific masterminds fond of kidnapping the kids for godawful experiments......

         And as fate (and constant repetition of the same tropes) would have it......this stuff started to get old, watching the Duffer duo pound out the same notes on the same worn out piano over and over and over and over....

          So it was with Season 5, capped off with a 2 hour Grand Finale, that rivaled Peter Jackson's 'Lord Of The Rings-the Return of the King' in breathless action spectacle followed by a touching leisurely epilogue that left no beloved character  without their own tear-duct wringing farewells. 

        While we got a real kick out that feature length finish, the seven hour long chapters that preceded it simply wore us out with the usual parade of deja vu moments and monsters from the previous four seasons. 

         (We felt overcome with the same exhausting ennui we felt when viewing the trailer for the latest 3 hour 'Avatar' bloat-a-thon.......a sleep-inducing feeling of "haven't we seen this same stuff before? Over and friggin' over again?")

     But credit the Duffer dynamos for wrapping everything up in slam-bang, crowd pleasing fashion.....with a final solid 126 minutes of thrills, spills, heart-wrenching sacrifices, blistering action and every emotional moment we ever could dream of. Well done, boys, but please don't you and Netflix wear out your welcome with misbegotten spinoffs....

       (P.S. memo to the Duff-meisters:   Brilliant idea, boys, casting 'Terminator's Linda Hamilton as a haggard, fanatical medical-military villain, except you forgot to give her an audience-cheering "Goddamn! I've been foiled by these 'effin' kids!" moment....tsk, tsk, tsk....)

       For the Season 5's seven episodes, 2 stars (**).

       For the Season 5 Episode 8 finale, 4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2)