Stranger Things marathon

we all have been busy, but yesterday work and meetings were light, so we got together as a family and finished watching the last 4 episodes of Stranger Things last night.

We had watched the first two episodes last week, but in those episodes there were only hints of monsters, and most of the plot was about the kids growing up. But the plot (and the fake Russian part of the plot) got better in later episodes.

Yes, there were monsters. But also people of all sorts willing to fight the monsters. And although the kids found and fought the monsters, at the end it was the grownups who refused to let the kids put themselves in danger when they went to destroy the machine trying to reopen the window into the monster's world.

Usually I don't like horror movies, or the modern "superhero" type movies, because they seem to rely more on special effects than plot. But this, like the earlier seasons, was more about people than monsters.

Here, because you already "knew" the characters and their families from earlier seasons, you could watch the characters develop and interact and know the background on why they acted that way.

And ironically for an "American" series, the people were essentially normal. Not in a "pretty" and bland sort of a way (like the cookie cutter pretty of characters in Hallmark channel movies), but normal looking and normal acting people... most of them were decent. Imagine that: normal decent people in a film.

Except for "El", not a lot of superpower stuff. And even for El, most of her story is about growing up and learning to be human, not about her superpowers.

To make things more fun: lots of humor and jokes. And lots of references to the 1980s and other geek stuff (like Planck's constant) that you might have to explain to your kids and grand kids.

So yes, if you have Netflix, watch and enjoy. I give it 4 stars.

Warning: It has a three handkerchief ending.

And don't turn it off until the final credits are finished (it has a hint about season 4 inserted there).