My mind has been feeling a bit flayed of late. We are getting ready to go spend much of the remaining summer in the PNW near my family, and I'm excited for it, but it's a lot to handle logistically. We are going for five weeks, so it's like a mini-move, and moving sucks. It would be nice if the kids were a bit more self-sufficient, but that's not going to happen for another, like, seven years, and waiting that long to do this type of thing defeats the purpose of doing it now, while we can. I really want my sons to be close to their cousins, especially my brother's son who's the same age as Lil' S1, and I really want to spend time with my parents before they get too old. I mean, not to get morbid, but not even Jonathan E. lives forever. So, we're headed west.
In other news, as you might be able to tell from the title of this post, we've been watching Stranger Things -- just finished Season 4 today, actually. I really enjoyed it. I was a little bummed out by the ending, only because I thought it was the final season and that everything would be wrapped up nicely, but it turns out there is going to be one more season, so, of course, they left it very open-ended. I actually would prefer there not be another season. This one was like a marathon race -- the finale alone was over 2.5 hours -- and thinking about doing that again just isn't very appealing right now. But, of course, the next season won't be out for another few years (Steve will be having a midlife crises), so I might feel differently at that time.
Like I said, I really enjoyed this season, but it was indeed too long. (My ongoing general gripe with everything.) There were plenty of parts that could have been have shortened. S actually wanted to skip the Nina Project sequences they were so slow (although the payoff was good), and the whole Russian subplot was completely superfluous (with no payoff whatsoever). But the thing they did this season really well is they put the characters in the places you want to see them. Give me Steve and Nancy together; let Jonathan be getting stoned in the desert; give me a lot of Robin, and just a little bit of Mike; Henderson and Eddie were a great duo; and although the Russian stuff felt shoehorned in, at least it put Murray and Joyce together whom have some really good comedic chemistry. The show is ultimately about the characters -- the plot got totally explained this season and it still doesn't really make sense -- so as long as they get that right, which they did, then it's going to be good.
One interesting thing about this season of Stranger Things is that it produced the first Billboard Hot 100 #1 TV-resurrected song -- that is, a song that was previous released, and then went to #1 after it appeared on a TV show. There have been other songs that went to #1 that were made for TV, such as Jan Hammer's Miami Vice Theme, but there hadn't been one that was "resurrected" to #1 by TV until Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush. Hat tip to Chris Molanphy of the podcast Hit Parade for this fun fact.
That's all for tonight. Until next time...
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