Yes, and god bless them. I remember pouring over the manual on the ride home from Toys ‘R Us being the only way I could contain my anticipation before playing the game. And while you couldn’t pay me to study hard for a test in school, by the time I put that new cartridge in the console, I was an academic (if not…

I say that if they filmed even one of Spacey’s smug, condescending, fourth-wall breaking monologues for this season, they should use it. Hire a double, employ some post-production trickery, and assassinate him on camera in the middle of it:

20 years later, Comic Sans is finally relegated to the font gutter it’s always deserved to dwell in, now only sporadically appearing in emails from your great auntie, or the occasional attempt at irony from a less-inspired hipster. And now here’s BadaBoom, ready and eager to take it’s place in unavoidable design…

Looks to be another “misunderstood animal wrecks havoc” disaster movie, which is kinda missing the point of the video game (that being it would be pretty fun to become a giant monster and just smash everything up).

I decided to do an original series rewatch just before the premiere of The Return, and found myself in the same dilemma regarding the mid-season 2 slog. Adding to this was that had I started out too leisurely and was running out of time on the day of the premiere.

The worst part is I know all this, and yet have to admit complicity in proving this cynical business strategy right. I played right into it.

I considered comparing this story to the forced relative-kissing scenario most of us faced growing up, but backed off.

They were there, one would presume in part to assure their daughter’s well-being on set.

Also, it’s a bit disingenuous to claim this story “comes from Teen Vogue” to lend the article the facade of legitimate reporting, when all they did was describe the same readily available episode of “Beyond Stranger Things” that you did, also without any additional fact gathering.

You know, that’s where my brain went for a second while watching the episode of “Beyond Stranger Things” in question (“ooh, were you nervous because he was black?”). Then I did the sensible thing and told my imagination to calm down.

If the internet has it’s way, all we’ll have left to watch is a campfire. Until someone remembers they knew someone who knew someone who might have burned their finger with a match once, and that’ll be that.

Hot Take: C’mon. This isn’t “Last Tango in Paris.” It was a closed-mouthed, non-sexual kiss. A peck. High school plays across the country call for 15-year-olds to do the same thing every year. Maybe in the current climate it was unwise to kid about it on the wrap-up show, but geez, lighten up. If a line was crossed,…

For me it was the establishing shots. At first I was just confused (“Is this snowy cabin supposed to be someplace else, or did I misremember the previous shot of the house?” “Wait are they flying somewhere now? I thought they were going on a bike ride.”) When it clicked for me, I couldn’t wait to see how far they…

There are other comments here that will assure you that you are not alone, but I don’t think that puts you in some secret majority either.

The monologue half-worked for me, mostly on the meta-level of imagining the whole thing as a “Curb” scenario.

Now that you mention it, I can see slight shades of Ren McCormick (Bacon’s “Footloose” role) in Jonathan. They’re both the deep, soft spoken outsiders who the girls leave their jock boyfriends to be with.

I was so disappointed when Mike stopped the others from showing him Dart, and that Mr. Clarke didn’t press them when they were so obviously rattled. I definitely want him brought into their circle of trust next season.

I concur, nothing about Lucas’s parents suggested “hen-pecked” to me. Didn’t that wife-demeaning terminology die out along with “old battle-ax”?

They were in a narrative corner re: integrating El into the larger story. In order for there to be any sort of return to normalcy in Hawkins after the first season, everyone pretty much had to agree to pretend none of it happened. El’s existence refutes that whole pretense, and you know Hawkins Lab would not take a…