Stranger Things 5x04 Full Reaction!
Added 2025-12-06 15:11:38 +0000 UTC
Comments
Can’t speak to the scene in the episode, but I can say that I did vote for Violent Night. I’ve never seen it, but I would love to share it with Jess and you guys. I still keep being bitter about no reaction to Patrick Stewart’s Christmas Carol, and the Christmas movie trivias that I attend barely including if at all any of my top ten Christmas films which is likely going to happen again this month, (Not to mention being so INSANELY bitter about how the Batman trivia barely included any of the Burtonesque and seemed more focused on Nolan and Schumacher, along with the Scorsese rip offs with the Batman paint jobs. Though not too much of the Battinson, strangely enough.) so I’ll endorse the bitterness here. Nice that the teamup is wonderful for you. I am getting more and more livid as I get older about the idea of the only way to make a good, strong female character was to make them as unfeminine as possible. Sometimes that does lead to some great characters as you note, but it gets so annoying and tiresome past a point. I believe you said something along similar lines with the live-action Disney remakes. I know it obscenely pisses me off how the Game of Thrones fandom so embraces the mindset given how much they shit on Sansa and Alicent, whom I both adore as they are two of my favorite characters, period. Contrast to Arya where everyone told me I’d unquestionably love her the best, and she fell short of the impossible hype. (Not helping was like how you said about not being able to see Mark Gatiss and Rufus Sewell for a long while, it took me half of Game of Thrones to not see red when seeing Arya due to the Face the Raven of it all.) Here you say they have the excellent team up of someone like Holly with Max, and good to hear the praise. Can see how good old Pennywise would be on the brain. I’ll cackle some if they maintain that Broadway continuity lock-out. Curious about the mention of The Great Escape, though now that along with Forbidden Planet brings Naked Gun to mind. I’m shit with math, so I’d lose that battle. Can fully buy Linda being cast like how Sigourney was cast in Defenders. I got the same sort of thought process with my shortlist for ideal Darth Plagueis casting of who’s got the gravitas and skill necessary to be plausible as the master of Darth Sidious, which is where David Thewlis emerges as frontrunner. Here there is also the casting gag of Linda being the big eighties icon, and yes, good note on we don’t even question it about her putting up as good a fight against Hopper, even without being as ripped as she was in T2. Haven’t even seen this, and I don’t bat an eyelash at that one. Nor have I seen anything about trying to mislead about Vecna being prisoner when from what I’ve gathered of Vecna, sounds like a fart in a stiff wind as evidenced by none of the reactors buying it. Heard something about how hated Kali is, though the image from the name is Temple of Doom. Nice to hear the writing’s been improved. Jess did sound very impressed with Derek, and now you mention that as well, sounds great. Nice to hear Vecna is one damn fine villain. I suspect I’m going to expose my age in the years to come when Jamie’s default image of him remains Anthony rather than Vecna. He was also young Grindelwald, though his part was small enough, and this sounds like it’ll help him escape that one. (Still better than being remembered for Twilight.) Interesting to hear about this being more like the cliffhanger between Dead Reckoning Part One and Dead Reckoning Part Two. Again, hoping that you, Jess, everyone will be happy with the next batch before everyone is onstage for the finale. My mom adores that song you reference by the way, especially the Faith Hill cover. Good touch.
Thomas Corp
2025-12-06 19:39:56 +0000 UTCI'm one of the snobs who saw The Wages of Fear first and can't think of Sorcerer as anything but a subpar knockoff, even if it's pretty good in its own right. And the SImpsons spoof kicks ass. Like I said before, it's recently come out that the whole reason the last two episodes of Season 4 were released later is that they were so effects intensive that they were only finished literally a day before release. So I'm willing to buy the same happened here. I just got to another unconventional Christmas movie in the Best Original Screenplay list, Battleground. It's about the Battle of the Bulge, and gets surprisingly intense for the time as you can very much feel everyone's determination to properly honor the survivors of this massive battle from just five years earlier. Plus it has then little known stars like Ricardo Montalban, James Arness, and James Whitmore. Yes, Brooks was there.
Ryan
2025-12-06 19:00:24 +0000 UTCOne thing I forgot to mention last time, I'm pretty sure Hopper saying he doesn't understand how El's powers work is a deliberate Violent Night reference. The way it's delivered is exactly the same. And you could understand that soon if a little more than six goddamn people voted for one of the greatest movie setups of all time. Yeah, I'm going to be bitter about that for a while. Madmax and Holly the Heroic teaming up is already everything I could hope for, and it's especially a relief that Holly is catching on to the truth this early rather than the show being like WITCH and having her duped by the bad guy right to the end. Ten to twenty years ago there was this whole thing where all writers seemed to think the only way to make a good, strong female character was to make them as unfeminine as possible, and while that gave us some great characters like Katniss Everdeen and Korra, I'm glad we're now past it and can get someone like Holly, thrown even further into relief by pairing her with the very tomboy Max. In fact, my big hope for the second half is that for some reason their escape involves fully accepting Running Up That Hill's plea to "exchange the experience" and act more like each other. Also quite a trip at this time to hear people on this show talk about IT, even if it's not the same one. Though I also couldn't help wondering if Max was telling her the whole story in third person, like in Fear Street. And I have to note the reason Vecna's afraid of that cave is given in the stage play that came out this year, so I wonder if the show is also going to share that at some point, or it'll just be left as this weird thing of "Only the true fans willing to buy a Broadway ticket deserve this answer." I couldn't wait for your reaction to this one specifically from the moment The Great Escape was brought up, knowing how proud you'd be of being able to follow everything they were saying about it. I would love to see that moment in the writers' room where someone realized using this specific reference would allow them to make a bunch of cheap "dick" jokes in a totally organic way, and of course it's even funnier with most of them going to Robin. Meanwhile, I was most proud of still remembering enough high school math to follow Dustin's extrapolation to realize the flesh wall is a full circle. Linda Hamilton's casting is now very much giving off the same vibe as Sigourney Weaver playing the main villain of The Defenders, where their main reason for it was just to have an actor who you could believe it would take the whole team to beat. And our decades of memories of her do a lot of heavy lifting to help us believe this 69 year old woman who's clearly not nearly as jacked as she used to be could put up such a fight against a huge guy like David Harbour. On the downside for this story, was anyone seriously thinking Vecna was actually the prisoner? Not a single one of the reactors I've seen bought it, and I'd instantly thought of Kali once the whole idea of a prisoner was brought up, so this reveal fell pretty flat, beyond the amusement of them feeling the need to put in a flashback montage because they clearly doubted a lot of fans would remember her. The Duffers have talked about how guilty they've felt for years over letting Linnea down with subpar material and making all the fans hate her without getting to see the kind of acting she's really capable of, and this is very much them trying to make up for it, so that's a big enticing part of the second half. And of course we can't get away without discussing Derek. Jake Connelly makes a huge splash with his first acting role outside local commercials, both in the early scenes where he's just a bully, to his turn to Maximum Derek after he fully gets on board with the heroes. Maybe they should have sent him in accompanied with two bags of cocaine to really sell it. Hopefully his career will expand nicely from here, though he's said he also hopes to be a pro football player, a combo that hasn't exactly landed the best results historically. All leading to the big climax, and two of our heroes fully ascending to Mike the Brave and Will the Wise. This one shot may actually top the one from last season, though with all the soldiers apparently being wiped out, I wish we could have gotten a better glimpse of what happened to Sullivan if that's really it for him. Vecna's return in his true form is beautiful, made even better by your so sarcastically saying he looks different before finding out he really does. Who could believe Jamie had this kind of performance in him after he was best known as the naive, innocent guy in Sweeney Todd, but he's been crushing it for two seasons now. And Will tapping fully into his powers is the kind of thing that if I hadn't known how much this show has always been written on the fly, I would totally believe this is where he was always planned to end up with how perfectly it flows from his whole story over four and a half seasons. Rather a Dead Reckoning style ending where there just happens to be more of the story to go rather than a direct cliffhanger, which really surprises me after the way this went down last time (which I've found out was literally only done because they needed more time to do the effects, so it's surprisingly effective to have the gap at that exact point). And I'll just say it, these four episodes are some of the best the show has ever been and have me excited for the ending to a degree I would have thought impossible after some of the missteps the show has made. Where are you, Christmas?
Ryan
2025-12-06 18:36:09 +0000 UTCFair that you say going into this mid-season finale that the stress level’s higher than the past episodes. That’s me as well with tomorrow night’s Derry episode where I’m spending today and tomorrow with the stress level of anticipation of that being just a WEE bit past the point of skyrocketing. So, you’re in good company, Jess. Even with anticipation of your loquacity being on the longer end of things, I still caught some of the reaction before getting to the aftertalk. Saw some of the reactions to the Will business. You say that with the episode being titled “Sorcerer” that you should have clocked shit. Makes you feel any better, I hear the title, and I think the Friedkin picture, so I wouldn’t worry about it. What I see of your reaction makes an impression. You dub Will to be Will the wise. Yeah, well, is this Will the Wise in Grey or Will the Wise in White? Or does he want to be particularly nerdy by being Will the Wise in Many Colors? And he’s saving Lucas according to your description, so that’s good for you, Jess. You mentioned about Joyce facing off against the Demogorgon sounds amazing. Can understand your fine line with the adults of they have some pretty tough kids that can handle shit, yet the protective parental instinct is not something you can just tamp down. If I ever had kids, I’d get it, though again, I take your point. Your description of the show being at its best when although there is the horror, the intensity, and threat, they still sprinkle in the splash of camp. Sounds like the Tim Burton Batman films when you put it that way. And those films do demonstrate when Batman is at its best when the gothic drama and the camp are perfectly balanced, so I can get behind your description of Stranger Things. Halfway through and not much word about Linda as this Dr. Kay. Which is fine, and maybe you just don’t have much to say about her character. She is a big draw for me if I ever see the show. Then there’s your update about the second episode drop on Christmas. Which I still don’t understand why Netflix would do that; this is not the type of show that you watch with the whole family for a festive time of things. And even if I was watching this show, a guy like me who’s Christmas spirit is dead from the bad memories, certain family members being gone, on top of the twelve years and counting of retail, that’s not a show I want to just sit down and spend Christmas Day watching. Then again, my top two Christmas films are Stalag 17 and Eyes Wide Shut, and I got Batman Returns in the top five of that list, so maybe I’m not one to talk. That aside, I wish you and your editor well with that episode drop, and no problem with the delay with the finale as you have your plans for the lovely holiday festivities. I will keep as quiet as possible, spoiler-wise. You would think I have nothing to spoil since I’ve not seen the show, well, the internet is most uncouth with this shit. For example: There’s been some sort of social media post about flights to Hawkins being cancelled, and apparently there’s a number you can call. And I don’t think the flights being cancelled is related to the airline blowing up Hank Hill’s smoked turkey. I don’t even follow anything Stranger Things related, and this still comes across my way. And people still keep thinking I’m going overboard with staying up until two in the morning to catch new episodes of shows when they air to avoid spoilers. Like I would have done each week for Andor season two if they hadn’t moved the release time to the evenings, the inconsiderate BASTARDS. If I was caught up, and I was watching this season, I would definitely do that for the final episode. And it would make it funny as I’ll be in bed by nine-thirty to tenish on New Year’s Eve, yet if I was on top of Stranger Things, I’d stay up to catch the finale, even if it is reported to be over two hours, which makes it about the length of the M*A*S*H finale. Which, by the way, from what I’ve heard, the finale is indeed going to be about Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen length. There has also been news of a confirmed spinoff, I’m not going to say what it is, and word about it came my way as well. No worries again about any potential delays due to copyright being a pain. As of this week, I’ve seen several updates, statements from quite a few reactors, such as the Blind Wave guys and Late to the Party, posts saying they’re having some trouble with it too, so you’re not alone. That may not be the best news to hear, but it’s not nothing. There is comfort in numbers, if nothing else; the commiseration. Prayers sent your way for the reasonably smooth sailing with that. To you and your editor: I just want to tell you both good luck, we’re all counting on you. Hoping the final episodes are to your liking. And it’s just nice to hear your love for the show, Jess. Take care.
Thomas Corp
2025-12-06 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
