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[John Bailey]

I really enjoyed Stranger Things on initial viewing but in hindsight it's a
show I dug because of the familiar beats it hits, rather than one that
dragged me into its own weird world. I was sad to hear that the next season
continues the same story instead of treating each season as a new chapter
in a shared universe. But I reckon it also found fans who aren't already
interested in the stuff it revives (and there are some great performances
and scenes and everything, I'm not dissing the show).
But nostalgia always feels better first time around*
The most Pynchonesque of TV at the moment I reckon is Mr Robot. Paranoia so
pervasive it alters the ontological reality of the diegetic frame, multiply
unreliable narrators, the invocation of the audience as co-conspirator from
the opening line, hyper-capitalism as both succubus and incubus, ones and
zeroes falling apart then reforming new logics, the sense that anything can
happen at any point and we'll just have to deal with it... Recommended.
* The Trainspotting sequel T2 is a rare exception. Never seen a sequel with
such a profound relationship with the original (and it's original fans).

On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 12:53 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> My biggest objection about Stranger Things is that the government bad guys
> at the beginning become the good guys at the end.  And the Monster story
> line is so tangential that it barely exists.  This show feels as if it were
> written by an improv group, with no plan.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 3:31 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>>
>> "The Montauk Project is every horrible suspicion you've ever had since
>> World War II, all the paranoid production values, a vast underground
>> facility, exotic weapons, space aliens, time travel, other dimensions,
>> shall I go on?" (Bleeding Edge, p. 117)
>>
>> In *Bleeding Edge*, the Montauk Project is a significant element whose
>> ontological status remains unclear; considering the novel's architecture,
>> there seems to be a mutual reflecting of 9/11 and Montauk Project.
>>
>>
>> In *Stranger Things*, the Montauk Project is explicitly linked to MK
>> Ultra, which as such was real. The serial's way of telling the story, with
>> its many Spielbergian references to the 1980s, makes the narration more
>> fantasy-like and less political than Pynchon's novel, though.
>>
>> Eleven kills the Monster:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4dzQ4_MI3s
>>
>>
>> http://www.businessinsider.de/what-inspired-stranger-things-
>> montauk-project-2016-9?r=US&IR=T
>>
>> > ... We've had fun naming all the movies that "Stranger Things" is
>> paying homage to, but it's equally fascinating to see how it's playing with
>> decades-old government conspiracy theories ... <
>>
>> Do the Duffer brothers read Pynchon?
>>
>>
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