Stranger Things

Burren said:

Season 3 is easily the worst...

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It's Season 2. The episode with the kid gang alone makes it the worst.

Had to read back a few pages, can't recall if my store is just very late with these or if the marketing started up again for some reason. But i saw a few flavors of these in the store the other day for some reason.

9 and a half years from Season 1 debut to season 5 ending.

kids who were 12 are 22 now. Fucking hell. modern TV schedules suck.

the show is good, not perfect but fun - and if they are gonna do these “chapter” releases to drive engagement I prefer they do it like this where the season releases over a little over a month rather than drag it out like they normally do. Spiking ratings on thanks giving Christmas and new years is smart as hell to get back to “appointment TV”

I legit have no memory of the story at this point and don’t think I’m going to rewatch it so they better have a hell of a “previously on stranger things”

Hateyou said:

In their defense they probably lost 3 years due to Covid and writers strike.

I hate drip releases. Just release it all at once and let me determine the schedule. What’s the purpose of “appointment TV”?

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companies like Netflix live by the social media engine.

having their product be the focus on pop culture and social media on 3 holidays over the course of a month instead of releasing the whole season at once and spiking for a weekend. It’s all BS in the end as only total views should matter but hey, I get what they are going for to try to justify their existence

Breakdown said:

9 and a half years from Season 1 debut to season 5 ending.

kids who were 12 are 22 now. Fucking hell. modern TV schedules suck.

the show is good, not perfect but fun - and if they are gonna do these “chapter” releases to drive engagement I prefer they do it like this where the season releases over a little over a month rather than drag it out like they normally do. Spiking ratings on thanks giving Christmas and new years is smart as hell to get back to “appointment TV”

I legit have no memory of the story at this point and don’t think I’m going to rewatch it so they better have a hell of a “previously on stranger things”

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I definitely "outgrew" the show after season 2. It was fine when they were tweens but just annoying when it became a teeny bopper love story soap opera.

Also I don’t buy the Covid and strike stuff as much. I get it but how is it that we have shows that started post covid that will wrap season 4 that debuted after season 4 of ST. Sure ST is a bigger budget show than others but they definitely drag ass.

Wait what? I thought season 4 was the actual ending, with the 2 part release....

Bald Brah said:

I definitely "outgrew" the show after season 2. It was fine when they were tweens but just annoying when it became a teeny bopper love story soap opera.

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I'm amazed at how long people will stick with these shows (looking at you Walking Dead). I checked out after season 2. Saw this thread got bumped and didn't even realize they were still making it.

This was nostalgia bait with 80s shit. Are they even still in the 80s at this point?

Best Youtube response...

I was 12 years old when the first season came out. All my friends used to watch it together. Now I'm 97 living in a nursing home. Can't wait to see the final season.

Of course I am going to watch this. That last part with Mike Yelling run....damn.

Hateyou said:

In their defense they probably lost 3 years due to Covid and writers strike.

I hate drip releases. Just release it all at once and let me determine the schedule. What’s the purpose of “appointment TV”?

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They just officially called Squid Games season 2 part 2 "Season 3", so I guess this is going to be a thing now going forward. Before they'd at least refer to the second drop as a part 2.

Now split drops are being called a whole season. It marks a trend across the board (HBO also affected for awhile now) where things have gone from 10 to 8 to 7 episode seasons.

Nothing was as cringe as swapping Squid Part 2 into Season 3 in the promotional material this week though. That's real ballsy by Netflix.

Gravel said:

I'm amazed at how long people will stick with these shows (looking at you Walking Dead). I checked out after season 2. Saw this thread got bumped and didn't even realize they were still making it.

This was nostalgia bait with 80s shit. Are they even still in the 80s at this point?

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I mean they can't still be in the 80s; I want to say season 4 was basically starting in the 90s. Which was fine, but yeah, as a period piece it's definitely past the point of anyone caring about the period in general.

I'm curious how it ends, but yeah. Productions need to have defined series ending points and they need to produce them within 3-5 years of start so that it inhabits the appropriate amount of time in the public mind.

The Bear is another show that needs to call it almost immediately. You can easily see where they are grasping at straws in even the 2nd season, and it's clear it doesn't go "better" than here.

Rezz said:

I mean they can't still be in the 80s; I want to say season 4 was basically starting in the 90s. Which was fine, but yeah, as a period piece it's definitely past the point of anyone caring about the period in general.

I'm curious how it ends, but yeah. Productions need to have defined series ending points and they need to produce them within 3-5 years of start so that it inhabits the appropriate amount of time in the public mind.

The Bear is another show that needs to call it almost immediately. You can easily see where they are grasping at straws in even the 2nd season, and it's clear it doesn't go "better" than here.

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in their universe I think season 1 was 1983 and each season is a year.

jayrebb said:

They just officially called Squid Games season 2 part 2 "Season 3", so I guess this is going to be a thing now going forward. Before they'd at least refer to the second drop as a part 2.

Now split drops are being called a whole season. It marks a trend across the board (HBO also affected for awhile now) where things have gone from 10 to 8 to 7 episode seasons.

Nothing was as cringe as swapping Squid Part 2 into Season 3 in the promotional material this week though. That's real ballsy by Netflix.

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These release schedules make it impossible to get into a show. 2-3 years between seasons? Why bother. 8 episode seasons is a bit of a laugh and taking 2-3 years to make them is an even larger laugh. Star Trek TNG had 25+ episode seasons right up to the end.

I can't remember a single thing about this show's last season, which makes it a lock I won't watch the last season at all.

Are they going to do three 3 hour episodes or something? It was so long ago and I could just look it up but I feel like the last couple episodes of the most recent season were like 2 hours long each. Or the last episode at least was over 2 hours.

Fucker said:

These release schedules make it impossible to get into a show. 2-3 years between seasons? Why bother. 8 episode seasons is a bit of a laugh and taking 2-3 years to make them is an even larger laugh. Star Trek TNG had 25+ episode seasons right up to the end.

I can't remember a single thing about this show's last season, which makes it a lock I won't watch the last season at all.

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To be fair about the ST:TNG episodes, they were mostly kind of bottle episodes where the overwhelming majority of whatever was happening typically happened on the ship, so on already built sets/etc. Also super minimal CGI, usually humanoid aliens which were largely just different facepaint/masks and matching gloves etc.

I get it and yeah, serial shows like that absolutely produced more content faster and for much, much less. I think a bigger issue is that too many of these production companies (ie, Netflix) purchase an idea for a couple of seasons when the creators clearly have a start:stop concept in mind. Then they look at the relative popularity and decide to either throw more or less (or cancel) and it goes from there.

A lot more of these limited, finite stories, need to be purchased outright with a definitive endpoint in mind and a budget that matches said endpoint. You lock up the stars for 2-3 years and produce 5 years worth of content, and then you stop. Keep them employed and paid and get everything you need out of them. They shouldn't be looking for other projects (Brown doing the 'Zilla movies, or the enola holmes crap, etc. Wolfhard doing... who cares?) and you should be filming basically nonstop to get all the work done so you can just spend money editing/etc.

Then when complete and out there the actors get all kinds of praise/etc and can charge shitloads for their next endeavor. This incremental stuff spread out over years just dilutes the property and almost guarantees that it is going to be over budget or the are going to have to haggle the shit out of actors and you end up with a subpar product because most of your money is now tied up in your decade older stars.

Just seems dumb overall. And I honestly can't remember shit about the last season aside from Metallica in the Upsidedown.

pump sub numbers, it gets people hooked for Q4 (dec) and Q1 (jan) in their sub number reports

sadly it works, squid game s2 was the highest watched streamed show last year even though s2 sucked and it was like 4 years since s1. s2 was also just a split half season with the second half dropping this month i think