Stranger Things 2 Review: The Abyss Stares Back.

Has it been a year already? No. It's been a year, 3 months, and 12 days since Stranger Things burrowed deep into my genre fiction loving heart. It's officially a big frikkin' deal now. One of those things you have to see. I personally made a bunch of my friends sit down and watch it. Even threw in two 5ths of vodka for free. I don't evangelize very often but then a show like this is exceedingly rare even for peak TV.

There's an old adage for film students to never make kids your protagonists. Good actors are rare enough. Good child actors even more so. I don't know what kind of sacrificial ritual it took to stack this show's deck so full but I'm not questioning providence. Even the teenagers are killer and only one of them looks 30-ish. You wanna pick apart ST's interdimensional shenanigans, fine. I'll admit the plotting this year was a bit repetitive. My point is I'd watch this cast do damn near anything. So what did they do this time?

Hawkins Indiana has done what all small towns do when a when a tragedy sweeps through, they forget as hard as they can. Will Byers is alive! Fantastic. Why did we have a funeral for him? Who cares. Who was the kid they fished out of the quarry? Doesn't matter! What about Barb? She ran away and that's that. Now close the curtain.

I wish my 7th grade science teacher taught me about Phineas Gage

The return to relative normalcy gives the show a chance to flesh out Lucas and Dustin a bit more and that really made me smile. Lucas's family is delightful and Matarazzo is a budding comic god. There's a scene where Dustin has to convince his mom to leave the house and while nothing he says on paper is "funny" I had to rewind twice to drink it all in. He could sell snow to a polar bear, I guess is what I'm saying. It's also nice to see Lucas's race inform his character more than last year. He gets a crush on a white girl in a story line that gets depressingly realistic as it goes along and there's an argument between him and Mike about why Mike doesn't want to be Winston Zeddemore for Halloween that gets Real.

Just about the only folks who drift into the background this year are Mike and Johnathan. But Mike's got "It" going on and Johnathan... dude's got problems IRL. The true MVP is Noah Schnapp's stunning commitment to the ever suffering Will. You don't see a lot of stories about kids with PTSD because there just arn't a bunch of 13 year olds that can break your heart like this. He is asked to do some truly crazy sh*t. Flashbacks, teary eyed breakdowns, seizures, and multiple poss-...nope that's a  spoiler. Out of everyone in the best ensemble cast since Firefly this guy deserves the Emmy. You just wanna to reach through the screen and hug em'.

On the plot oriented front I was a fan of a number of changes. The newer, friendlier, face of government run mad science (an outstanding Paul Reiser) helps muddy the motives of what exactly Hawkins Power and Light wants. I love how Joyce's new relationship (Sean Astin) starts in media res, Eleven's current living situation is brilliant, and I like how Mike turned into a mopey little jerk since El left him. I can relate.

Pay no attention to the only legible word in that foreshadowing graffiti...

The new kids in town have their detractors, Max is kinda Mary Sue-ish and Billy is a bit of a one note bully. Who's clearly in his early 20's. But I do like where both of their characters end up at the end of the season, arc wise, and their performances are solid. You do get the sense that her need to hang out with the D&D party is less story driven and has more to do with loneliness. Plus when they push her away she pushes right back. Billy is also a hell of a lot better than last season's stab at the Stephen King bully and the scene he shares with Mike's mom near the end was so funny I was gasping for air. You make me laugh like that once a season... you can stay.

I'm also grateful the central conflict isn't just the same stuff but bigger. The creature from the upside down is smarter and angrier. It knows how it failed last time and adapts. A force of nature villain with a personally sadistic twist. I would have loved to know more about the Mind Flayer, though I understand I'm asking series finale type questions here. We're only halfway done at the very least. Heck, maybe the less we know the better.

Then there's episode 7. Maybe you've heard about it. It uhhhhhh, it is not great. The show decides to  have a pilot for a spin off right after the season's biggest cliffhanger. After watching it a second time I don't dislike it as much. But also I wouldn't be heartbroken if we never see any of those new characters again. ST's casting black magic had to wear out some time and it didn't help that the writing quality dipped sharply too. Though Eleven does make some important character choices, I did appreciate that. But come on Duffers, if you use those guys in the future you gotta tighten that dialogue up. Otherwise I'd recommend introducing 06 or 07 instead.

So my buddy Will likes to... draw.

But the last 2 episodes are a roller coaster. So good that I broke my one promise to myself to take at least 24 hours to finish. It's very much Aliens to season 1's Alien and it was scrumptious. Once again everybody gets something to do and it doesn't all revolve around a big glowing hole in the sky. I mean... it is 25% that but the climax has a lot more on it's mind than most. Particularly a scene where everyone shares a personal story about Will. Joyce tells one about a box of crayons she got him for his 8th birthday and it utterly, utterly, wreaked me. Stuff like that cuts straight to the heart of what I get from this show that I don't see anywhere else. Sincerity.

These characters deal with sci fi scenarios like I imagine most people would. There aren't any pithy monologues about saving the world. There's finger pointing, arguing, and name calling. When a 3 story shadow monster bears down on Will, he cries. When the gang is surrounded by monsters they run. When they are about to face certain death... they hold hands. The presence of these life threatening scenarios realistically wears them down and I emphasize with them more than any other cast on the air.

Maybe it's corny. Certainly some of it is, there's a "it's not your fault" type scene in ep 9 I'm not crazy about. But I love it because it hits so much more than it misses and I'm glad I'm not alone. So sit down, mix a vodka tonic, and have some whipped cream'n'Halloween candy suicide waffles.

My treat.

Battle Chasers Review: Just One More Turn.

A girl and her war golem.

Battle Chasers: Night War is a delicate high wire act. It has grand ambitions and a vanishingly small crowdfunded budget. Personally, it's one of the most pleasant surprises in a year filled with them and is definitely on my GOTY list. But it might not be on yours. Let's talk about that.

The burning question is how much repetition, level grinding, material hunting, and palette swapped enemies can you endure for the best turn based combat you may ever ever play? Because I made it 60+ hours over 2 weeks. I fell madly in love with it's combat and mechanics. Going to the ends of it's earth to trick out my party in the best possible gear. That meant replaying dungeons at least once and hunting down all the optional bosses. I can see how some might find that tedious but I liked the ways the game itself tried to change it's pace.

When you start a dungeon you can choose an easy or hard mode. Finishing it on either difficulty gets you a loot box, naturally harder modes get you better loot boxes. Yet it goes deeper than that. Harder versions of dungeons (which are all randomly generated as well) spawn puzzles. Good ones. Miniature adventure game quests that are way more inventive then they need to be. Settling a score between rival weapon dealers, solving decent riddles, programing a war bot to love, and those are just my favorites. They take maybe 5 minutes a piece and were much more meaningful discoveries to me than just another loot chest.

But I'd put up with a lot more just to get to the combat. Which is inexplicably good. Your character's roles are starkly defined. Your tank needs to draw fire, your rogue needs to kill stuff as fast as possible, and your healer... needs to heal. Some deviation from that plan is fine. Gully, the tank, has some neat shielding abilities if Calibretto, the healer, is busy. Garrison, the rogue, can make enemies bleed which can lead to multiple battle winning gambits. There's nothing like watching an enemy bleed out just before he kills one of your own. But too much deviation, like 2 turns worth, can be devastating in the simplest of battles. You can never take your eye off the ball and I love that. I can't say much for the rest of the game's 6 characters. Except for Red Monika but we'll get to her. I had too much fun with the starting 3 to feel like switching up. I also didn't feel like level grinding for characters I hadn't spent my perk point books on.

Speaking of!

The amount of time I've spent on this screen is... abhorrent.

I need to give a shout out to the perk trees. The game's secret sauce that kept me hooked for weeks. They all have 2. Offensive and defensive. Although those seem to just be guidelines. You'll flip back and forth weighing options. Do you go all in on one tree and get mastery bonuses? Or do you trick out your favorite skills by spreading the love around? Certain builds work great for dungeon crawling but are crap for bosses. The opposite is also true. You will never be completely satisfied and yet you are being drip fed perk points constantly. Playing the game smart can get you points faster but not fast enough! The PP economy is genius, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

But as for Red, well the phrase "chain mail bikini" doesn't do her justice. She's a relic from a darker time. She's an obnoxious pin up that chafes with the rest of the game's glowing design choices. I know this is based on a comic book series from the early 2000's, but jeeeeeze. Can't I get her to equip a sweater? Or some pants?!

Regardless, this is a damn fine RPG from Kickstarter and all that entails. The end game nearly collapses under the weight of a thousand palette swaps and the final boss disappoints. But Battle Chasers was really all about the journey and I had a hell of a time. A solid number score escapes me, but I would have gladly coughed up $50 for it. If and when they start crowdfunding a sequel I am DOWN.

Now who wants some wallpaper?

Oh I've only gotten a little bit through Stranger Things 2...

...the second time. God help me, I love this show so much and I owe it to all you people to tamp my mania down into a coherent argument for this blog and the podcast. But yeah, season 2 is REAL good. Real gud.

Stranger Things premiere at 3:00 AM EST.

Not that I'm pulling an all nighter or anything. Maybe. If it's really good. I have work tomorrow. I can't do this to myself. F*%k, those reviews are glowing...

Pouring one out for battleborn...

You had really really really REALLY bad timing. But you were fun, funny, and well designed. You deserved a place in the sun and it's a damn shame you never got out of Overwatch's shade. A fine game that I do concede is technically "better." I wish there was room for both. Or that there were active lobbies even 4 months after launch. 

Here's a Chance inspired fan art dump!

And you Isic... I'll miss you most of all.

C&C Episode 94: Thanks Chamberlain!

This week we talk about Chamberlain's early Christmas gift. I disagree with Chance on cuphead and couldn't agree with him more on Battle Chasers. I also out myself as a shameless true crime dork. People like BTK can't be "underrated" I realize that now...

Two out of three ain't bad

 

Mindhunter Review: How's your mom?

Mindhunter isn't the exactly the best police procedural I've ever seen. It isn't even the best new show this year ( The Keepers). But nevertheless I INHALED it. Horked it all down in less than 48 hours. Would you have enjoyed David Fincher's Zodiac if it was 10 hours long? Because that's exactly what it is even though it covers several more killers.

This is a meatball sub. You know what's in it but that doesn't mean it can't surprise you. The bread is a garlic baguette made fresh that morning, the meatballs are grass fed beef, and the red sauce is a Sicilian family secret centuries old. Nothing here is going to win any awards but I could watch this show once a week for the rest of my life. You know... if there was a new one each week.


This is meant to be a deep dive into the dawn of behavioral science in law enforcement but it shines as a nickel tour of American serial killers time forgot. Ed Kemper, Jerry Brudos, and even Monte Rissell get... justice doesn't feel like the right word. Great performances at any rate. If you love true crime like I do, you're gonna get a kick out of the many interview segments that break up the character drama. Which is sadly the weakest link.

It's not a deal breaker but it does feel like filler compared to how electric the procedural elements end up being. Holden Ford ( the hundredth character based on John E. Douglas) is a teacher at Quantico who is deeply frustrated by why motiveless spree killings keep happening. He teams up with the older Bill Tench as they go on the road teaching various police stations about "sequence killing" by day and interviewing a murderer's row of... murderers by night.

Their personal relationships needed more work. Johnathan Groff just isn't as talented as his girlfriend Hannah Gross. She kinda acts circles around him and you wonder why she keeps putting up with his stodgy self centered BS. Not that Groff is "bad" he really shines during interrogations. But during the relationship scenes he is just so devastatingly charmless.

Anna Torv eventually gets on board as the basement crew's psychologist/M. and I'm stunned why she doesn't get more work. She's perfect for film noire and Fincher's low key baroque style is a wonderful fit. It's honestly a shame we don't see more of Tench's and her personal life. I found his adoptive parent situation and her dilemma of leaving her professorship to start over much more interesting than Ford's flailing attempts at romance.

To be fair their relationship arc is pretty great.

But ultimately it's the meatballs that make or break this sandwich and the mystery vignettes are spectacular. One is a hunt, the other a he said/she said clusterf*&k that tears a small town apart and one more involving a elementary school principle that is something that should win a writing Emmy. It won't but I'd vote for it. They hammer home just how radical this method of getting into killers heads, empathizing with them, and predicting what they'll do next seemed to people at the time. Killers were born killers. Nothing you could do about it.

There's a great running gag with a beat cop who waits for the road school to be over and comes up to them before they leave and says "so there's this one guy..." There were always one or two cops that saw truly horrific killers slip through the cracks in their methods. Without guys like that, Douglas's research may never have been proven right and so many more killers may have gotten away with  higher body counts. Mindhunters shows how effective cooperation can be and never talks down to the locals.

Lastly, my favorite point the show makes is something I've noticed over the past year or so devouring true crime podcasts and reading The Man with the Candy. It's that scant few serial killers are actually "born" that way. Most suffered incredible kinds of abuse physical or otherwise. Most had absent parents or were never listened to when they cried for help in their own way. They aren't Hannibal Lector, in fact most are fairly dim. Sympathy is a strong word for what Mindhunter says they deserve but it makes a fine point in saying that most people haven't been through what they have and they are far more pathetic than popular fiction would have you believe.

The dialogue may be overwrought at times and it's relationships a little soapy. Yet I found this show impeccably researched and refreshingly honest. The only huge knock I have against it is the foreshadowing of BTK. He's teased in 8 of the episodes, mostly before the opening credits for only 10 seconds. They treat him like the season's big bad but he doesn't get caught until 2005. If they did some day in the life stuff with him, great. But there's barely any of that. So there you go. An occasionally gripping true crime drama with a sub plot involving a creepy home security installer that goes nowhere. Enjoy!

FringeDivision4Life.