5 Reasons ‘Stranger Things’ is Great

It has a compelling mystery

My biggest fear was that “Stranger Things” would be akin to “Super 8,” a parade of homages linked by a weak plot. So I was surprised that, just a few episodes in, I stopped looking for any callbacks or Easter Eggs and found myself invested in the story and the world the Duffers created. Part of that has to deal with the characters (which we’ll get to in a moment), but I was surprised that I found the story’s mythology to be just as compelling without being the labyrinthine mess that bogs down so many serialized dramas.

The debt to Stephen King is most obvious in the setup of the Hawkins lab, a shady government base straight out of “Firestarter” or “The Stand,” as is the creepy parallel world, The Upside Down. The show’s pacing is right on, doling out information quickly but also dropping enough bread crumbs to lead us into the next story. I don’t know that The Upside Down or its monster are overly original, but they’re effective, and the way the brothers used Dungeons and Dragons to explain the parallel universe helped keep the feel unique.

I know the Duffers have a 30-page dossier about the Upside Down, the monster and Hawkins Lab. But honestly, I’m glad they didn’t deluge us with information. I don’t need to know the exhaustive history of Eleven or the portal, and the show does a great job giving us enough to piece together the big pieces of the mystery without spelling everything out. It keeps the show from being overwhelmed by its own mythology, and the unknown information keeps the Upside Down, the monster and Eleven mysterious and creepy.