#Stranger things season 2 episode 1 plot series

(We know from last episodeвЂ™s flashback that Joyce took Will to see Poltergeist, so it must feel like dГ©jГ vu for both of them.) After being contacted by a strange voice she recognized as her sonвЂ™s the night before -В an incident that fried her phone -В Joyce buys a new phone and sits perched in a recliner with the receiver in her lap, waiting for another call. In perhaps the most powerful sequence in вЂњThe Weirdo on Maple Street,вЂќ Stranger Things brings yet another вЂ80s touchstone into the mix, suggesting that Will has become a ghost in the machine like Carol Anne in Poltergeist. She doesnвЂ™t have the вЂњcool-girlвЂќ distance of Heathers and Beetlejuice anymore. Though sheвЂ™s shown flashes of the person she was before Will disappeared, particularly in her shorthand with Hopper, Joyce has spend these first two episodes in a constant state of bleary-eyed determination, as Ryder plays this difficult role with raw, authentic emotion. Instead, the role is giving us Ryder as weвЂ™ve never quite seen her before, casting an actress known for cool, dark, urbane wit as a chain-smoking, working-class single mother from the Midwest whoвЂ™s fighting like hell to find her son. As Joyce, Ryder doesnвЂ™t draw on her past for a moment -В and this on a show that does almost nothing but reference the past. The Duffer brothers are aware of the Ryder iconography, but so far, Stranger Things has been smart about tweaking it. (IвЂ™m reminded of a favorite Onion story: Nation Falls In Love With Girl From Record Store.) As Reality Bites made it almost insultingly clear six years later, she was the avatar of alterna-teen cool. If you grew up on early-to-mid-вЂ™80s popular entertainment, but your taste started to shift more toward, say, the ClashвЂ™s вЂњShould I Stay or Should I GoвЂќ and Modern EnglishвЂ™s вЂњI Melt With YouвЂќ (to use episode-appropriate examples), there was something resonant about RyderвЂ™s image. Heathers didnвЂ™t come out until 1988, four years after the show is set, but RyderвЂ™s performance hit Gen-Xers like your humble recapper hard.

#Stranger things season 2 episode 1 plot series

Casting Winona Ryder in Stranger Things seems like an appropriately вЂ80s thing to do for a series so immersed in the era.