The Breaking of the Fellowship: Stranger Things 2, Characters in Combination, and the Serialized Streaming Narrative

I recently finished Stranger Things 2 (I'm a very slow binger), and my main complaint is about the handling of characters. Which isn't to say that the characters were mishandled per se, but that the show features them in different combinations than I would wish.

The best part about Stranger Things is the cast chemistry, especially that between the core four boys, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will. Most of their time together in season one is actually sans Will, but the group works without him, and also works well with him. One of my favorite episodes of season two is the first one, and that's because I just like the wacky nerd hijinks this fouresome gets up to playing arcade games (or playing D&D, or going trick-or-treating as the Ghostbusters, or whatever). The supernatural plot is secondary to the character chemistry.

While the first season kept the core four together (aside from Will, but adding Eleven), the second season disperses them. Mike and Will end up with Hopper and Joyce, while Dustin and Lucas work with Steve and new character Max, and Eleven is off doing her own thing.* So the gang is barely together except in the first couple episodes and the last one, and that disappoints me. Why have a cast with this kind of chemistry-- I don't know if they are a real group of friends but they sure seem like one-- and not utilize it?

When I've expressed this to friends, they've pointed out that not mixing the characters up would miss us out on what was probably the season's best moments, the interactions between Steve and Dustin. Last season, Steve was in the Jonathan/Nancy plot, but this season they're off on their own, with Steve joining in with Dustin, Lucas, and Max. And indeed, the interaction between Steve and Dustin is amazing, as Steve ends up dispensing romantic and fashion advice to the younger kid. Steve turns out to have great camaraderie with the younger kids (as also seen in the finale), and I would have been sad to miss out on that.

I think this relates to a thing I've complained about with streaming shows before. The way they're (usually) built around single stories that span 8-13 episodes means they get locked into particular stories across whole seasons. If Stranger Things was more lightly serialized, you could have a couple episodes about the core four, and an episode where Steve and Dustin hang out as well. I like ensemble television a lot, and some of the best stuff in ensemble television happens when characters who don't normally interact spend some time interacting, and you discover new areas of possibility. For example, my wife and I are watching Parks and Recreation these days, and Ben is usually paired with Lesley Knope, and that's obviously his natural place, chemistry-wise and story-wise. But every now and then the show will do an episode that pairs him with, say, Andy and April, or Tom Haverford, and those moments yield gold as well.

Stranger Things can't do this. Its commitment to season-long stories mean that characters get put into groups that they're basically committed to for the entire season. Once Mike and Will are off with Joyce and Hopper, they have to stay that way until the climax. There are times this can work-- like I said, Steve and the kids turned out to be a great combination-- but there are times it doesn't work. Mike, for example, feels kind of useless when he's with adults the entire season. A more lightly serialized ensemble show can experiment with different combinations of characters on occasion, while still usually using them in the default combination.

I know Stranger Things 3 won't give me what I want, but I think a lot of season two's problems would actually be rectified with a more light touch to serialization. I could get to see the core cast of the boys, Eleven, and Max interact, while the show could still experiment with interesting and unusual combinations.

* I don't focus on it much in this post, but I was also bummed how little time Eleven spent with any of the characters. But this is because the Duffer Brothers have written themselves into a corner, I think. Eleven, at the end of season one, was revealed as so powerful that she can stop any threat. This means she had to be kept isolated from all the other characters until the season's climax.