During the Super Bowl the first teaser for the second season of Stranger Things premiered and people are super into it. It has Eggos, Ghostbusters—boys once again!—and Eleven, so of course the internet is excited. The opening with the vintage Eggo Waffles commercial and the way it cuts to Eleven is slick. It’s everything people love about Stranger Things in ten seconds—Eighties nostalgia and creepy-cute kids. I liked Stranger Things well enough, but it hasn’t stuck with me, mostly because it’s not about anything except nostalgia. Has it stuck with you?

At least the teaser is delivering on the weird sh*t. It looks like the Upside Down is merging with our dimension, and the tagline is “The world is turning upside down.” So that portal in the government building is expanding, right? That’s probably what is happening? Or Will Byers’ return is in some way bridging the gap between the two dimensions. The Demogorgon followed Eleven from the black place she went to, so maybe something followed Will back, too. (Nice going, WILL.) Stranger Things season two will drop on Netflix on Halloween, and I’m sure it will be a fun thing to watch that week, when everyone’s in the horror mood, which will probably help convince people that it’s good drama and not just atmospheric.

What I want to know is when the rest of The Get Down—the superior 2016 Netflix show featuring kids in a period setting—will air. The six episodes released last fall were only Part One, and Part Two is supposed to come sometime this year, but there’s no set release date yet. And there’s no word on whether or not there will be any more after that. The Get Down is expensive, and Part One and maybe didn’t do very well. It’s hard to tell because Netflix doesn’t release viewership or subscriber counts, but the general consensus is that Netflix spent a lot of money on a show that didn’t really deliver, and didn’t translate good reviews to award nominations, either.

The Get Down and Stranger Things are both about kids in bygone eras, they’re both about nerds—The Get Down kids use the Star Wars theme in their music—they’re both about kids clinging to pop culture to try and make sense of the worlds in which they live. They both have outstanding ensemble casts that mix fresh faces with established actors. They both have killer soundtracks. They both have detailed artistic design that flawlessly recreate their eras. They both deserve the buzz.

Share this post