Stranger Things - 'Chapter 4: The Body'

"I got a real positive feeling about this."

After the shock ending of Chapter 3, Mike lashes out at El for giving him false hope, but she responds by causing his walkie talkie to receive a cry for help from Will. He's still out there, he concludes, and assembles the kidvengers to share in the revelation. Lucas is of course skeptical still. Joyce (why was I calling her Nora last review?) believes the same thing as Mike. She calls the body fished from the water a 'thing' and refuses to believe that this is Will. Jonathan and Sheriff Hop both think that she's in serious denial, but they will both come to question their own certainty later on, as will Lucas.

In short, this is the episode where shit gets undeniably real.

Girls, apparently, are blonde in these boys' world.

Mike, Lucas and Dustin disguise El as a girl (once more, they essentially see her as alien just because she has short hair and is wearing Mike's clothes. Put a dress and a wig on her and they're like, dude!) to sneak into school and try to use the ham radio to boost her signal. Unfortunately they get caught and pushed to attend Will's memorial service. Here, Mike sees the standard issue bullies laughing and calls them out. They homophobe for a bit and Mike shoves one of them. When the bully comes back at him, El paralyses him and makes him wet himself, and maybe it's just me, but nose bleed notwithstanding she seems a little too into it. Kids are vicious, yo.

Nancy tries to report the faceless figure she saw at Steve's house, causing a bust-up with Steve, who is much more worried that he'll be found out for having a party with beer and sex than that Barb is missing. The police seem convinced that Barb just ran away, hinting that it was out of jealousy after Nancy slept with Steve, which in turn leads to a bust up between Nancy and her mother. Feeling isolated, Nancy notices a distortion on the photo of Barb and approaches Jonathan to enlarge it. He's a bit distracted, until she mentions the lack of a face, a detail Joyce also described. He enlarges the shot and sure enough, a faceless figure is watching Barb. Could his mother be right about Will? And what does that mean for Barb?

"All work and no play makes Joyce something something."

Joyce meanwhile cranks up the Clash and tries to make contact with Will. This time he is able to speak to her directly, Nora peeling back the wallpaper to reveal a weird membrane, through which Will calls to her while the boys hear the conversation over the ham radio, which pretty much puts the mockers on Lucas's doubts. Something approaches and Joyce tells Will to hide; she will find him. Then she gets all Shining on the wall, but merely bursts through to the outside while the ham radio ignites.

Back at Hawkins Lab, a volunteer is sent through a similar membrane and killed by a monster. Science is a harsh mistress.

Hop hits the bar, but it turns out he's quizzing a state trooper about why Will was found by state troopers on non-State run land, brought in under heavy guard and investigated by a state coroner. The trooper admits he was tipped off, but warns Hop he'll get them both killed. Hop heads back to the morgue and knocks out another trooper. He cuts open the body and finds... flock. The body is a fake, so Hop heads for the Lab and a possibly ill-advised break-in.

Stranger Things continues to be a powerful blend of smart sci-fi thriller and eyes-open love letter to a past age. I'm really starting to worry that Mike and El are going to end up as an underage, telekinetic Bonny and Clyde given their shared rage and delight in anti-bully vigilantism. I'm also concerned that Hop's good traits - intelligence, observation and deduction - will be overwhelmed by his reckless need to atone and we'll be bidding him a farewell sooner rather than later. On the upside, Joyce and Nancy both take a step for the proactive this week. I'm particularly intrigued by Nancy's attitude to Jonathan. He's clearly embarrassed about the photo of her - and he should be - but she seems genuinely to accept it as a mistake and to consider him awkward more than he is creepy. It's not something you would have seen a lot of in the actual eighties, where girls tended to be judgmental and guys needed to prove themselves in one way or another.