In general I felt the absence of the kids' home life this season. Yes!!! I don't know quite how to explain it, but it leaves you with this sort of empty, contextless feeling, especially with characters like Max and Billy, whose home life has a MAJOR effect on their characters, at least apparently. I'd hoped that Billy would have at least one more confrontation scene with Neil to kind of put things to rest, but nope. And also there's barely any interaction between all the Byerses this season, which again feels so weird and kind of empty after having so much of a focus on it in the first two seasons.
One thing that contributed to this, I think, is that this season's character team-ups never really got switched up at all, and I think the character relationships in general suffered for it. There was so little movement compared to last season, especially with Steve & Dustin & Robin & Erica--not that I didn't love their team-up, but all of them were pretty much trapped in the mall up until the very end, so they didn't get to interact with anyone else and after a while their dynamic began to feel a little bit static. Also Joyce and Hopper pretty much never interacting with any of the kids except for a few bits here and there...when everyone came together at the end it felt more rushed and not as satisfying, because it was more like a bunch of pieces sort of clashing together than groups joining up to form a whole--even in the battle at the mall they split up so quickly there was barely any time for some really good group scenes.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-07-07 01:57 am (UTC)One thing that contributed to this, I think, is that this season's character team-ups never really got switched up at all, and I think the character relationships in general suffered for it. There was so little movement compared to last season, especially with Steve & Dustin & Robin & Erica--not that I didn't love their team-up, but all of them were pretty much trapped in the mall up until the very end, so they didn't get to interact with anyone else and after a while their dynamic began to feel a little bit static. Also Joyce and Hopper pretty much never interacting with any of the kids except for a few bits here and there...when everyone came together at the end it felt more rushed and not as satisfying, because it was more like a bunch of pieces sort of clashing together than groups joining up to form a whole--even in the battle at the mall they split up so quickly there was barely any time for some really good group scenes.