Best of 2016, #9: Arrival (Tease Your Twist)

Once again, I’ll start with what didn’t work:

The Problem: Most of the conflict in this movie is false conflict. We start with a very familiar sci-fi situation: Aliens have landed and the scientists want to communicate while the military doesn’t trust them. We’ve seen this a million times before, but this time the situation is tilted too far in the scientists’ direction. It’s way to obvious to us, and it should be obvious to them, that these aliens are super nice guys, but we still get scene after scene of the military freaking out needlessly. Meanwhile, we get a very cool story of watching a linguist decode this language, but the film doesn’t trust this story enough to carry the movie (and they may be right about that). (The most obvious example of false conflict is the fact that the military doesn’t warn Adams or Renner that gravity is about to realign itself. Why not give them a heads up on that? Just to give us and them a little false shock.)

The Meddler: The aliens needed to be even more alien, to the extent that they’re accidentally killing people, either by simply crushing them, or by emitting sounds that split eardrums, or by frying them with force fields, etc. This would up the stakes considerably. Now Adams would be putting her life at risk by entering this ship belonging to these aliens that can’t stop killing people, maybe accidentally, maybe not. Now the military would have a good reason to just wipe these people off the map and the scientists would have a much harder job to do convincing the military that no, these deaths were accidental and we just need to learn to communicate. Then the communication breakthrough would be far more consequential.

What I Liked About It: The performances, the tone, the science, and especially the whopper of a twist.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Tease your twist. A great twist can’t just land like a rock on the head of your audience. As with a murder mystery, you need to “play fair”, laying in a series of clues: Not that your audience wants to necessarily guess the twist before the reveal, but they want to feel like they could have and maybe should have. The beauty of this twist is that it’s teased out and revealed so gradually that you’re on the cusp of figuring it out about a half-hour before it finally hits you, which feels so gratifying. As soon as I heard Adams say “Your father’s the scientist”, I began to figure it out somewhere in the back of my brain, but that only meant it hit with more force, not less, when it was finally revealed.

Best of 2016, #10: Fences

So here I am back. I’m so sorry to disappear for so long, but it’s just hard to care about anything in the middle of this national nightmare. I’m just glued to the news and constantly freaking out. Everything I’ve ever fought for or cared about is being gleefully destroyed. It’s literally the apocalypse.

So there’s that.

Now let’s talk about this year’s movies. The bad news is that my negativity has spilled out in that direction as well. I thought pretty much all of the most prestigious movies of the year were overrated. Even when I went to write about my 10 favorites, I found I had more complaints about them than compliments. So in keeping with my sour mood, I’m going to have to split these in four parts each. A first part where I complain, a second where I meddle, a third part where I compliment some element of the movie, and then a storyteller’s rule that can be gleaned from the movie.

Problems: Fences was actually adapted by Tony Kushner, but he took off his name so the screenplay is merely credited to the dead original playwright August Wilson. Ostensibly, this was done out of deference, but one must suspect that this was also out of embarrassment over the fact that he just hadn’t cracked it (or Washington wouldn’t let him). The original play was set in a back yard, but almost none of those scenes have to be set in that back yard, and there’s no excuse for failing to open up the play more. At least range more around the house!

The Meddler: Once in the movie, there’s a montage between two of Wilson’s acts, and it goes a long way. We need more of those. This is a movie: We don’t need dialogue like “Where’s Cory?” “He had to go out to football practice.” Show us him leaving early and going to football practice, and have Troy see him go! Then show Cory at practice! One problem with this movie is that we never really believe it’s 1957 because the production design is so generic in this one back yard. Let us see this world! Convince us that it’s 1957.

For that matter, much of the text involves Troy being haunted by his traumatic past, which takes the form of certain powerful moments that he can’t shake. Intercut the  movie with those images, which can tell a silent story. Show us mysterious and painful images and then let him explain them later.

Ironically, one of the only times Washington does add an image to foreshadow something, it hurts the movie. Before Cory’s big confrontation with his dad, Washington shows him checking out a Marine recruiting station. Now we can already guess how the confrontation will be resolved, which makes it less tense (we aren’t wondering “What will he do if he’s kicked out?”), and it ruins the shock of seeing him in his Marine outfit later.

Finally, the movie could have been shorter. It’s 140 minutes, but those extra 20 minutes would shave off easily. The movie doesn’t really kick into gear until Troy admits to his affair almost an hour in. The scenes before that act to set him up as an imperious moralist, which sets him up to be exposed as a hypocrite, but each of those opening scenes could be chopped down. The scenes with his older son add the least to the movie, so they’d be target #1.

So why do I love this movie? Because it works wonderfully as a PBS “Great Performances”-style filmed version of one of the great plays of our time, acted by two of our finest actors.  Washington get truly jaw-dropping performances out of himself and Davis.  I can certainly understand why Washington was so loathe to alter a word of the text, but even without changing a word, there were ways to make this less stagey.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: One way to give shapeless stories some shape is to have characters make a bet, and then pay off that bet ironically. Here, Troy and Bono make a bet as to whether Troy will finish his fence before Bono finally buys a refrigerator. As it turns out, their friendship is pretty much over by the time they both accomplish their goals, so they don’t bother to ask the other who got there first, but the bet has added just a shade of stakes and urgency to the lackadaisical task of building the fence.

Check Out James's Fantastic Film Festival

Hi guys! Will I ever return to regular posting? Yes, I will! I'll have a Best of 2016 countdown soon! In the meantime, you may recall on the podcast that co-host James Kennedy mentioned the very cool film festival he hosts. Well the new season is underway, and he asked if I could post the schedule. You should all check it out, it's a lot of fun!

It’s time for the screenings of the sixth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival!
(Wait, what is the 90-Second Newbery? It’s an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers create movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds. Complete information about the 90-Second Newbery here.)

Here are the screening dates for 2017. (Want to bring the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival to your city? Every year it expands into more cities! Drop James a line at kennedyjames@gmail.com.)

90-Second Newbery 2016 Schedule
All screenings are free.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
SPECIAL DEADLINE for submissions to the Asheville, NC screening of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival!

Saturday, February 11, 2017
The TACOMA, WA screening, co-hosted by James and author Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle) and Tacoma’s own hilarious Doug Mackey. At the Tacoma Public Library (1102 Tacoma Ave S). 3-5 pm, but come early for the 2:15 reception! Make your free reservation here.

Sunday, February 12, 2017
The PORTLAND, OR screening, co-hosted by James and author Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle) and Dale Basye (Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go). At the Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR). Organized in conjunction with the fine folks at Portland Community Media. 4:30 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Friday, February 17, 2017
The OAKLAND, CA screening, co-hosted by James and authors Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle) and Marcus Ewert (Mummy Cat). At the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library (5366 College Ave, Oakland, CA). 7 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, February 18, 2017
The SAN FRANCISCO screening, co-hosted by James and authors Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle) and Marcus Ewert (Mummy Cat). At the San Francisco Public Library main branch (100 Larkin Street) in the Koret Auditorium. 4-6 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, February 25, 2017
The MINNEAPOLIS screening, co-hosted by James and authors Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle) and 2017 Newbery Medal winner Kelly Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon). At the Minneapolis Central Library (300 Nicollet Mall) in Pohlad Hall. 3-5 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, March 11, 2017
The NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY screening, hosted by James and author Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle). At the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (5th Ave at 42nd St, New York, NY) in the Bartos Forum. 3-5 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Sunday, March 12, 2017
The BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY screening, co-hosted by James and author Keir Graff (Matchstick Castle). At the Central Library (10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY) in the Dweck Auditorium. 2-4 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, March 18, 2017
A special screening of the “Best of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival” as part of the Read-A-Thon for Rochester’s Teen Book Festival. Hosted by James and Charles Benoit (Snow Job). At the Barnes & Noble in Pittsford Plaza (3349 Monroe Avenue, Rochester, NY). 3-4 pm.

Sunday, March 19, 2017
The ROCHESTER, NY screening, co-hosted by James and Charles Benoit (Snow Job). At the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum (900 East Ave, Rochester, NY). 2-4 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, April 1, 2017
The CHICAGO screening, co-hosted by James and author Keir Graff (The Matchstick Castle). At the Vittum Theater (1012 N Noble St, Chicago, 773-342-4141). 3-5 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Saturday, April 22, 2017
The ASHEVILLE, NC screening, co-hosted by James and Alan Gratz (The League of Seven series). At the Pack Memorial Library (67 Haywood St., Asheville, NC). (NOTE: Special deadline for Asheville entries is February 8, 2017.) 1-3 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Sunday, April 30, 2017
The BOSTON AREA screening, co-hosted by James and National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson (Feed, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, and Symphony for the City of the Dead). At the Brookline Public Library (361 Washington Street, Brookline, MA). 2-4 pm. Make your free reservation here.

Podcast Episode 3: Laika Notes (the super-size episode)

So here we have the long-awaited third episode of the Secrets of Story Podcast, hosted by myself and James Kennedy! WARNING: This episode is a special jumbo-sized departure from our normal format. In our first episode I attempted to fling away an idea about Laika the Space Dog, but then James caught it and decided to write it himself as a 70-page screenplay, so for this episode James made a tape in which he and his niece and nephew read the script out loud, then I listen to the tape and give notes, while James responds to in real time. The result is entertaining, but long, as the final product came in at a whopping 2 hours and 10 minutes, so this episode might just be for die-hard fans only. For the rest of you, come back for episode four, where we’ll return to our normal svelte, fighting weight! In the meantime, download this one here or

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 3: Laika Notes (the super-size episode)

Last Change to Give Us Laika Notes!

I was playing coy before, lest I ruin the surprise, but now you’ve had lots of time to listen to the second podcast, so I’ll go ahead and discuss it here: James took the Laika idea I tossed out in the first podcast and wrote his own version, and we’ll discuss it on the third episode, which we record in a few days. We’ll read it aloud on the air as I critique it, but in the meantime, you have one last chance to download the script and toss your notes into the mix, as Harvey Jerkwater did in the comments here. Thanks for the notes, Harvey!

My New Favorite Review

“Matt Bird is like Mike from ‘Breaking Bad.”

The Kindle is Finally Here!

It’s been a mighty long wait, and many of you were getting mighty impatient, I know, but I’m glad to announce that the Kindle version of the book is finally available on the Amazon page! (And while you’re there, check out my 11 five-star reviews!)

Podcast Episode 2: The Easy Way

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 2: The Easy Way

Well, folks, it’s been a month since Episode 1, but life got in the way. We first recorded this on the night before the election, but we ran out of time and decided to meet again to finish it later. Then disaster struck. Afterwards, we decided to re-record it for a post-Trump world, and did so, but the dour Trump-themed version was too depressing, so then we decided to splice just the end of the later recording onto the first recording. So most of this episode is a relic of a happier world, before evil triumphed (and the end bit doesn’t acknowledge the new post-apocalyptic reality.)

You can stream it here, or, even better, subscribe to us on iTunes, then like us and review us!

At the end of this episode, we have a surprise for you, so I won’t spoil it here, but it involves a download, so here’s that link!

(Once again, the music is from FreeMusicArchive.com. It’s “Lucky Me” by Scott Holmes, with an Attribution/NonCommercial license.) 

New Video on Exposition!

Hey guys, it seems impossible to go on, but we must go on. Let’s all pretend that my silly little story advice has any meaning in post-apocalyptic America! That said, here’s a new video on exposition: This one is the shortest yet, barely squeaking in over three minutes. Is it too short? Let me know!

It's Starting to Seem More Normal Now

But now that freaks me out.

It All Seems Pointless Now

I was going to post more about Star Trek Beyond, and I was supposed to edit the new podcast that James and I recorded on Monday night to post next Sunday, but it all seems kind of pointless now, after the election.  I’m sure the despair will lighten in the coming days, just because everything that goes down must come up, but it’s hard to see that right now.  I’ll be back. 

Rulebook Casefile: The Lack of a False “I Understand You” Moment in Star Trek Beyond

I just watched Star Trek Beyond and boy is it limp. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not an utter horrorshow like the last one— If I had to pick one word to describe it, I would just choose “lazy.”

We start off with an unexciting cold open, played for laughs, in which Kirk, standing still, gets attacked by little creatures. This ends quickly without any real jeopardy, then we have a dreadful 15 minutes of “character scenes” in which Kirk wallows in vague ennui. Then an alien woman shows up asking that the Enterprise save her planet (or something, it’s not clear.) As soon as the Enterprise shows up at her planet, it gets attacked and destroyed by some bad guys. Escaping to the planet below, Kirk realizes that the woman who asked them to come there did so knowing that they were being lured into a trap to be destroyed. At first she claims she had to do so to save her crew, and then she seems to be working with the bad guys maybe, and then she’s killed off unceremoniously.

The movie’s biggest problem is that this alien woman makes no impression on us before she betrays our heroes. Helping her is the entire motivation for the movie! In the whole epic scene in which the Enterprise gets destroyed, they’re sacrificing everything to save her, but she’s barely had any lines!

This movie needs what Frozen had: a fake “I understand you” moment. Kirk should be hesitant to help her until she reaches out to him with an impassioned cry of the heart that makes him care so much that he’s even willing to sacrifice his ship to help her in her cause (whatever that cause was. Again, it was unclear). They should bond deeply, and we in the audience should feel moved by her story.

Of course, it’s tricky, you don’t just want an unfair fake-out. As with Hans in Frozen, you want to be able to rewatch the movie and realize “Oh, I can see how she’s faking him out, and how what she’s saying can actually be taken either way.” But even the unfair version would be better than what they have. You can’t just assume that the audience will sympathize with a victim because we’re told (falsely) that she’s a victim. You have to make us feel that, or we won’t care (with good reason, in this case.)

(Another problem here is that the movie decides that, after 50 successful years of Star Trek, they’re suddenly going to worry about the language translation problem, so they have the woman speaking in her alien language, with a little automatic translator on her lapel repeating the words in English. Before this, for all intents and purposes, everybody in the Trek universe just spoke English, and that worked just fine. Why mess with success? The way they do it makes it even more impossible to empathize with her.)

New Video: Moments of Humanity

My last video got me lots of hits and followers, and they’ve all been waiting patiently for video #3, so here it is: Moments of Humanity! I hope you enjoy it! As usual, please let me know what you think! This one is a little different, in that the advice is not as counterintuitive, so it seems less “cool” to me, but hopefully it’ll be useful to see all these examples thrown together. Let me know!

Yay, the Podcast is Finally Up on iTunes!

Subscribe here and download onto your device of choice!  New episode next week!

Straying from the Party Line: Moral Hypocrisy in Stranger Things

You guys know I hate moral hypocrisy in stories. You should not, for instance, hold your heroes to a different standard than your villains. The one aspect of “Stranger Things” that I really didn’t like was the fact that Eleven kept casually killing people throughout the series. I didn’t like it for several reasons:

• The series didn’t seem to have the time or the inclination to deal with the weight or ramifications of these killings, either for Eleven or the for the victims. The two agents she seemingly kills in the pilot (in the kitchen of the diner) disappear off screen so quickly, you hardly notice them.
• Instead, the killings are presented in a stereotypically “badass” way. I especially hated it when she cocks her chin to snap two guards’ necks in a flashback in a later episode.
• Worst of all, the story doesn’t need all this killing. She could just as easily have incapacitated these people by putting nightmares in their heads that make them collapse in horror, or made them writhe in pain with nosebleeds, or simply knocked them out psychically. Those all could have looked just as badass.

This is a series that’s all about the pain caused by the disappearance of a 12 year-old boy, but isn’t the death of each of these random government employees (who may not completely realize they’re working for a bad guy) just as sad? These guys aren’t exactly wearing Nazi armbands.

Such killings also constitute a big plot hole. As we see, family members tend to demand the truth when people disappear, and presumably Dr. Brenner would have his hands full at this point dealing with aggrieved relatives. (And that’s not even counting all the people killed by the monster or disappeared into the Upside-Down!)

Like a lot of stories that were actually made in the 80s, this series tries to walk a tricky line: a horror story about kids that will hopefully be equally appealing to teens and grown-ups: A celebration of innocence and experience at the same time, juxtaposing and combining the sensibilities of Mike and Hopper. For the most part, the series succeeds wonderfully, but I think it would have been even better if she was just knocking all those people out (in a horrific and badass way, if you prefer).

Rulebook Casefile: The 13 Member Ensemble in “Stranger Things”

The “Stranger Things” pilot has a lot of work to do. First and foremost, it has to introduce 13 main characters (really 14, because we assume the cook will be a character as well) and get us to like/love most of them. Let’s look at them and why we like them:

• Mike Wheeler, amusingly serious about his dorkiness
• Lucas Sinclair, shares out exasperation with the other nerds
• Dustin Henderson, sweet-natured
• Will Byers, touchingly innocent
• Eleven, bad-ass, stuck in a harrowing situation
• Jonathan Byers doesn’t really make an impression yet.
• Nancy Wheeler is less sympathetic, but we empathize with the thrill/confusion/fear of a new relationship.
• Steve Harrington, a witty cad.
• Barb Holland, touchingly dorky.
• Sheriff Jim Hopper, amusingly boorish.
• Joyce Byers, we empathize with her horrible situation and economic struggles.
• Karen Wheeler doesn’t register, she’s just a hectoring mom.
• Dr. Martin Brenner, an intriguing psychopath

To make things harder, the pilot eschews the easiest and most traditional way to introduce a large ensemble: We could meet Mike first and then meet the other twelve from Mike’s point of view, sharing his limited perspective on their lives, but instead we get several separate introductions:

• First Mike, Lucan, Dustin, Will and Karen get their shared intro scene.
• Then we discover Nancy from Dustin’s POV, but only a glimpse, so the scene with Nancy and Barb (and then Steve) essentially serves as its own independent introduction scene.
• We meet Joyce and Jonathan in the context of Will, but they essentially get their own independent scene.
• Hopper, Eleven, and Dr. Brenner each definitely get their own very individualized into scenes.

So how does the show cram all this into 45 minutes and still have time for a plot? It relies a lot on well-worn tropes. This isn’t just a show set in 1983, it’s a loving pastiche of books, movies and TV from that era, so it introduces most of the characters using the types of scenes we know well.

The Nancy/Barb/Steve storyline is a total cliché, but it gets away with it because we get the sense that it’s all kind of a joke that it’s so familiar. We’re half-identifying with the characters, and half outside of the show, thinking, “They really nailed the pop culture of that era.” This gives the show access to shorthand characterization that allows it to quickly set up its world.

This show is a testament to the fact that audiences love familiar tropes as long as they’re re-contextualized in an interesting way. Every storyline is derivative here, but they’re derived from an interesting mix of sources (“Akira” meets Pretty in Pink meets Stand By Me meets Alien meets...) and recreated so lovingly that we’re delighted, not offended.

A Cover Gallery For the Official Release Day!

Hi guys, today is the official release date of my book. That’s a little meaningless now, because they went ahead and sent it out two weeks early to everyone who ordered it. (Check out this amazing first review on Amazon! “Erik Hazzard” totally sounds like a name I made up to review my own book, but I promise that he’s real and I don’t know him) and my release party isn’t until Friday, but it’s still a special day, so I thought I would mark the occasion by putting up all the covers I mocked up for the book over the years. Some of these I put on the blog back in the day, and others will be new to all of you!

I started with the idea that this was a populist manifesto (That’s Joel McCrea from Sullivan’s Travels):

I still love this title and cover:

This title/cover was a shameless rip-off of Blake Snyder:

The one should look familiar to longtime fans of the blog:

My agent wondered if we could sell this as a marketing book, which seemed like a longshot, but I did a cover mark-up to see what that would look like:

I decided that the last essay in the book called Scheherazade to mind, so I played with two covers featuring her:

I went back and forth as to whether or not this should be a book specifically for rewriting:

 

In the end, I’m glad we went with the branding and cover we have!  Leave these things up to the professionals, folks!  Now go out and buy the book, if you please.  I hear that it’ll be face-out at Barnes and Noble for a month!

Podcast Episode 1: Channeling Master Thespian

So for the last two weeks, we’ve had videos, and there are more to come, but today I thought I’d launch into yet another new multimedia venture: My very own podcast!

You guys have heard me as a guest many times on the “Narrative Breakdown” Podcast, but in honor of the launch of the book, I thought it would be fun to start my very own, or rather our very own, because I’m co-hosting with longtime friend-of-the-blog, James Kennedy, author of  “The Order of Odd Fish”!

You guys know that James frequently makes his objections known in the comments, so I thought it might be fun to let him pick at me in person, forcing me to defend stuff I’ve said here. For the first episode, we start with my post from a few weeks ago: Beware of Master Thespian. James disagrees, and we have it out, hopefully in an amusing way. We then try out a second feature: Free Story Ideas. I’ll let you listen to discover what that’s all about.

Will we have more episodes? Who knows! It depends on the reaction and how lazy we are. Let us know what you think!

UPDATE: The Podcast is now on iTunes and you can stream it here or download it by clicking on the title below and going to the SoundCloud page.

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 1: Channel Master Thespian

Rulebook Casefile: The Thematic Question of Stranger Things

Let’s look at the second scene in the pilot for “Stranger Things”. After a scary glimpse of a monster killing someone in a government lab, we cut to four kids playing “Dungeons and Dragons” in a basement. Mike, is both the creator of the campaign and dungeon-master:

• MIKE: Wait... do you hear that? Boom! Boom! BOOM! That sound... it didn’t come from the Troglodytes. No. It came from something behind them...
• Mike slams a LARGE TWO-HEADED MONSTER MINIATURE onto the map.
• MIKE: THE DEMOGORGON.
• The boys stare. Shit.
• LUCAS: We’re all gonna die.
• MIKE: Will, your action.
• Will swallows. God, he wishes it wasn’t his turn.
• WILL: I -- I don’t know --
• LUCAS: Fireball him --
• WILL: I’d have to roll thirteen or higher --
• DUSTIN: Too risky. Cast a protection spell--
• LUCAS: Don’t be a pussy! Fireball him!
• DUSTIN: Protection spell -- !
• MIKE: The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering. It steps toward you. BOOM!
• LUCAS: FIREBALL HIM, Will!
• MIKE: Another step. BOOM!
• DUSTIN: Cast protection!
• MIKE: It roars in anger --
• WILL: FIREBALL!
• Will rolls the dice. Too hard. The dice scatters to the other side of the room. It lands in front of the bedroom door.

So what all does this exchange do for the story?

• It foreshadows the fact that Will is about to be attacked by a real monster.
• It makes us love Mike, for whom this overly-dramatic performance serves as a comically vain moment of humanity.
• It introduces and differentiates the personalities of the rest of our ensemble.
• It provides the thematic question.

The good vs. good thematic dilemma that fuels “Stranger Things” is innocence vs. experience, represented here by the debate between protection (protecting both your safety and your innocence) vs. fireball (endangering yourself and your soul by killing). Will is forced to choose. It’s always great to begin a story with this sort of thematic question asked out loud, which not only establishes the theme, but resonates throughout the rest of the story.

This quickly leads to another thematic dilemma: After Mike is called upstairs, Will finds the die and discovers that it was a seven. Lucas asks, “Did Mike see it?” Will shakes his head, so Lucas says, “Then it doesn’t count.” When they get outside, however, Will confesses to Mike:

• Will: It was a seven.
• Mike: Huh?
• Will: The roll, it was a seven. The demogorgon, it got me. See you tomorrow.

Interestingly, this last exchange doesn’t happen in the script, reversing the meaning of hiding the roll. In the script, Will’s deception tarnishes him and seems to bring on his death, in a classic horror-movie sort of way (He chooses evil, therefore evil is done to him). In the finished version, it seems after Will’s disappearance that he was maybe too good to live in this world. The horror genre always invites us to blame the victim, one way or another.

Straying from the Party Line: The Dangling Dramatic Question in Stranger Things

Is “Stranger Things” a series or a miniseries? In many ways, this feels more like the first hour of a miniseries than the first hour of a series.

• The premise is not established by midway through the pilot.
• The premise does not lend itself easily to mini-goals that can be solved within each episode.
• The dramatic question for this episode is not answered at the end of the pilot (What happened to Will?)

Indeed, I feel strongly that it should be a miniseries, and shouldn’t have a second season, but that ship has already sailed, so we’ll see how well they pull it off.

Of course, many of these things could also be said about the show this one most closely resembles: “Twin Peaks”. I’ve always felt that show should have been a miniseries as well, and utterly failed to sustain itself as soon as Laura Palmer’s killer was found. I’d be interested to know if any of you disagree with that. I’ve never heard anyone make a strong case otherwise.

I would say that this is the price to be paid for not answering the dramatic question at the end of the pilot: you establish that dramatic question as the driver for the whole show, and the show has to end when it’s answered.

It seems to me that this was intended to be a miniseries until its huge success. The show just tied up too many loose ends at the end of the season. Mike and Eleven’s story felt like it had come to a natural and permanent conclusion. The boys were not ready to begin life as adventurers or demon fighters: One huge thing had happened to them and that was always going to be the big thing that happened to them. The teens’ story was even more finished and I have very little interest in seeing them again. Only Hopper seems like he has another season in him, and that’s a stretch.

What about you? Are you eager to see a second season? Can it possibly be as good as the first? Can it still involve the kids, the teens and the same adults, or should it jettison some of the old cast in favor of new faces?