Watch With Me: Stranger Things Chapter 1

Warning: Spoilers

Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers aka Why did Benny have to die?

The local buzz about this show is impressive. I have heard nothing about the plot, only saw one promo, but you can tell people are excited.

I love looking up spoilers, but I haven’t looked up anything. Promise. I looked up the plot to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child last night- but for this I’m all new on a show for the first time in a very long time.

But this cover image is straight off of a Hardy Boys book.

November 6th, 1983. November 5th was already taken by V, of course.

If you are in an elevator trying to run away from something and you hear a creepy noise above you… you’re gonna jerk your head so fast you break your neck. That slow tilt back is as unrealistic as the elevator being functional in case of emergency. #stairs

That being said, I’m already hypocritical in that I dislike people calling out minutiae in reality vs. nonreality. When I study space travel I’ll make sure to understand what a parsec really is, Neil deGrasse Tyson (see his related Star Wars tweets). I’ll keep the cynicism to a bare minimum.

These 12 year-olds just said pussy without flinching. I don’t think I said the word pussy until I was 19… and I definitely flinched.

Do the 80s suddenly feel creepy to anyone else? Flickering lights and “Restricted Area” signs aside.

6:44- SLENDERMAN?!

Thank God kids those days knew how to use a gun righ- wait, shit, WILL! NO!

Cue Theme Music

Although it would be fun to do a play-by-play of each episode with all my thoughts, that would be unfitting for the format and extremely time consuming. Similarly, it might be fun to explain an entire theory before elaborating how that theory applies to watching this episode. Instead, I’ll focus on one question I pick out of the episode and try to explain it terms of narrative enjoyment.

Why did Benny have to die?

As audience members, we are immediately “okay” with Benny as a character for several reasons. He reacts appropriately when he finds a child stealing food from his restaurant. We like him more when he feeds her, coaxes her into speaking, and shows obvious signs of concern. In comparison to other scruffy, middle-aged, obviously single men in the show, we of course are going to like him. It’s a direct comparison to the sheriff, who practically ignored a mother in need.

According to my favorite theory (affective disposition theory, Zillmann, 2000), Benny is definitely one of our good guys. We know this. The icing is then smothered on the cake when he is about to turn away the “child services” worker (the one that he called as a responsible adult!) because he hadn’t told Eleven someone was coming for her.

You gotta watch out for those middle-aged white women. Bye-bye, Benny.

The major narrative cue that foreshadowed Benny’s death was the very quick re-characterization of the sheriff, Hopper. Hopper suddenly knows something bad happened to Will while searching the shed, we find out his daughter passed away… All of his slovenly callousness is retroactively forgiven as we attribute his behavior to really rough circumstances. That, and he’s the sheriff. A linchpin character, really. Benny could have been, too, but what would keep us watching?

A sudden violation of our expectations as a whole group of characters descends to chase after mysterious Eleven, a girl with super powers that I’d like to have for myself.

As humans, we always want to find out the “why.” For all of our observations and experiences, we attempt to understand the causal structure of events. Benny’s death was the punctuation mark at the end of a perfect thriller pilot- What the hell is going on?

Episode awards:

1st place: Africa by Toto as Steve tries to get in Nancy’s pantsies. You’re a tricky bastard, Steve Harrington.

Last place: The bullies who just wanted to see a double-jointed kid rip his arm out of his socket.