House of R - ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Revisited (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Mal and Jo are back in the Upside Down to continue their rewatch of ‘Stranger Things’ in the run-up to the fifth and final season. Next up: revisiting the first part of Season 4 (Episodes 1-6)! They talk about their original experience with this season and hand out some superlatives! (00:00) Intro (11:11) Season 5 trailer reaction (23:54) Opening snapshot (50:33) Stranger superlatives Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell and John Richter Watch the full spot on Stranger Things Day, November 6 at https://Target.com/StrangerThings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of House of ours presented by Target. Have you heard? Stranger Things is back at Target, and it's time to gear up for the upside down. Head back to the 80s with awesome exclusives like the unreal Demogorgon popcorn bucket, the fog over Hawkins candle that reveals secret messages, and the Demogorgon bundle box that's full of cool surprises. New items are dropping all season long, so prepare for one last adventure at Target. Greetings.

And welcome to House of Our, a ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today, hold on to your butts broc chachos. It's Joanna Robinson. Hello, my darling. Mallory, we're in the final stretch. It's getting so close to new stranger things. I know. I can't believe it. Also, this is the first time we've redone something we've already done together, right? Our first sort of like remix of a previous pod. Yeah. Wild times. Wild times.

I guess we had some like, you know, revisiting our favorite moments from Rings of Power Season 1 ahead of season two, but nothing quite like this. Like we covered this entire season of television and now we're going to do multiple hours on it again, which is fun because guess what? Three years have passed between those. pods. Just a few. That's a lifetime.

Just a little bit of time. We've grown as people, maybe. Or perhaps we will say the exact same things, and that'll be fun to know as well. It's entirely possible. Have our opinions changed or not. We'll find out together. Before we do that, before the purple palm tree delight starts to work its magic and make our troubles float away, like seed pods of a dandelion, set some quick programming

Reminders, upcoming pots for us. The end of this week, we're doing another Best of the Century so far, and this time it will be. Drum roll, please. And a drum roll is apt here. Musical moments. Musical moments! Unbelievably, I was not the one who made this final

selection. Unbelievably, it was Mallory who made the final selection that it would be musical moments. So here we are. I consider it a gift to me. It's just a series of little gifts. all building toward taking you to the movie theater to see Avatar Fire and Ash, you know?

Can we, yeah, you're just buttering me up. Can we better define musical moments for our listeners in case they want to submit something to Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com? Here's where we are right now. Could it change in the next two and a half days before we record? Maybe.

Here's where we are right now. We are making a distinction between musical moments and needle drops. This is not a needle drop specific pot. Could needle drops make it into a few of the selections? Yes, but only in a certain way. They can't be needle drops for us at home. They have to be needle drops for the people in the scenes

because we are doing diagetic sound. So characters singing, actual full musical productions, characters dancing, characters listening to something and thinking about it, characters listening to an actual song is the one way that needle drops would come in, but we're not just doing like rocking out to a needle drop at home. So we would not be doing the, I'm just a girl needle drop from the end of Captain Marvel. Right.

Which, I mean, obviously would have been a top ten pick for, for, yeah, probably your number one. Otherwise, yeah. But we could do, I'm going to pick something from the 90s, so it's outside of contention. Okay. Like in the film Practical Magic, when you put the lime and the coconut is like playing, and they're all sort of like singing it, like, it's playing for them also as well as us. Yes, exactly. But because it is musical moments beyond just the diagetic needle drops, it's going to be all sorts of good stuff in the mix.

All sorts of good stuff. Character singing, characters dancing, hobbs and dragons to Gmail.com. A reminder. We got a lot of responses to the villain's pod that was like, where's Gus Fring? Where's, et cetera, et cetera. So just like a reminder. Gus specifically mentioned as an example of the kind of villain we would not be featuring in the intro of that very podcast. And yet so many comments were like.

How could you leave out Gus Frang or Lala Salamanka or whatever? These are House of Our specific film and television shows. And so no, Breaking Bad does not count, nor do the Sopranos, nor does Mad Men, nor does a number of other things. But like anything comic book related, sci-fi, fantasy that we might have covered on House of Art, timey-Wymie, whatever the case may be, that is the kind of stuff that we will be covering. You can send us your musical moments from other things, but they... certainly. We'll not be in the pod, but yeah.

I'd love to hear your invite. I'm thrilled, beyond thrilled. Same. We're going to try to do a few more of these best of the century so far pods. They're really fun to do. People seem to be enjoying them. A lot of lovely stories that we have gotten a chance to share and haven't gotten a chance to share that then we get to for a few minutes

when we look back at the past 25 years. So that's been really nice. The bad babies have sent us a lot of topics. Topics. But if you have any more that are kicking around, you know, you think we should consider, once again, Hobbits and Dragons at e-mail.com, you can send us our way. Send them our way.

After we do that pod at the end of this week, the way time works is then it will be next week. And when we get to next week, we will be doing Stranger Things Season 4, Part 2, because we are dividing the Stranger Things Season 4 revisited pods into two parts. The episodes are so long, there's so much. Now you might be saying at home. Makes sense. Netflix dropped that. in two parts, volume one and volume two. Guess what? Little twist. We're doing the episodes differently,

but only slightly. We have one episode distinction. So today's pot, season four part one, episodes one through six. That means that episode seven, which is a seismic stranger things episode will be clustered with episodes eight and nine in our season four part two pod at the top of next week. you have that to look forward to. The runtime on those last three were just like so chunky. But we also didn't want to like really front load this volume one pod. Like we felt like this is a good way to divide the story so we could give enough space for all the things that happens before we get so much lower dumpage in the final three.

Yeah. There is a lot on the mythology and lore front stuff that like frankly we might not talk about as much today because we will be saving it for that pod. So we'll hit that as we go. But in terms of the spoiler warning, pretty intuitive. Like anything from Stranger Things is on the book at this point. We will mostly be focusing on season four episodes one through six. And because the next pod on season four episode 7,8, 9 is just mere days away,

you know, could some things from those episodes come up? Yeah, but we're going to try to use our discretion because it's only a few days before you get to hear us talk about that. So we will be there soon. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today.

Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Joanna, how can everybody follow along? Listen, subscribe to the pod. Why not? In the pod catcher of your choice, you can watch us, of course, on YouTube or on Spotify or, or dare I say, Samsung is another place where you can find us.

And, you know, follow us on on social media platform of your choice. And then also, I already mentioned a couple of times, but hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. And I just want to highlight a couple emails we got recently that dazzled me. First of all, we got a couple's costume from Halloween that was. do you want to describe this Last of Us a couple's costume that was sent our way? Please, please take us through a beat by beat. Tell us.

Oh, okay. It was Joel and Abby from The Last of Us with the golf club in someone's kitchen. And it was pretty phenomenal. I thought both costumes were really, really good. But that was like a demented couples costume idea that I floated on our weird little Halloween costumes episode that we did.

I'm not saying they were inspired by that, but I was delighted to see it actually happened somewhere. Your influence is real, as you know. Jill and Abby looking great. We got a pumpkin carving. That was the mind flare that looked amazing. With a cat also. It's crucial. It's a crucial detail here.

Is the cat actually a part of the pumpkin? No, but it was posed with the pumpkin and that draws the eye. I have to say, if you're going to send us photos and you want us to talk about it, put a cat in it. Put a cat in it. sign it with your apple, sign it with your pickle. Pickle. Put a cat in the photo. And then also our listener, Mikal, who's been a long time emailer, sent through this stained glass recreation of our logo, which was like...

This was wild. I think it was done on the computer, but it was just like, it looked so cool. Yeah. If anyone else wants to do fan art of our logo, I have in my mind like a sort of adult swim-esque, like we could, like, feature a bunch of different like whatever. Anyway, Hobbes and dragies at e-mail.com. Send us photos of your cat. Send us photos of your Halloween costumes,

of your pumpkins, of your arts and crafts projects. We appreciate everything. Thank you so much. I love it. Last programming note is just, you know, we've both been really sick. So if we're coughing, if we're sneezing, if we're sniffling, that's why.

And if everyone is listening and like, weren't you guys just sick? Yeah. We were. This is what happens when they make us leave the house. You know what I mean? Oh, man. Any other programming reminders, opening notes before we get to our opening snapshot?

We are going to talk about the, very briefly, we're going to talk about the recently released season five trailer before we get to season four. Anything before we get to the season five trailer that you want to hit. No, we're still trying to figure out our season five sort of exact release plan, but we have a bunch of stuff planned around these three drops that they're doing. And I'm really excited for, like, I'm so glad we've done these rewatch pods because it's just like helps me marinate in this world and gotten me so excited for genuinely so excited for season five and to like experience it with all of our listeners too. Makes me really really happy. Same. Back in the upside down with the bad babies.

Mm-hmm. Who could ask for anything more. Getting photos of jackalanters with mind flares carved into them. I mean, just sensational stuff. Really cool. Let's head to the opening snapshot. Murray has karate from one to three on Fridays. That's the thing we know.

but we Jeremiah? We do not have karate from 1 to 3 on Fridays and so we were able to enjoy the new season 5 trailer that was recently released

just came out a couple days ago. We are not going to go beat by beat through the entire trailer. We just wanted to hit a couple highlights, a couple of the things that stood out to both of us and got us even more excited

maybe than we already were for the impending season 5, volume 1 release, or maybe some visual. Oh, oh, we've been talking about that a lot, anticipating that a lot, there it is, or anything else that stands out from the trailer.

So, Joe, why don't you kick it off for us? What is a highlight of yours or a thing of note of yours from the Season 5 trailer? I'm going to try to keep this brief, but I warned you that. Based on Linda Hamilton alone, I could do a lengthy wigwatch segment, but I have to go through a whole thing.

The main culprit, here, and I'm bummed about this, because I'm going to talk about Lucas Sinclair a lot in this episode. I love Lucas in the stretch of Stranger Things. I am very invested in Lucas and Max and what's going to happen with them in season

five. Caleb McLaughlin, I feel it must have been his choice, has opted for a wig this season, and we have a lot of questions about it. It is like similar to the flat top that he had, that was his natural hair,

in season four, but it is, the internet is not happy with the wig. So I'm going to try to let it not distract me from the Lucas storyline, which I'm very excited about. So there's the Lucas wig. Okay. Dustin, Gaten has like some Mullity extensions in his hair. Jonathan's wig is crazy. Will's hair finally looks good. You and I talked about that a little bit. The Carabono, Karen Wheeler, Bleach Perm is the crispiest it's ever been. It is crazy. It's like ready to snap at any given time. And then L's hair, we should say, this takes place fall in 1988,

has grown out significantly from the last season. Yes. The clearest visual indicator of the passage of time. Yeah. That's my main hair watch, wig watch segment is, if I missed anything, please, hop, it's a drag on the email.com. I'm bummed about the wig.

I like, I saw, because I posted a photo of, you know, Caleb and Sadie on, on Instagram and most of the responses, or on Twitter, most responses were about the wig. And I was like, oh, I hadn't paid much attention. And then I dug into it. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, that's not, that's not the best it could have been. But, wow. I really feel like I will, I'm not going to let it distract me from my, my Lucas fixation. So here we are.

this is why you're you're just a scholar. No, I mean, it was the listeners who had to point it out to me in the first place. And then I was like, and then I was like, oh. You have amassed, a devoted public that is chronicling an area of scholarship and interest for you. This is just incredible, you know? I had not a single thought about any wigs while watching this. And I just not even the Linda Hamilton, which is. No, but when you sent me the picture of it, then I engaged.

You know, that I... You did. You locked it. I locked it. I saw what was there to see. You know, the mullet, back on trend. I mean, we're in a mini-mullet era, obviously, right now in 2025, heading into 2006, but still, actually a good time to have a mullet.

What I really liked, I was digging into a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, and we'll talk about, if we want to, Mike's hair in season four. but one of the things that the hair designer said was that Mike's hair in season four was meant to sort of him trying to look more like Eddie. Like he grows his hair out to try to look more like Eddie, which is why Mike's hair looks the way it does in season four. And so I'm wondering if that's why, like, Dustin has this, like, sort of longer hair

is sort of, like, in honor of Eddie. That brings me to my top pilot from the trailer, which is the way that Eddie is kind of the main character of the trailer, absentia because of Dustin. Dustin's hair clearly longer to honor Eddie, it seems. He's, Dustin is wearing his Hellfire shirt still, clearly for Eddie. And there's that, there are many shots where Dustin has a beat up face, but there's like the kind of team in the bunker plotting shot where nobody else has scrapes or scratches. And it, we don't know

because we haven't seen any of season five, but it seems to me like Dustin is walking into that school saying, like, you won't talk me out of loving Eddie Munson and then gets, like, beat up for it and is probably bullied for it and that he still thinks it's important to do. And there is, on the dust in front, there's like a little quick shot of Dustin seeming to like be, it seems like he's crying in Steve's arms. And I'm just like, these are my dudes. I just love these guys so much. And I can't wait to be back with them in season five. And I'm like really sad to say goodbye to some of these characters. I really hope that a lot of these characters are okay. Maybe we'll save that for next pod, but I'm like, who are we ready to say?

Okay, you got it. Tell me, who are you ready to say goodbye to based on the trailer? That just brings me to my next, which you message me about, but I decided to make one of my picks anyway, which is the queen who wants to live forever scoring of the trailer. Absolutely iconic needle drop. That sends the needle drop expectations for season five through the fucking roof. But I should say, I have such an emotional attachment to who wants to live forever because as a fan of like, not just the Highlander film, but. The Highlander TV show, which is, for the record, not good. But I used to watch with my friends all the time.

We had all the episodes on VHS and we would get together and watch the Highlander TV show. And every time that like something really sad happens on that show, it would be, Who Wants to Live Forever? So that song is sort of imprinted on my DNA as like something tragic has happened, get ready to feel sad about it. It is a tone setter, undeniably. It is a mood setter, and it made me, like, quite nervous. Nervous.

Quite nervous. Let me tell you something else that made me nervous, and it's my next highlight from the trailer. It made me nervous, but also made me thrilled. We have talked a lot, including when we talked about the teaser trailer that came out, about Will Byers. Yeah. And desiring a more central role for Will Byers at the end of all things. Vecna in the right side up, saying, William, you are going to help me one last time. I don't have to throat.

My throat is too gravely still to try Vecna today, but by next week, I'll be ready. And pulling Will toward him, that centrality, you know, we're talking so much as we should be about L's connection to the upside down and everything that is happening there. We'll talk about that a lot in the next pod. But Will. Yeah. Putting Will back in the middle of all of that. We get the classic Noah Schnapp, Flopp-Dey, Electrified Fish situation. I didn't put it on my list, but it, like, because we talked about it last time, but, like, yeah, Will Barrow is being central.

They released a sort of Avengers Endgame-esque poster for the final season. And it's like, 11 is the central and biggest character. But right above her, between her and Bechna is Will, like, just only slightly smaller than 11. And it's like, yeah, it made me happy too. So, but scared, but happy. Worried. I am concerned. And once again, we're really happy for Noah Schnapp that his hair does not look stupid this season.

On the 11 front, here's my last thing, which is like 11 is superhero, which is something that sort of the creator's been talking about and Emily Bobby Brown has been talking about. But like we see a lot of, you know, her like leaping over the fence or like creating force fields or all these sorts of like that. electricity and energy. In addition to that, I just think the genius of her costume, which is Josh Brolin is brand in Goonies coated, but also like superhero coded. You know, she's got the like in Goonies, if you've never seen Goonies, pause, go watch it.

But like, you know, Josh Brolin has the gray sweatsuit with the blue short shorts and the red bandana over it. And she's got the blue bandana and the red short shorts over the gray sweatsuit. So she's doing like a slightly inverted. But in making the short short shorts red, it's giving like Superman. It's giving, you know, like classic superhero. So I love how like it's such a Stranger Things moment because it's like a really specific 80s coded pop culture reference. Goody's one of their like, you know, blueprints for the whole thing.

Plus the concept of a superhero costume for our superhero character who like, you know, Mike and other characters. has been saying she's like a superhero this whole time. Well, she's really going to be leveling up into that role. So I'm excited. Great pick. Great pick. We should say on the 11 front, on the Millie Bobby Brown front, that a lot of the shots in the trailers that we have seen so far, which the full-length trailer is like

not too dissimilar from the teaser trailer. Like, it doesn't seem like we're seeing a lot of what is to come in the new season. And also, I'm very curious. is that there, are they just showing us the first draw? Yeah. You know, I don't know. Who knows?

It's been, it, my guess is that we have seen footage from like a couple episodes of the total season. That would be reasonable that they were holding a lot back. But in the limited footage that we have seen so far, Hop and 11 seem to be pretty routinely paired. And in just recent news,

the last couple days, there's a Daily Mail report that Millie Bobby Brown before filming the most recent season filed a harassment and bullying claim against David Harbor that there was an internal investigation. At the time of recording this, we've yet to see additional information or statements for anybody. So we're obviously going to be keeping an eye out for further news and following the story. But certainly I wanted to mention it. Yeah. Disheartening. Yeah.

My next trailer note. connects to something that we've talked about a lot in really all of our Stranger Things pods, and we'll talk about again today very briefly at the end when we hit some of our like season five look-ahead stuff, time travel. I have absolutely no idea if this is anything. But at the one minute and 51 second mark, there is a shot of Steve Harrington's car in what I can only describe as a Delorean. an ask situation. There is a contraption on the roof. And he's driving, or someone's driving it. It's not necessarily Steve, actually. I don't think we can tell. Do you see Einstein? Was Einstein there? I don't expect to see Einstein or an Einstein adjacent figure in Stranger Things after the buyer's

family dog disappeared following season one. Doesn't seem like we should be expecting to see more dog characters in season five. Back to the future, obviously prominently future. in season three. We've talked a lot about all the time travel clues. Not sure if you know this, but in the episodes we'll be covering today, basically the lead character of the season is a grandfather clock that's tick, tick, tick, tick, ticking. Some other time travel stuff as well. So seeing Steve's a wizard, why is this wizard so fascinated with clocks? Do you think he was like a clockmaker? Incredible Steve Harrington moment. It's great stuff. So yeah, who knows? Is there something on the roof of Steve's car for another reason, maybe? But are they trying to travel through time also possible?

Instead of Libyan terrorists, they're fleeing from Linda Hamilton's wig. Something even scarier, honestly. It's entirely possible. It is entirely possible. Will we be getting more trailers ahead of season five? I don't know. Maybe this is it. We're only a few weeks away.

I mean, it's the beginning of November here. And this comes out the 26th of November, Volume 1. So who knows? We'll get to see more. We'll find out. But for now, some enticing glimpses of what awaits. Anything else in the trailer before we start chatting in season four? episodes 1 through 6. Okay. Let's set the stage with just some quick big picture notes on season

four before we dive into, we will be doing once again our stranger superlives and that will be the bulk of the pod today. Season 4 was released, as mentioned, in two drops. Volume 1, which was episodes 1 through 7, came out May 27th, 2022. I have a vivid memory of recording those pods with you in a hotel room at Star Wars celebration, like panicking about the internet connection. Panicking. Vivin memory. Volume 2, episodes 8 and 9 dropped July 1st, 2022. Again, that was three years ago, so it has been a minute. And these are mega long episodes. 78 minutes, 78 minutes, 65 minutes, 79 minutes, 77 minutes, 75 minutes, 101 minutes, 87 minutes, 142 minutes for the finale, 142 minutes. a hundred forty-two minutes.

I will actually genuinely never forget the gasp that I admitted when I saw the right time. I remember that first time. But guess what? That episode is a fucking banger. This is set during spring break. March of 1986, we have flashbacks to a 79 timeline. And the spring break timing of the primary stretch of the story, good as good a place as any

to mention that our babies are in high school, Joe. They've grown up. They are in high school. They're spread out everywhere. They're very tall. Millie Bobby Brown is married as a baby. Just something to think about. Our folks are fractured across the continental United States and beyond, including other countries and dimensions. This is not just rooted in Hawkins anymore. We're in California. We're briefly in Salt Lake City. We're in Nevada. We're in Alaska. We're in Russia. We're in the upside down. We're in the mind palace. That's a really fun new location, Vectus Mind Palance. And we have different character clusters with the California grouping. We knew when we exited season three that the buyer's family in L, they had left Hawkins. And like, there is that moment when

you start season four or when you saw the trailers for season four, you're like, oh, they're doing it. Like all of our characters are not going to be together. And that's a wild thing. Some of that works really well. Some of that works less well because we lose some of the pairings that we love and feel quite potent, but we gain other things. Yeah. We kind of have like our Hawkins crew of Steve, Robin, Nancy, Eddie, Dustin, Lucas Max. We've got the Hawkins Tigers basketball team, your favorite character in the history. The stranger things, Jason. My hero. We've got the satanic panic townies, right, both inside of the high school and just in the town hall and across the community. We have our 11 Owens, Owens back, Owens Brenner, Papa Back crew with a

the orderly. Just a dude being a guy. Peter. Just a bro being a dude. We've got Will and Mike and Jonathan and Argyle L is initially there before going on her own Nina journey and then they're together. Joyce Murray-Yuri paired in a way that we, to this day, have questions about some of Joyce's decisions to just abandon her children for the entire season. She makes one phone call attempt. And Yuri's like, don't worry about it.

Great stuff. And then Hopper in prison over in Russia with, I am going to call him Enzo, even though that is a code name. And his actual name is Dimitri, but I will be referring to him throughout the entire pot as Enzo or Jack and Huckar. Something we should mention is that in addition, there's even one more timeline, which is the 1950s, like flashback inside of all of this. The way the characters are spread out and the timelines are spread out.

The Duffer's called this their sort of like Game of Thrones. season. Not just because they wanted to go even darker in tone, which they certainly did. But, you know, they start with a bloody massacre, right? Yeah. They start with a red wedding. But, yeah, just the way in which all your characters are sort of spread out and you're checking in around the map on various people.

And sometimes you check in on a place that you're excited about. And sometimes you're like, oh, here we are back in Siberia. So, you know. And sometimes you check in on a place very briefly and it changes your life. and then you never get to go back. And you're like, what happened to Tabitha? And did she win an Academy Award? Definitely.

And how's his brother win best director and what is up with Eden? How's Eden doing? I love those kids. I have some questions. I mean, we don't have this as a category, but I will say there are rewatching it. And I felt this way last time, too. I love this season.

Like, you know, I really love this season. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. But there are, you know, every episode is over an hour and there are like lingering shots or establishing shots where I'm like, we could have tripped. We could have probably tripped that.

You know what I mean? One of my main memories from covering this the first time I'm around with you was the exterior shots of airplanes. Yeah. You're like, why? Why? There would just be like, you know,

it would just be like hopper or like Enzo looking at the bars and then just sort of slowly pan away and I'm like, why? Why are we doing that? Not that I don't like artistic flourishes, but I'm like, we're, okay. And I will say, like, lingering so long, Susie's siblings felt like a backdoor pilot for something, which I don't know. I'd watch.

What is Cornelius up to? How many circuit breakers has he thrown since we last saw him, you know? I'm wondering. The baddies of season four, you mentioned the violence on that kind of Thrones cop front. I mean, this is a bloody, not just bloody and violent and scary season, but we are like routinely watching children, whether it is the flashbacks, the memories, or what is happening in Hawkins with Chrissy and Fred and Patrick. Yeah.

Children's bloodied, mutilated bodies mean, it is a very dark, very violent season, and it is dark in an introspective way as well. What is happening to me? Who is after me? What have I become? which is a vintage stranger things, focus and thematic interest, but like ratcheted up on the just actual overt,

like here's a corpse with blood pouring out of its eyes, but not really, because that's there at the end of season one in the finale as we hopefully connect to. It's just at scale here. I think there's something really different about what we see happen to Chrissy and Fred's bodies at the beginning of this and the stakes that puts on the ticking clocks of Max. right?

Like watching that happen to Chrissy, someone we've only known for an episode, but someone we're like, we kind of like, or sort of like someone emotionally invested in already. And then just to watch her like jaw crunched to the side and all of her limbs, it's just horrifying. The spriting, the popping. The violence and the horror is like really supreme.

Vecna, obviously here as a big, big, big, bad. We will talk a lot about Vecta in the Part 2 pod, certainly some today, but a lot next pod, so stay tuned. Papa is back, the return of Brenner here in the 79 memories and in the Nevada Nina sequences alike. And connected to that, obviously we have another really interesting development this season, which is the decision to go back to the lore well of the other kids at Hawkins Lab.

Like, it would have been very easy after the reaction to season two and the eight of it all, which nobody liked including us. To never do that again, to say, you know, 11, like, yeah, 8, 11, that's it. But no, we spend a lot of time with the rest of the kids, and we'll talk about that more in the next pod as well. And then we have, you know, Vecna, elite, Brenner, always core. And then we have the third kind of like villain cluster that I think is infinitely less effective, which is the, on paper, interesting idea that some people in your own country, in your own community,

and your own government, in your own military, and your own school, whatever the case might be, think that you're a hero, believe in you, can't do it without you, want you to help tap back into the thing that makes you who you are, and then the other people think you're the problem. Interesting concept. Spider-Man, menace. Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan and that and co-plotline is tough. Honestly, like, easy to forget about, I think. Until you're reducing the episode.

Easy to skip past if you need to trim some time off your rewatch, honestly. We're not going to trim time off the pod by skipping this, though. How could we? It's the Holly Trauma Tracker, and boy, do we have some new entries to share. In Season 4 episodes 1 through 6, we have a couple of real doosies here that are going to be following our girl and Holly around for some time. This is a little bit quieter than the next couple examples, but I think it warrants mentioning, which is the crayon breakfast time with Max, right? Max is drawing, oh, if only we had Will here,

the real ours, Max is drawing what she saw in. Doesn't be like, we really need Will. These drawings are pretty good. Nancy is able to fold some corners and perfectly reconstruct the Creel mansion. Like, this is pretty good. The fact that Max is like, yeah, I bought Bart some of Holly's crayons, this is great. Like, I thought it would be easier to draw it than to talk about it. Okay, it all tracks.

And then she's like, here, here's the drawing of the dead children wrapped in the fires of vines. And Holly's like right there. Holly, an early iPad kid is like, is zeroed in on her light bright. Like we're foreshadowing the light bright, right? So she's just like, she's just light brighting it up at the breakfast table. But I love when Max is like, Holly and I are spending some time together and Holly's like, uh, like Holly's

like, uh, yeah. In this same stretch of story, we get the literal nightmare fuel of Dustin explaining to Holly a young child who's just trying to eat a pancake and play with a light bright who Freddie Krueger is. Joanna, what does Dustin say?

He's a super burned up dude with razors for fingers and he kills you in your dream. And then he tries to, like, walk it back and be like, he's just a movie character. Don't worry about it. But, yeah, he's a super burned-up dude with raises her fingers and he kills you in your dreams. Now, this is a very nightmare on Elm Street heavy, like, season, obviously. So I'm glad that Freddie gets, like, a direct, you know, one, two, Freddy's coming for you, like, mention here. But to Holly.

Horrifying. That would scar me to hear that. Absolutely scar me. I do like that for, like, 10 seconds, Nancy's like, let me be a big sister here. Dustin. Dustin. Really? I'm related to Holly.

Holly, remember? Great shit. Speaking of siblings, I would also like to nominate for the Holly Trauma Tracker, this contender. The town hall meeting. Jason is whipping the assembled into an absolute frenzy. Let's go hunt the freaks. Kill the beast. We'll talk about that scene more, obviously, throughout the pot today. But part of this is distributing flyers, hellfire. And pictured, of course, in the Hellfire photo, it's not just steady. Dustin's there. Lucas is there. Mike is there. So Little Holly is sitting here, first of all, just hearing all of this listening to all of this, seeing this response of the crowd. Yeah. But then it's like, wait a minute. My brother is the beast. They're talking. Are they going to

go try to kill my brother? It just seems like a lot for young Holly. Anything else for the Holly trauma tracker that you would like to mention. I think we've covered it quite well. Great. Things are going real well for holidays. She's doing great. Before we get into our superlatives. What about having Ted as a father in general?

Let me tell you something. It's hard to pick the best Ted stretch because let's not ruin it because Ted is going to come up in our superlatives. But this is an incredible Ted run. This is Ted's season. This is Ted's season. That's an incredible Ted run. That can be one of the.

reasons you cite Joe for why you love season four. But tell us before we get into our categories. Just overall, what is your relationship to either season four in general or these episodes, one through six of season four? Number one, Ted Wheeler, number two, Jason, two of the greatest TV characters of all time, aspirational, heroic, wonderful people. Number three, Sullivan. Number four, Angela. There are a lot of characters in this season. There really are. I will forever have such a fondness for this season because it was. was the season we covered together. I mean, that sounds so, like, sappy, but it's true.

Like, I always love things more when I, when I get to spend a lot of time talking about them with you. And so I, I remember, I haven't really listened to our pods, but I remember going into this pot, I had a lot of hesitancy because season three was super popular. It had been three years. And so we were just sort of like, will anyone care about season four? A lot of people were online sort of stunting that they weren't going to watch season four. They didn't give a shit.

It'd been too long, blah, blah, blah. and then everyone locked in. And part of it is like, part of it is that the season is quite good. Part of it is the, like, TikTok virality of Eddie Munson or the TikTok virality of the Cape Bush or, like, you know, there was just like a couple things that really sort of launched off on TikTok, which was still, you know, like really hooking and gaining traction with people.

This is like a COVID season. This is just, there's like, oh, there was a lot going on externally that, made it something that everyone just like locked back into and then it just felt like stranger things had never been bigger honestly. And I think back to the season, you know, Dear Billy, which is episode four of this stretch is I think just forever cemented in my mind as like an absolutely iconic episode of television. Oddly enough, not the star of my superlative picks. Yeah. But because I think it's more of like it's more of like the whole thing than it is like these little moments necessarily, but

I just think this is astounding what they accomplished. I think all of the, like, Jamie Camp Bauer, you know, Henry Vecna stuff is really, really good. The way that it all sort of comes together, the way that all the pieces feel separate, but then go here at the end of it and stuff like that.

So I dipped a bit into the final three episodes that we'll be talking about next time. But that's sort of my sense is like it was a great experience podcasting with you and it was a great experience tapping back into the monoculture

something that feels rare and rare of course that everyone's watching the same thing together even though they might not be watching at the exact same time because of the like Netflix binge drops so you don't get that like every Sunday we're checking in together

sort of feeling but it's still like everyone watched it everyone can talk about it everyone can make the references and understand it so Kate Bush can go you know rocketing up the charts it's you know yeah Yeah, I feel similarly.

I really love this season. It's such a rich stretch of episodes to return to. I think that, like you said, four is just an all-timer. I mean, it's in the running for best episode of the entire series. It's certainly a contender. And I think that seven and nine, which we'll talk about next week, are also incredibly good episodes and really important episodes. And there are other episodes in this stretch that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily. really list till when you were just, like, you wouldn't write the dive when you were writing

like your five or ten top Strangers' Things episode, but it's a banger. It really is. It's a banger. Like, there's just some great ones in this stretch. So I really, yeah, I loved covering this the first time. I had that same, like, oh, my God. It was such a talking point before the season, like, are people done with stranger things? It's such a real, like, level of gratitude that everyone tapped back in and we got to talk about it

together. It's great. So I really am hoping that that happens again. season five, it seems like the height meter is pretty high. So I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait. And I think that we should now go to like the thing that we started doing last pod, which is before we get to our superlatives, we open the door into our respective and shared. You can penetrate a mind palace. That's something we learned here. We love to penetrate a mind balance. By highlighting a scene or a moment, something from this stretch of episodes, the things,

feels to you most emblematic of what makes stranger things, stranger things, or what makes stranger things, stranger things to you, or what makes season four of stranger things stand out when you think back to it. And you can repeat your pick in a category. That is fine. But what kind of stands out at the top here? Yeah. I think you should go first because yours comes sort of chronologically before mine. Okay. Carlos, can we hear my clip? See my clip. We're the freaks because we like to play a fantasy game. As long as you're into band or science or panties or a game where you toss balls

into laundry baskets. You want something freak? Okay, so could that have just been my clip for our first superlative, which is Best New Edition? And obviously we're both picking Eddie. There's absolutely no mystery about that. I mean, we talked last pot about how picking Robin for Best New Edition for Season 3 was like the easiest pick of the entire rewatch project to that point. This is one A and one B with that.

But I think that's part of why I feel so emblematic to me is like the fact that a new character can come in and feel so ingrained into like the fabric of the universe, the character's lives, but also what it feels like for time to pass and things to change. I will be returning to kind of like the core text of this quote. I think actually quite a lot today and a lot of my other picks and other categories as well, because it's like, you know, not just one of the core, but part of the core thesis of this season. Yeah. But as we've talked about on every pod, just of the show with the coming of age nature of the story. And like one of the other things about it that feels emblematic to me is I love these Stranger Things moments where you're like 90% really bought in on what a character is saying.

And then there's that remaining chunk that's like, wait, but you're doing something wrong too? Like, it always actually pains me that Eddie, who is like, why don't you accept me for who I am is basically like fuck the jocks? Right. You know, there's everyone's kind of like a part of the same soup of high school who's literally in this scene which cafeteria table and in which click and in which group. But the heart of what he is saying. Like you're judging us. You think we're freaks. You think we're different.

This is going to build and crest toward this. Like, you actually think we're channeling Satan vessels for Satan that we are killing our classmates, that we're inflicting horrors in the community because we're nerds, because we're not cool. Like, you hold us in judgment and you hold us in low esteem. And that is obviously from day one with the characters, with the party, like, at the core of what makes our group of friends in this show connected to each other and connected to so many of the viewers at home. like that's what's killing the kids conforming, having to be somebody who you think you're meant to be very central in this season and the show overall. So yeah, that's my pick for most emblematic and it's just also a perfect intro to Eddie. It's just iconic. It's a great, the cramps, I was a teenage werewolf, which plays underneath that. It's just like just such a killer.

It's not the only cramps needle drop, but it's like such a killer. I forget what I clipped that for, but I clipped that audio for something that we did some like maybe best moments of the year or something like that. I remember going through that speech agonizingly trying to pick out like what is going to be my like clip. So I have it like sewing, you know, like Dungeons and Dragons. Like that whole thing is so ingrained in my head. And yeah, it's just such a cool introduction to a new character. It gets up on the table, you know, it's just like it's. This is the year I'm going to graduate.

It's basically Elvis. It's incredible stuff. I love that. Oh, Eddie. What's your pick? I don't have a clip for mine, but I think we can all envision it. This is, I will talk about this, this dear Billy moment that Max's run, running up that hill, that whole sequence. Because a couple things.

Like, it's the combination of pop culture nostalgia, this is a 1985 song, it's emotional importance. for Max. This is a song that is, it's not just like we're putting in here because it's a cool song to put in here. It's something that is like emotionally resonant

for Max. And it is something that her friends have done. Meanwhile, Nancy and Robin have figured out that this is their last-ditch effort to try to rescue their friend. And so when she's in Vecna's Mind Palace,

the like floating Creel mansion, and this little window of brightness opens up. And it's Lucas and it's Dustin and it's Steve and it's her. And it's just like a little ray of hope. And it's her friends pleading with her to come back. And so the power of friendship, these young kids and their communities that they've founded with each other, the Lucas and Max connection, which is iterated again and again

and again across this season is, and I've already said this, like my, my thing of this season, honestly. And so the way in which they miss each other and then the way in which they find each other is so important to me. And so, like, it's important that there have been misses in order to make this moment where it works and it connects, come together.

I remember when we talked about this, for some reason, I was very convinced that Max would be fine. I can't remember why, probably because, like, you see you're all sort of the trailer or something like really wonky and nerdy. of me, but like, I remember you were like, I wasn't sure she's making that run and all the show was crashing around her and I wasn't sure she was going to make it. And so it's, you know, it's scary. It's

intensive. It's wrapped up in 1985 pop culture. And, and then for it to have that power to make that song super relevant to a new generation of people is incredibly potent. So I just think, you know, it's a fairly basic answer. but like it's just like it's just an assemblage of all these really important things come together so this would be an interesting exercise maybe when we finish season five and it's like a complete text for us but actually saying like what feels like the most iconic like visual or moment or aspect of the story this would be like in the mix I mean I think it's a fantastic pick the I love what you're noting about like the discovery the connection for a new modern audience to culture from the past which obviously has been like part of the stranger things from day one, but it's increasingly fun for me to think about that as like, because I'm so obsessed with this idea of time travel and the story, just like, it's time travel

of a different sort, right? It's like a portal of a different sort, and I love when stories can give that to us. Yeah, I'll be talking about Dear Billy and Max and Lucas many times today as well. It would be impossible not to. It's just such like God-tier stuff in this season. I really co-assigned everything about Lucas and Max and that relationship in these episodes. And the next batch, too. It's just an incredible season for that relationship.

Also, because specifically the nature of that, that missed connection between them is Max's isolation this season, right? And so her feeling so all alone, so ashamed, which is exactly what Vecna is playing on, all these sort of things, isolated. Like, she cannot share what she's going through with other people. And it is that reintroduction of the connection that saves her in that moment is just, you know, she had to. reach for those people that she had sort of hit herself from all season is extremely good and powerful. And guess what? This is a great show. So it's, uh, the best. I can't wait to talk about all of our categories today. This is, I'm so curious to see, I feel like sure we're going to have some overlap, certainly. I know we do. There's no question. But I'm curious to see what,

uh, what we each have the other dozen. So should we get to it? Should we get to our stranger's furlatives? Let's do it. This episode is brought to you by Target. Listen up, Explorer. Stranger Things has returned to Target. We got a peek at Target's Stranger Things spot, and we're happy to report that it's practically a love letter to 1987 and to Stranger Things. It's got Easter eggs galore. Max is Sony Walkman, a light bright in the Wheeler's living room, and yes, a wall of glitching TVs flickering with a mind-flayer moment. And the real star? our guide Ted Wheeler is here. It's his first time at Target and he falls headfirst into the Target effect,

goes in for cheeseballs and walks out with cheeseballs and, well, you'll see. Been there, Ted. Oh, Ted. The spot is digging into the Target archives to use really these props, authentically transporting us back to shopping in that era. Think demoing Nintendo and hanging at the snack bar. If you are a Gen X or Maloney's, millennial Target kid, or millennial Target kids.

Sure. It hits. So prepare for one last adventure at Target, and you'd watch the full spot on Stranger Things Day, which is November 6 at Target.com slash Stranger Things. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you?

Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimfaya, guselcomab. Taken by injection is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before a treatment, your doctor should check you for infections in tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine.

Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about trim Faya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trim Fia, including important safety information. Let's get to our first category. As already mentioned, it is once again, best new edition. The pick is Eddie Munson. What would you like to say about our curly-haired, hell-fired leader, Eddie the Banished?

This just, like, launched Joe Quinn into the strategy. Superstardom. Has every choice he made since Stranger Things been a great? one. I don't know. But he certainly had more, like, I would say, of all the Stranger Things actors, perhaps because he was not locked into, like, thinking about having to do another season, you know, he can go make Gladiator or go make a Marvel movie, you know, in a way that, like, the other stars and Stranger Things hadn't had anything that big, other than David Harbor, I would say, I haven't had anything like that big come to their doorstep. You know what

mean. And this just like, this just blew up for him. And so the wig is great, we should say. This is an absolutely 10 out of 10 wig. As far as I'm concerned, it transforms Joe Quinn's like entire thing. And I do have some notes on, we love a character on an arc. Yeah. I do have some notes on a rewatch. I think some of the breadcrumbs are less bread crumbs and more like hunks of bread that are thrown down in terms of like how Eddie's arcing and so I do want to talk about that a little bit more when we get to the conclusion of that arc. But I mean, from the beginning, from that opening speech, from the, his connection with Chrissy, like, in the woods and that whole exchange, which I absolutely love that scene. Yeah. His horror, the, the, the, the, the, the D&D game that plays side by side with, with the basketball game and the, like, flourish of his role.

And then his horror, which again became like a TikTok meme, Chrissy Wake Up over Chrissy is like, you know, and a lot of his stuff this season is him just like screaming like, Jesus Christ, you know, like reacting to things. But yeah, I mean, he's just a very important, indelible character. We were so like, we were very worried about Steve this season. We're very worried about a lot of people. But like, we were so worried about Eddie this season. Having just met him, we were already like. extremely emotionally invested in him. So he's got chemistry with every single character that he interacts with.

It's just like he's fantastic creation. You mentioned being scared about Steve. Like I have now seen the season many times and I know what happens. And I'm still terrified for Steve when he goes into love his. When the demo bats are like feasting on his torso. Absolutely terrified. Especially after he gets to like, you're like, is this just like five minutes scene about his chest? hair like the goodbye to Steve the Hare Harrington it could be um Eddie rules any fucking rules like it's

funny we were we were like talking about you know what merch is most popular for strangers things like so much of it still is about Eddie and Hellfire and like he really just worked his way into so many hearts so quickly the intro is it's just like gold star stuff the devil has come to America it's the best to that Eddie Chrissy sequence like out in the woods I think that's surprising tenderness obviously it really helps like endear us to but they're both new characters we have no history with neither of them and it helps like root us in the story of the season

and in who they each are individually right away but like it feels like such a nice tie to like the larger areas of interest of the show you know when Chrissy says to Eddie like you're not you're not what I thought you'd be like. He's like, mean and scary? Yeah. And then he's like, you're not actually like, yeah, I thought you'd be mean and scary too. And I just love that moment between them and this idea of like how quickly perceived differences can melt away as barriers if you just like bother taking a minute to get to know somebody and not letting your like prejudices or what other people think is like cool and acceptable stop you. And I really like love that scene.

I think it kind of has an outsized impact beyond just it's like runtime. To your, you know, the breadcrumbs or a full loaf point about, yeah, the like, you know, I think that we'll talk about that more next time. Obviously, there's a lot of Eddie reflecting on his tendency to run, thinking about what it means to be a person who runs. He just says it like nine times. He's like, but that's just me. I just run away every time. I do know, apparently I ran. Another thing I love about Eddie, of course, is the Eddie Steve Dustin of it all.

Like Dustin's saying you're just jealous because I have another older male friend and Steve's like, uh, it's absolutely hysterical. But humor aside, it's hard for me to actually think of like anything else that could be quite as effective as stranger things shorthand to make us love somebody right away. than this, which is Dustin saying to Max, when we got to high school, Lucas made all his sports friends. Mike and me, I mean, no one was nice to us. No one except Eddie. It's like, what more do you need to know this? Is a person who made the characters we love feel welcome and like they belonged? And that's just perfect. So more to comment in season two, but talks about like the little lost lambs and like, you know, and how like Mike and Dustin are going to have to grow into the role of taking care of. Inheriting that mantle. Yeah. The new, the new flock. Yeah. It's pretty good.

Did you have, I can't ask, did you have a runner-up? Because no one was going to challenge Eddie. But, like, who else do you want to mention here? Obviously, Vecna. I would say Jamie Campbell-Bowers, like, whole thing. Yeah. Yes. Argyle, worth mentioning here.

It's a legend. Many Argyle picks to come. I love Argo. You love Edwardo, Franco. He's great. He's always great. I love. I mean, Robert England is here as Victor Creel.

And as far as, like, 80 stunt casting goes, this is, like, an elite choice. that they made. We've already mentioned Chrissy a couple times. I think she's great with very limited screen time. Yes. You know, that's, those would be my sort of picks. Yeah. It was Eddie's title from the jump here. Absolutely. No question. Next category. Most important relationship. I suspect we have the same pick here, but maybe not. What do you have? Carlyss will you play my clip? But I did know you. And I'm sorry. I wasn't there. It's not your fault. No.

I disappeared. No, no. You didn't. I just didn't look hard enough. Okay? But I see you now. I see you. I'm going to cry.

It's also my pick right down to the exact clip. The exact clip? The exact same clip. The exact same clip. Yeah. It's Lucas and Max. It has to be. It's Lucas and Max.

This moment, I mean, there's a number, you know, like, right before she goes up to read Billy's letter, Lucas is like, I'm here, I'm right here. I don't need a letter, right? Like, I'm right here. You know, or him trying to, like, give her the ticket to his basketball game at the beginning of the season. You know what I mean? He's like,

you know, I thought, and then he's like, something's up with you. So, like, he does try. But, like, you know, then he has this moment with her where she's like, she tries to let him off the hook. It's not your fault. I was hiding. He's like, no. You know, I did not reach out to you as much as I should have.

you know, they broke up so sure, like, you know, injured feelings where I play or, you know, ego or whatever the case may be. But like, and I do, I love that there's this line in the Dear Billy letter where she says, like, I try to be, I pretend to be happy for a while because of the end of last season, right? She and Lucas are like singing together, making fun of Dustin, you know, like, like still enjoying themselves. but this idea that, like, you can mask your pain convincingly. And, yeah, so Luke is connecting back with her. This will come back again in the next part. I talked about that at length when we covered this season the first time. But, like, it was a really stutter.

And, like, Caleb, I think Lucas, you know, there's, like, the fighting over Max or, like, his resentment over 11 in the first season. I think there are many ways in which they did not lock into Caleb's full potential as Lucas until this season. And he just like delivers on what he's given to work with. And then just the two of them together. And I didn't see it coming as like, you know,

that this was going to be where my heart sort of sunk its roots into. But that's where it is this season. So, yeah. This is my pick as well. The only, the only consideration I had for not picking Max and Lue, Lucas as most important relationship is the likelihood of picking Max and Lucas's most important relationship next pot, but I think I have another pick I'm going with. I actually don't think it's my pick next time. I have a different one. I think I will have a different one as well. So I felt like

this was this was really, even though they obviously have some very important story in those episodes. Yeah, this is the moment. I love what you're saying like that disconnect early, which obviously is present across the friend group, right? And I'll talk about that more in another category. But like with Lucas and Max in that episode one conversation when he tries to give her the ticket and she rejects it, the like, you're like a ghost conversation, I just, that is a really beautiful and effective and poignant scene, this idea, again, of like, you're trying, but you're making mistakes at the same time and how like that, both of those things can be true at once, you know, like he is, he knows something's wrong. He is trying to reach her. But as he will admit later, like, he doesn't know. know exactly how. And also, like, she isn't ready to tell him. And that's true, too. And, you know, she's also, like, as all, as Dustin and Mike are, too, like, judging his new interests and passions and withholding. And they're just, like, is a rupture, like a rupture in their relationship and a rupture in the group because people change and grow. And that's true.

But also in this, like, opening episode conversation, Max says, like, Lucas, look, people just change almost as a shield. It's like it's a true thing and a reality of growing up. But also like it is a way to put a little bit of distance between that conversation and the thing that they're not quite ready to say to each other yet, which is just really great. And I love that letter moment too. And I don't need a letter. It's just like so wonderful. And also her nerves that like they might open it and read it like while she's still there.

I just love how all of that goes. And, you know, in the Mind Palace, the memories, you know, L is there. Like the shopping montage from season three is there and it's doing work. Comes up a lot. Everyone is there, but so many of the moments that pull Max back, that root Max. Like, we've talked a lot about, you know, made the Patronus comp many times when we were covering this season the first time around. And like, I think that is like undeniably what this department.

of running up that hill and just music as like a force of light and good to pull you back. Like, especially in contrast to what the orderly will say to L, like, do you have a memory like that? Anger, right? Sadness, which is basically what eight said to 11 and C-Sat 2 about tapping it. And so this is this contrast, right? It's like the way that the love and joy and friends and family in your life can be this like shield against the dark. That's what's happening there. And the fact that like, you know, you have the ghost bust.

moment with Lucas. You have Halloween, trick-or-treating, right? You have, like, the, grasping each other's hands, like the bonding of that formative moment and the bus, the bus had it with the Dema-Dogs. And, like, you have to snowball and you have the first kiss. And you have, like, sharing the canteen to Lucas finish the water in the canteen when they were going to see Cerebro. It's just, like, so many of these things that for Max are like, I am not ready to say goodbye to this are rooted in her history with Lucas. And I really, really love them when we get to the other side of that and they have that conversation about Kate Bush. And Max is like, you know, you like Kate Bush. And he's like, uh, like, she saved you. She's the best. She's my favorite. It's just so sweet.

And then the way that Max kind of gently like, you know, calls him a dork. Like I thought you were one of the cool kids now. You know, the way she says she missed his laugh. It's like, obviously extreme, extreme things have happened to these kids that are not routine. But. That aspect of like, maybe you break up with your middle school into high school boyfriends six times. And then one of those times it's not the same as all the other times. And like, what does that mean? You know, it's just like, it's just, yeah, I. It's also like, it's also that, you know, when we talk about Lucas's like missteps or misses here,

something I feel like I get pushed back sometimes from people when I get critical of teenage boy characters are like, he's just a teenage boy, what do you expect of him? Like if I'm talking about Zander Harrison Buffy or my enduring enmity against Mike Wheeler or whatever it is, but like there's a way to be like a teenage boy and miss things and there's a way that's something else. And what I really like for Lucas here is he's like he's missing things. He's messing things up a little bit. But it's in a way that just feels like it's just extremely just human. And like I don't think you need to make a like, oh, he's just a teenage boy. He's just like a human.

You know what I mean? I feel like that whole like he's a teenage boy, what do you expect? I don't know. I expect every person to act like a human. And that includes mistakes. Mistakes should be made. But lessons should also be learned. Yeah.

And that's why like that conversation they have in the woods in episode six is so, it's such a whammy. Because like they're kind of talking about exactly that. It's like maybe the thing you did, maybe a misstep, either one of them again. Like I do think that Max being like, fuck your championship game is like, hurtful. That's something that actually matters to Lucas, you know? I mean, all of his friends not showing up. It's terrible. When he looks over to the bleachers and they're like not there

and then he sees that they didn't move hellfire because they all come out like cheering from it's like having the best time. It's so sad. And then he goes and gets like drunk for the first time. I know. The fact that like he has that his first drunken night and hangover without his friends is actually like quietly devastated to me inside of the season. V vomiting by himself and a toilet in this like absolutely hellhold of it. Penny's. Benis. They're still in this. I will say, though, that Robin and Steve and Nancy are all there, like,

cheering for Lucas matters a lot to me inside of that basketball. I mean, Robin and Steve, I think a runner-up in most important relationship here, a real contender yet again, the fact that we pick up, the drive, you know, we've got so much great shit at Family Video, obviously, the fact that they have morning movies. Dr. Zubago. You know, I don't do double VHS. shit. But the fact that Steve, I mean, he's going to the Pepp rally, but also you're just like,

he would probably just drive her anyway. Like, they're just, the rhythm of their life is like a shared one at this point. And the way that they're just talking about dating. And like, it's a different version of something we've talked about elsewhere in this series where, you know, like, after coming out of season two, the surprising connection between Dustin and Steve. And then it's like, wow, it's really meaningful when they reconnected in season three. And you're like, that wasn't just abandoned.

Yeah. Robin and Steve, they are the closest. person in the other person's life. And like, you know, it's obviously... But they're just, they're just friends. Just in case Nancy asked you. Nancy? Just friends. You know, real, just friends. She returned fast times, paused at 53 minutes, five seconds. Do you know who pauses fast times of 53 minutes, five seconds? People who like, boobies, Robin? Boobies. Funny, but it's also just like, you know, you were talking about this so beautifully in like your most emblematic scene and a lot of our categories last pod for season three, but

the acceptance of just their, who each of them is. It's not just acceptance. It's like, because there's this idea of like acceptance or like, quote unquote, tolerance, which is like, but it's just sort of like normalizing. Yeah, exactly. And not just normalizing, but like making, like, when he, when he made fun of her in that bathroom scene in season three about her crush, which gets a nice return here in season four. Yeah.

But also then just, yeah, teasing her about her new crush. and just sort of like, like, genuinely ripping her the way that he would a guy friend. And it's just like, this is just like, this is what we do. Exactly. We're just like people who love each other and want the other person to be happy. And we talk about every aspect of our life because why wouldn't we? It's great. That's great.

I think that I'll put a pin in this one until our part two pot. I'll say that Mike and Will are a runner up for me on like the most important relationship front just because I think that the, not because we get a ton of, that they're so cast off in the season and set aside, but like in these episodes, but because some of what the heart of what they talk about is like an acknowledgement, I think,

of the importance of rediscovering and reconnecting to that. So like, you know, I think when in episode four, like Will says, you know, they're talking about Owens, whether they could trust Owens and Elle could trust Owens. And Will's like, you know, he wasn't able to protect me. Like, that was you guys. That was you guys.

Or, you know, when Mike is talking about basically how empty Hawkins feels without Will and how he kind of hadn't, like, really thought about that. It's Hawkins. It's not the same without you. I feel like maybe I was worrying too much about Elle. And I don't know. Maybe I feel like I lost you or something. Does that make sense?

And then, of course, you know, Will trying to give Mike advice, but really... This is in my emotional moments. Yeah. Yeah, his own. Yeah, sometimes I just think it's, I think it's just scary to open up like that. Like, we'll put a pin in that then until we get to that category. But that is such a hugely important and vulnerable moment for Will and everything that will. A lot of my will stuff, though I'm going to, that's like sort of in my back half. Yeah. That's why I said. But we kind of want to mention it because I actually think we probably both had the impulse to save it for

next pod. And yeah, certainly there's a lot of Mike and L stuff, you know, in these episodes too. Not only the like from instead of love, you know, card signing. But like L not telling Mike about being bullied at school is really rich. You know, the fact that Mike is like, like, why didn't you feel like you could tell me this? Like I have, I've experienced this. And she's like, I actually like am different. And also she's embarrassed. So both things are true.

She's different, but also she's embarrassed in a way that like a lot of young people or people of any age are if they feel like they are on the outside of something and they don't want somebody close to them to see them that way. You know, dear Mike, I have gone to be a superhero again when so much of the origin of their relationship centers on that idea. Am I the superhero or am I the monster? And Mike being the one first was like, you saved me. But yeah, I had this elsewhere as well, but like, you're burned a pod, Mal. But like, I think that, like, that shame that 11 feels about being bullied and hiding it, I had sort of in my coming of age section, but like that idea of like feeling the need to hide yourself from the person you

felt closest to, which is of course a huge theme of the season. But like, but also this idea of like you fell in love with me or in like with me or in from with me when I was a special superhero. And now that I'm not, what does that mean for our relationship? Like, you know, so, yeah. Most emotional moment. I think, I really do think, I have a couple options here, but I do think my main one is when Mike and Will are talking and Mike says, I should have explained myself because maybe 11 would have taken me with her and things would have been different than, but I didn't know what to say. And Will says sometimes I think it's just scary to open up like that to say how you really feel, especially the people you care about most, because what if, what if they don't like the truth? And this is part of Will's larger arc of like his feelings for Mike, his sexuality. which we will talk about plenty more in the final three stretches and we'll bring Jonathan into the conversation and all that sort of like that obviously.

But that moment and Noah's delivery, he'll have an even sort of stronger version of it in the back half, but his like the layers of what's going on there and what he's hiding, but what he's telling us the audience but what he's hiding from Mike at the same time is just like, it's really piercing to me. Absolutely. I have some other.

runners up, but what's your, what's your moment? I love that. I love that scene. We talked about so much real time. I just, I, I, I, I can't wait to talk about the Will Jonathan conversation next pot. I just can't wait. Obviously, a shared favor of ours is an incredibly important.

So we will be coming back to all of that. Mine is, mine is something we've talked about a lot already. Mine is Max reading the Dear Billy Letter. It's very good. Carlos, can we hear a clip? I play that moment back in my head all the time. Sometimes I imagine myself Running to you

Pulling you away I imagine that if I had That you would still be here And everything would be Everything would be right again I imagine that we That we could have become friends Good friends like

Like a real brother and sister Sadie is like unbelievable in that stretch. Incredible. I have a friend who watched through Stranger Things for the first time. Not my friend Diana who I watched with, but another friend was like, oh, you're doing this. I'm going to, I dropped off in season two, I'll catch up, blah, blah, blah. And she is like a very snarky TV watcher.

And she's just like, I don't get why Max is so upset about Billy, like, Billy sucks. Like, I don't understand it. And I'm like, I, you know, like, that's, I don't think that's a wholly unreasonable read. Billy was an absolute asshole to Max, like an abusive person to Max the entire time. And so I think it takes so much for Sadie Singh to really sell Max's emotion here. And I think she absolutely nails. It works on me. It didn't work my friend.

It works on me. But it's, it was such a hard prompt because it's not just like, you know, when Hopper writes a letter to 11, you know, or that speech to 11, that we talked about a lot in season three, which, you know, a moment that we both really love. Like, that's a natural sort of emotional thing. This is like a, can you buy this premise that Max is this torn up about Billy? And the writing is phenomenal, but just Sadie's performance. Yeah. I think the next line, um, right after the part we just heard is, you know, I know that's stupid. You hated me. I hated you. But I thought that. maybe we could try again.

And that's like, I thought that you could, I thought that maybe we could try again is always, like, the part where I lose it, because. But that's not what happened. Yeah. Like, I think that that, actually the fact that they despised each other and that Billy was cruel, not just unkind, but hurtful and harmful and emotionally, physically, all sorts of ways. And that doesn't mean that the loss, but also just like the trauma would leave you in a day. Like I think it's so important for the show where these things are happening, supernatural,

but also real, losing family members, losing friends, having these ruptures in your community, and your town, in your life, that that leaves a mark, right? And that the characters have to, like engage with what that has done to them. And I think that the way that what we're hearing from Max here is not rooted in fond memories and happiness or any sort of like false sheen or polish on the history that they shared. It's rooted in like, first of all, shame. Why didn't I help? Like a lot of this is about Max. And that feels really honest and really true to me. Right. Like, when you lose somebody, you're thinking a lot about what you didn't do. Right?

That's like part of it. That's present here. There's the despair. There's the regret. There's wondering, like, what is inside of you and what does it mean? Which is obviously something that Vecda is like weaponizing here. There's this like aspect of it here too that's like connected to what we talked about our end with Max and Lucas.

This idea that Max can only say these things to a person she had no connection to. that there is like, I mean, there's the literal fact that Billy is gone, but she's like, you know, I wouldn't have believed it, but maybe you can hear me, right? But there's also just like there's like the fear of what it would mean to say these things aloud to the people who are still there. Your only confidant is someone who's, you're talking to a tombstone. That's like a heavy thing to think about. And I think that connects so well to that Will and Mike moment, right? Like, if you're going to open up and like that to say how you really feel, especially the people who care about the most, because what if they don't like the truth? And it's like,

I'll just put it in a letter. And then I don't even have to be there when they read it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like, right, or they'll read it when I'm gone. And, like, I think this obviously is just also one of the best encapsulations of the toll that trauma takes and how it shapes you, like, always, but especially when you're young. You know, Vecna, we talked about this when we covered the show, the first, the series, the season the first time. But, like, it is very purposeful that Vecta's targets are all teenagers, right? And obviously, there are ties then to other.

characters. Like, um, when we hear a hopper talking to Enzo slash Dimitri slash jock in and saying, you know, everyone I love, I hurt, like I was running the whole time. Yeah, I wasn't curse. I am the curse. That's, that is of a piece and a tie. The pattern of, of so many of the characters in the story think that they, including 11, like am I the monster or am I the superhero, thinking that they are the, the curse or the illness instead of the cure and only finding a way to that other, embracing the other pole because of the people around them. Like, that connects all the characters. But the fact that Max is carrying this as a freshman in high school

and the fact that Fred and Patrick and Chrissy, when Vecna is sweeping through all of the trauma in the town to choose, he keeps picking the kids. And, like, there are other reasons for that that we'll talk about more next episode, obviously. But, like, this is a time in your life where something happens to you in it, it can shape the course. things.

Yeah. And I think that it's very, it's very, it's a much better version of I know what you did last summer, but it's I know what you did last summer, right? And it's just sort of like, and I'm going to haunt you for it. And you may even be seeing the counselor. It's so funny. The count, like, the, we're both seeing the same counselor thing is a, is a Buffy season three plot, like, that I can't talk to you about yet.

But I was just like, oh, yeah, that's a Buffy thing. But, yeah, praying on vulnerable teens. And what I like about that is that we have someone like Fred and someone like Max who are a bit in the Outcast cast, but we also have Chrissy and Patrick who are like, the cool kids, you know, and it can happen to anyone. Yes, yeah. Exactly. Mood shift.

Really quickly, I will also say there are moments in the flashback. when in 11's 1979 flashback when 11 blips to tiny like all the moments where you see how tiny she was because one thing watching her like

you know go through this and then you like see a reflection of her in the mirror and she's just easy weency and it's just like horrifying so yeah it is I also think that the diorama

Mr. Fibley my dad I chose for my hero I chose my dad, like is incredibly sad. The size of kind of the like, you know, bully goon squad intro for Angel and Co. but it's just he was a hero for people and he was my hero too is fucking sad. But also like Joyce, did you want to like look over this and be like, maybe? No, no, Joyce?

Maybe we should pick, you know, someone. else is our hero. Joyce has a lot of encyclopedias to move. Maybe we should work on the diorama a little bit, make it a little bit more sophisticated, something like that, I don't know. Angela's number one good saying more like diarrhea is brutal.

Ace. Funniest moment. Carlos is another place where I had an episode seven clip, but I have an episode five clip, so that's fine. I don't know what happened to me when I put these clips together. I got over ambitious. Anyway, so I will say, can I start for a funniest moment?

Please. Will you play Carlos my episode five clip, please? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, why not? Take us for all we're worth. Okay. Wheeler has officially entered the chat.

Oh, my God. This is an incredible moment where, like, this is the beginning of actually, like, a runner of Dustin really moving into this, like, Ted Wheeler sucks era of. of his life. When Ted's like sarcastically, go ahead, take us, if you're listening to this and not watching this, part of this is very visual. Yeah. So Dustin just starts, Justin goes, okay, like snarkily. And then just starts loading breakfast foods on his plate as Ted just like looks at him,

a gog and a gabe. It's so good. It makes me laugh every single time. I'm a huge fan. So that's my funniest moment. It's a great pick. Incredible moment. You could have picked like at least a handful of different.

TED moments here, but that's a great one. I love it. I've got some Ted coming in other categories. That's a, that's just phenomenal one. I love in that stretch how Max, Dustin, Nancy, have like a really intense, crucial story moving conversation, like a foot and a half from Ted. Maybe we'll talk about that in 80's parents. Who knows? I think also Karen being just like, I love how you guys are all sticking together in that the entire neighborhood has moved into her basement. She's like, how nice. Not should I be concerned that all the children of multiple ages are here and sleeping over? I don't know.

Something you think about Karen. Something to reflect upon. Great shit. I could stand to have more Karen and Ted in my life. Season five. I really hope so. Okay. I think this is the first time I've done this, but my clip is not actually my pick.

But I, it's my clip is my runner out. Okay. But it didn't feel right to me. I couldn't make peace with not having a Steve Harrington clip, and so I picked my clip. I picked a Steve thing for my clip, even though it is my runner-up. Carlos, can we hear my clip for my runner-up? No, I don't buy it.

Straightforward my ass. You know what, honestly, Henderson, a little humility every now and then. It wouldn't hurt you. Sorry. That's one of my favorite moments of the season. It's very good. I just love it. I love their, like, constant bickering.

Steve and Dustin throughout this whole stretch. When Steve gets like paired with Duffin. Dustin and is like... Is he sighs? He's like, I'm sighing. It's like, it's not a size?

It should be good to mix it up every once in a while. We're always bared. Oh, man, it is really great when Steve. Always the babysitter. Always the goddamn babysitter is an iconic line. The like the boat only holds three and then Steve just gets in it anyways. Like,

I will be with my peers for once. Just great shit. I really love to on the Steve Dustin front. Like there's the great Sherlock Holmes moment. That's wonderful. But Skull Rock, navigating the path to Skull Rock, Dustin obviously gets his celebration. He gets to call back to season one and what they learned about the electromagnetic fields and the compass.

But when Steve is like, you do realize that Skull Rock, it's like a super popular makeout spot. And Dustin's like, yeah, so? And Steve says, yeah, well, it wasn't popular until I made it popular. It's just an incredible Steve Arringdon Flex that I love. So Steve and Dustin as the runner up. actual pick is the Byers family risotto dinner, which the two of us just needed an opportunity to talk about for a moment together. And this felt like the spot. I feel like we've sent photos of it back and forth to each other multiple times. Jonathan and Argole blazed out of their

minds. They are so high. It's so funny. I think my favorite, these guys are high as fuck, part of it is when Jonathan just misses the entire exchange. And he's like, wait, what? And then Joyce has to say, what's wrong with you? And Murray's like, I think I know what's wrong. That's just incredible. Argyle has to, like, fill him in because he was paying attention.

He's like, your mom's going on a trip to Alaska. Incredible stuff. And I love when Argyle says to Murray. This risotto is a shemakin, dude. They've got the munchies. This is great stuff. You get a real kick out of the olive oil wine. Yeah.

Just cracks me up. That's a great scene. Very, very funny. I have a couple other runners up. Tell me. We already mentioned double VHS. That one really got me. So good.

And then he tries to use the move. Yeah. And she's like, great. I'll like, I can't wait to show this to my boyfriend. He's like, fuck. This exchange for some reason really gets me and I don't know why because I'm actually not sure it entirely makes sense to me. But is Dustin and Mike in the bleachers?

And Dustin says, look, I'm not saying my girlfriend is better than yours. It's just that Susie's like a certified genius. And Mike's like, well, you do realize L save the world twice, right? And then Dustin says, and yet you still have a C in Spanish. Just a non-sequitur burn on Mike. Because Susie changed his grade, his Latin grade, his D-minus in Latin or whatever it was. So she's like, yeah. Let's go back in time.

I get it now. Okay, cool. Not a non-sequituror, but really good. It is great. I love that. Joy Singh to Murray is black not the highest color about his black belts. Incredible. Boasting.

Really, really good. Incredible stuff. And then Erica's whole, my name is Lady Applejack, and I'm a chaotic good, half elf rogue, level 14. I will sneak behind any monster you throw my way and stab them back with my poison-soaked koree. And I'll smile as they watch them die as slow, agonizing death. So we're going to do this. We're going to keep chit-chatting like this is your mommy's book club. Incredible.

The Lady Applejack intro really good. Some amazing Erica moments yet again. Great use of Erica. Great use of America. I really love when she just eviscerates Jason when he comes to the Sinclair House. That's amazing. I will also nominate as a runner up. Talk about the spirit of community.

The stretch where every single other character in the scene has a really meaningful moment looking at Steve's chest hair. This is incredible. The comedic payoff is... Because you have the like Robin watching Nancy watch Steve, which I would put more in like ship wars, another category, right? You know, we'll talk about Nancy and Jonathan more there, I assume. But Dustin and Lucas looking at Steve Chester through binoculars and like, when did Steve get so hairy? Right? I keep telling him he needs to tame that jungle, but he claims the ladies dig it.

And then Max coming in and saying, let me see. And then looking for a really long time and the look on Lucas and Dustin's faces when they're like, it's really good. Great stuff. Makes me laugh. And I think on the Susie siblings from the moment when the letterbox bro is directing. It's like, Ed Cut, incredible, just incredible. And Father, your terror, it looked genuine. It really makes me laugh. I just think that's so funny.

Oh, man. A lot of other funny moments, but they'll come up in other categories. Okay. That takes us to scariest moment. do you have here? I will say, well, we've already mentioned the diorama reveal, and that is, like, extremely scary to me. Mr. Fibley. Maybe it's the idea that Papa, who is considered one of the greatest brains of any operation, does the crossword puzzle and pencil? I was hoping you would bring this up. I was like, Joe is going to have a comment on this. You think he's a coward, and he should

commit in hand or sharp. You have to do it in head. Do it in pen. Sharpie is too, it's too chunky, it'll bleed. Okay. On the newspaper, you can't do it. Even a fine point. You can't do it. You can't do a Sharpie, but you need a nice ballpoint to do your crossword puzzle.

Don't be a coward. A pencil? You kidding me? I know. It's shameful. It is. Brenner. Amateur.

Great pick. Okay, I have like a funny pick and an actual pick. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I think what happens to Chrissy and Fred is very scary. That's, that's. That's certainly, that's my runner up, I guess. But that is actually legitimately horrifying. And I think the whole Victor Creel memory sequence where we go back to the Creel Mansion is scary.

I remember the first time I watched that. I was like, this is, I'm scared. This is scary. My comedy pick is in episode one when the package has arrived and choices on the film with Murray. And she's describing the doll. And she says, Jesus, she has nipples. Then Murray slips into his post karate ice bath and in tandem with she has nipples, he goes, oh, yeah.

Terrifying. O'm upsetting. That's great stuff. My actual pick for like, I think even more now in 2025 than when I watched this in real time, it is so disturbing to me watching Jason. In sight the masses. Yeah. with the like fanaticism and yeah conspiracy yeah exactly like do we really know what's

happening and what aren't they telling us and let's go get them it's harrowing a lot of people right away are like let's go i have one more pick tell me and i think it's equally as chilling as the satanic panic town hall and it's the concept that anyone wouldn't want pineapple on a pizza. Try before you deny. Oh, fruits on your pizzas gnarly, you say? Try before you deny. You know that this is like my main hot fruit exception is pineapple on pizza.

Yeah. It's delicious. Adam loves pineapple on pizza. It's so good. It's not a favorite of mine, but I don't like refuse to accept it either. Especially in like a jalapeno and pineapple on pizza. Spice. Yeah.

A little hot, hot and sweet. Yeah. I do like when he, when Argyle just goes through basically the entire, like, this is our farm to table approach, except the pineapples or from a can is just great.

Wonderful. Slaping some juicy pineapple on your pie. Do it. He's the best. Speaking of slapping some juicy something on something, we have a couple categories today that may or may not be linked, depending on how we've each chosen. to approach these.

Goopiest moment is up next. What do you have here? I'm going to go with, there's a lot of options. It's not a very like slimy sequence. We've had a lot of more of like stringy, gooey, slimy stuff in previous seasons. But I'm going to go with Chrissy's rotting dream banquet,

like inside of her dream sequence right before she gets got by Vecna. This is a very, uh, nightmare and Elm's dream warrior. reference moment. But there's just like a huge banquet table, like a table just spread with all these meats and they're all just like rotting in their flies everywhere. So I'm going to go with that.

It's really gnarly. Disgusting. My pick is when we had to Rinkomania and Angela and Haguans put on wipeout and lead L out to skating rink

and torment her and then throw, they hurl a chocolate milkshake at her. This is the like carry stretch of season four of stranger things. So this could also certainly go in pop culture references. That would be an acceptable place. As you mentioned, we'll talk about Elle and her relationship to being bullied

and being in this new school in another category as well. But I think it belongs here in Goopiest moments because of the pairing, the pairing of the pairing of, the milkshake with then the cranial ooze after L. Brains Angela with the Rollerscape. So you get double goop goop all around. Yeah. Something to think about.

There is something to think about. I will say, Hopper eating peanut butter with his gnarly little thingies, which does lead us into our next category. We thought we'd talk about in the next category. Yeah, sure. We can just go right now into our new category for this pot, which is I put peanut butter on that. You don't really forget because it leaves such an impression, but like you forget until you revisit it how central peanut butter is to season four of Stranger Things.

Yuri, the peanut butter smuggler, the peanut butter is everywhere. Take this anywhere you'd like, Joe. Carlos Lee, please play my clip. Oh, when Steve gets so hairy, right? I keep telling him he needs to tame that jungle, but he claims the ladies dig it. Let me see. What? Great shit.

I've put peanut butter on that. Amazing pick. Amazing pick. Not the nipples of the Russian doll then. No. No. I can beat your pick. I just feel like Max speaks for so many people when she just like grabs the binoculars and just like then there's just a beat of her watching it.

As you described earlier, it's incredible. There's also like when they go to Skull Rock, it is briefly. for a moment, inexplicable, the outfit that we see Stephen. Because you're like a sweater and kind of like loose trousers. Like I expect to see Steve the Hare Harrington in tight-fitting jeans, paronikis, or Adidas, depending on the season. A polo shirt, a jacket, a backpack, a bat, sunglasses, rubber gloves, a bucket, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers. All the scoops of it.

All of it. He just had to be able to take that sweater off really quickly. and then swim in those pants for the rest of this to work. And the choice and why they made this choice is so clear once you get to that next stretch the story of the diet. It's just great.

Thankfully, Eddie has some layers on. We'll talk about that next time. You know how Netflix has been releasing these social clips of the cast, like watching clips? There's one where Joe Kiri and I think Maya Hoc are watching part of the dive and they're talking about the cowlneck sweater that Natalia has to wear

and they were just like that freaking sweater and like getting it all wet and the continuity of it and like how like frustrating it was. So yeah, I'm sure that they thought a lot about all those like costumes they had to get sought and wet and then just like and then keep them wet for like the next episode. A cowlneck, it's not the garb you want for Lovers Lake. It's just not.

Listen, Max, looking at Steve's chest hair through the binoculars could have been a pick for best coming of age moment, but I think we'll both be going with a slightly different tone for our selections here. Instead, I'd put peanut butter on that. So, you know. Wait, so wait, what was your answer? Did you give your answer? I had like 10, you know, kind of candidates. I think nipples of the doll. Maybe the pick, but I like your nomination.

I think that's a great. Maybe Vecna can use some peanut butter to like pass. up the neck wound, you know, when Max Rips. Yeah. Does a little like stab move. Yeah, yeah. It's great.

But yeah, the way that Hopper dips the two fingers in the jar and likes them. They're so grubby. I mean, I don't begrudge him. He's starving. You know, get your calories in. But they really grubbed up his

fingers and made us experience that with him. So, yeah. Best coming of age moment. Tell us. We've already mentioned two of mine, right? 11 lying about having friends,

and then the Eddie and Chrissy exchange in the in the forest, this idea of, like, finding common cause with someone that you thought you were so separate from. But I'm going to give it to, and we've already talked about this a little bit too, but the Lucas and the basketball team and his old friends.

And this exchange between Lucas, do you have a clip for this? I do. Okay. Do you have a clip? Well, no, but so rather than me... So we can hear it and then we'll talk about it. Let's hear it.

Let's hear it, Carlos. Has it ever occurred to you that we don't want to be popular? So you want to be stuck with the nerds and freaks for three more years? We are nerds and freaks. Yeah, but maybe we don't have to be. Look, I'm tired of being bullied. I'm tired of girls laughing at us. I'm tired of feeling like a loser.

We came to high school wanting things to be different, right? So now we have that chance. Exactly. Exactly. It's so good. Incredible scene. Lucas. Also, something I found out in my research for this, that Lucas is wearing number eight because

Caleb is a huge Kobe Bryant fan, so that's why he's got the number eight on his jersey. But what comes right before that part is Lucas saying, if I get in good with these guys, I'll be in the popular crowd, then you guys will be too. This is the idea of not like, I want to leave you guys and abandon you, but I'm going to like hook into the popular cloud and then I'll bring us all along. Like he doesn't want to lose his friends. He's not, it's not that plot line of like, I'm too good for my friends. It's I don't want to be picked on anymore. And I have found protection inside of this team where we all wear the same, you know, uniform. And so I'm all, we're all one and we're all part of it. And,

and I am good at this. And so people value that. So they won't make fun of me for it. And like, then we can all do that. And, And the fact that Mike and Dustin have found their own version of that in Hellfire Club, they also have a uniform that they wear. And they also are part of a team. And they also have this protection of Eddie and all this sort of stuff like that. But it's like the pain of like the comfort, the warmth of finding that, you know, place where you belong and the pain of your friend being in a different pod from you and what that separation means. And, like, Lucas, me watching the beginning of the season for the first time and not knowing, like, are Lucas feeling so hurt by Max, by Dustin, by Mike, et cetera, by his sister, by Erica, you know, that, like, that he's going to throw in with the jocks. But he was like, no, no, like, that was not where the direction he was going, but I was worried for a second it would be.

And I wouldn't, I wouldn't think it was outside the realm of possibility because, you know, in high school, it's just so. freaking scary and it's so easy to just find, lose yourself, dissolve yourself into the group think of whatever crowd you belong to. So yeah. I love that scene. I love that moment. I love the way that every season engages with this idea of the shifting dynamic inside of their group and the characters move around and like who is in which, who is occupying which space at a given moment in time. I really love what you're saying about how like at the beginning of this, it's in that clip and in that just first episode, like, heading into the championship game, heading into this time conflict is head to head with Hellfire, that it's not that Lucas is embarrassed about them being

his friends. He wants them to be, he would be proud to see them in the bleachers. He wants them to watch him and celebrate with him and share this with him. And then there is that like, little bit of a regression where he's like, I'm not in Hellfire. No, it's my sister, right? But that's also paired with fear because there's this larger thing happening. And then I'm with you, like, even now when I rewatch it, I'm like, what choices look is going to make? It's so tense. And, you know, of course, we know that he's going to run and meet them at that school and be there for them. But it is, it's not easy. And I think that's the right choice because it shouldn't always be easy. And like, of all of the, like, everyone in the conversation is really

right and a little wrong at the same time. I think this is one of my favorite examples of it in the show because, like, of course, Mike and Dustin are hurt that Lucas would miss Hellfire. And of course, they're, like, anxious that he's moved on and that he has not only, like, access to something that they don't have access to, even though he's saying he wants them to have access to it, but that, like, the thing that they had together isn't enough for him anymore, which is, like, another version of, like, in a very different way. But, like, everybody has their version of it, the conversation that Mike and Will had in season three where it's like, did you think we were going to sit in our basement and just like play D&D forever?

Right? So like groups change and people change and they want to change together, but it's not always easy to. And I think like you feel really keenly for Mike and Dustin there watching like one of their closest friends in the world like have this experience that they're not having. But also then it's like they're judging him for it and they're really being dismissive of this thing that is important to him and that is a cool new thing in his life. And like that's really hurtful too.

When they don't go to that game, it like kills me. Kills me. I understand that there's conflict here and everyone's right, everyone's wrong. But at the same time, it's like, Lucas can't move his championship game. You can move this D&D game. And I'm just like, you guys should have gone to the game. Do hellfire after the game. It's a high school basketball game.

It's not going to make it that long. Exactly. That's what was interested to see the scoreboard there. They put up a lot of points. Yeah, it's so badly no matter how many times you've, You watch it, want them to just say, we'll be there tonight. Like, we're there for you. And then, of course, like, the fact that that's not what happens is really important.

And they have to work their way back to each other. But it's just great. That's just a great scene. I love it so much. Love it. Any runners up here that you wanted to highlight? No, other than things we already mentioned now. Yeah.

Okay. You can now watch House of R on Spotify and the Ringers' first ever television channel, available exclusively on Samsung TV Plus, the subscription-free, free streaming destination bringing you the best of TV. Rewatch some of our best deep dives and debates on the new all-day ringer channel. You can also settle in and catch up on your other ringer favorites, including the ringerverse, the rewatchables, or the big picture. To watch, open the Samsung TV Plus app on your Samsung TV or Galaxy mobile device,

navigate to the ringer channel, and boom, you're in. The next superlative is the. The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're on Cool Award for honoring the nerds. Brought you by Cameron Crowe's book tour. I have a clip here. Can we? Fantastic. Start with that.

Let's do it. Let's do it. What say you, Eddie the banished? I say you're asking me to follow you into Mordor, which, if I'm totally straight with you, I think it's a really bad idea. But the shire, the shire is burning. It's a motor it is. It's the best. How lucky are we?

Good to see that. I think that. I know for one and three, I can't remember what my pick was for two, but I think a Lord of the Rings reference has been my answer here for most. I know it's Weathertop for three and Merckwood for one. I can't remember what my number two was season duo's. But like these little Lord of the Rings moments are so fun. And this also became like a viral TikTok audio, right?

The Shire is burning, so Bordor it is. But I just, I love this moment. And I love Steve's like, what's more? What's more? Incredible shit from Steve the Harrington. Incredible. Fantastic pick. Just an incredible one.

Incredible moment. I will go with, I love that pick. I'll have as a runner-up, just everything we've already talked about with Erica's Lady Applejack, which is just iconic. I'm going to pick Susie. I'm going to go with Susie once again coming through in the fucking clutch. Susie is like,

the way that Susie is used in Stranger Things Seasons 3 and 4 is very reminiscent to be of a you know what a Lugie is? It's a baseball term for like a lefty, one out only guy. So like that's not really applicable anymore because you have to get three outs. But the idea of like you have one job.

It's a real like you have one job. You do one thing. Why? Why a lukee cousin? It's an acronym. Oh, okay, okay. For a left-handed one-out guy. Got it, got it, okay.

So, like, Susie's kind of like the lukey, right? Like, we're like, we need one thing. We need somebody who can give us this number that we need. We need someone who can. Who knows what an IP address is? Yeah, I was thinking of that too when you were talking earlier about, like, how, you know, and Stranger Things has been very much like an internet-era show overall, but how, like, really the internet core, you know, the memes aren't everything for this season, how big it was on

TikTok. I always get such a kick out of that moment when Jonathan's like, what's the internet? And Susie's like, don't worry about it. It's just going to change the world because it's such an internet era show. So that's a very fun thing. But, um, Susie, granted, there's this cover about the, you know, the, the, the American Nintendo. Yeah. Did you say 16 bit? 16 bit, Susie, it's 16 bit. Um, regardless of the cover story. Susie does it. She does it yet again. She does it, frankly, with ease.

And I could not possibly love the moment more when Mike is like, can you print this in with such derisions? She says to him. No, my skills ended IPG location. I love this for Dustin. I love this for Dustin. Susie and Dustin mean a lot to me. Great stuff. Absolutely great stuff.

I also think on the nerds front. Robin. You know, Robin's a band kid. Yeah. But theater kid energy from Robin, certainly. But the band, I mean, those are, that's what the band is. And yeah, like you feel it in the Penhurst sequence when she's like, other kids, they wanted to be astronauts, baseball, basketball players, rock stars,

but I wanted to be you. Like, Robin, bringing that theater kid, band kid energy theirs. Really good. And she's the one. She's the one who convinces, convinces director Hatch to briefly to let them go, talk to Victor. Until she fucks things up later. That's okay. But the bra was really tight, and she did warn Nancy that the bra was too tight.

Quite is she. Speaking of Nancy and bras, shipworse. Oh, yeah. Well, okay. It's Nancy and Robin and Steve and Eddie and Jonathan all sort of like in the mix together, right? It's like, it's Nancy and Robin and Steve, but Robin's like, I'm not involved. And also Steve is like denying that he's still in love with Nancy and Nancy is denying that, that she's, like, looking at Steve.

It's Jonathan and Nancy in their whole, like, where are we going to college bullshit? It's Eddie's chemistry with Steve. It's Eddie's chemistry with Chrissy. It's Eddie's chemistry with Nancy, frankly. Like, it's just, you know, all the late teens be looking at each other. You know what I mean? I get such a kick out of that moment with Dustin's like, do you want to talk about it?

And Steve's like, what is the moment when you lost your mind? when you saw Nancy Wheeler? That's just great, great shit. I think on the ship wars front, I'm still kind of fascinated by this choice with how to play with the Nancy Jonathan relationship in this stretch. And like, we'll talk about this more maybe next.

I think we'll talk about this more next episode, but kind of like where the show wants us to be with like what we're rooting for. But the inner cutting of the Argyle Jonathan scene and the Nancy. friend scene. Oh yeah. And then just, it's very good.

It's really great. And I just obviously love when Argyle's like, you know, give that, give that right hand to yours a vacation and, you know, get some. I think it's really, hanky, panky. I think it's really funny when characters who have really only been paired with each other, like the show is like, you know, so they separate Jonathan Nancy for almost the entire season, right? And like, um, the, so like, Jonathan gets a friend, Argyll.

Like, that's how they solve that. and is like in the Steve role with, you know, Mike and Will and stuff like that, right? So, like, that's what they do with Jonathan. With Nancy, they're like, uh-oh, we forgot to give Nancy any friends after Barb died. And then she just, like, was with Jonathan. And, uh-oh, that was her entire personality. So, like, Nancy gets a friend and Robin, which I really like for her this season. So, yeah.

All worth it for the payoff. Because Nancy, it's so tense with Nancy and Robin at first. Yeah. On one side. All worth her for the payoff of Robin later being like telling Nancy that she, quote, flinched or winced or something every time Robin mentioned Jonathan. It's so funny. Robin is the best.

Also, you have a Tom Cruise posters. You have Tom Cruise posters. And then the, like, the ballerina music box. Yeah, it's pretty great. Fantastic stuff. There's a lot of comedy here. I really, when Jonathan is like I don't, like, I got into. Lenora community, I can't leave my mom and my brother. I don't want to tell Nancy this because I don't want her to change her mind about Emerson and then resent me. And then he says like, and then before you know it, we're just like mom and dad. I thought that was an effective way to take us back to kind of one of their core origins, which was, you know, during shooting practice, like talking about where both of their sets of parents wound up and how depressing it is when you're a young person to think about like one day being there and how.

how in this moment for Jonathan, he's like, I feel like we're now like a step and a half away from that, which is very scary to him. Interesting. We've had some recommendations from listeners to drop everything in flight to New York and see Stranger Things for shadow, for shadow stage play. As far as I know,

we're not going to be able to do that before Thanksgiving, though it is canon, but something that is, you know. Is that when it concludes Thanksgiving? Well, that's sort of when season five starts. So I was just saying we can't do it before season five. So get the production ending. Canon and it is, the adults as teens.

And so it's like Joyce and Hop in high school, but also I think Lonnie is like a character as well. And Karen and Ted or that, you know, like it's all of them as teenagers in high school is sort of the character set. Incredible. Is Ted like already 50 when the rest of them were? It's funny.

I'll send you an Instagram reel I saw that was like the cast And they were doing superlatives, like, most likely to. And it was like, you know, it was like Joyce, like, buyers, or not buyers yet. You know, Joyce's her maid name, like most likely to. And Jim. And so I was like, oh, I was like, oh, Karen and Ted are in this. And Karen's like a cheerleader, of course. And then Ted, I think, is like a jock.

And it's like, yeah, that makes sense to me that Ted Wheeler was like a jock in high school and then became this. Like, that makes a lot of sense to me. It all tracks. It does. It all tracks. Did teenage Ted have any political? signs on his front lawn. We'll find out maybe if we ever get to see the show.

Let's hope. On the ship wars front. This isn't a war. This is just pure possibility. Let me just say. Eden and Argyle, I ship it. Okay. Eden, like the garden is so funny to me.

Eden in her breakfast club get up. Yeah. Argyll just disappearing to the van. Really great stuff. Sweet, innocent, Susie is like, Is there, did we spook a skunk? We have more to talk about in the back half, but I think the Eddie and Steve stuff is quite potent. It's quite good.

I mean, you know. No notes for me. Certainly no notes for me. Great stuff. Best quote. Oh, boy. This is a bit of a tie. It's either Max's Dear Billy Letter.

Sure. Yeah. or again, what do you do with a character when you've separated them from all the other characters that they've ever spent time with? I guess you give them a lot of monologues. So Hopper has many monologues. We've already talked about the best one.

That ends with the minute I sent for Joyce, the minute I sent for her, I sentenced her to death just like I did with Sarah, everyone I love, I hurt. See, I was wrong this whole time. I wasn't cursed. I am the curse. I would argue.

Jim has like maybe two contemplative monologues too many this season, but this one is so good. Really good. Talking about his time in war, about Agent Orange, about, you know, Sarah and Diane and all this sort of stuff. Like, it's all really good. And then concluding with I Am the Curse is like extremely good shit from Hopper.

And the way that that connects to that like conversation in season two, I got the feeling like he's the black hole. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Great pick. I had a hard time narrowing the field. I have a couple

hundred different buckets contenders here. So I have the first that I would like to discuss is the Argyle Division. Oh, please. I've limited myself to three quotes for the Argyle Division. We've already talked about them.

But you're a good boy, okay. You've been a good boy man, and I think it's way past, too. You give that right hand of yours of vacation. And then when Jonathan's like, ooh, and Argyle says, it's natural. I just... Wow?

Purple Palm Tree Delight, work in its magic. My man makes your troubles float away like the seed pods of a dandelion floating on the wind. Incredible. And then your favorite fruit on your pizza's gnarly, you say, well, I say, try before you deny. Incredible. Very good. Non-aragile division, three candidates. When Enzo slash Dimitri slash Joccahara says to Hopper, he's telling Hopper in episode

three, what Yuri smuggles? And he says, cigarettes, peanut butter, Playboy is the best America has to offer. Very good. Incredible. Accurate. I love in episode five when Steve is basically just trying to understand why they have to go into the Creel mansion and why it's important. He's like, because Max saw it in Vecna's Red Soup Mind World? It's like, actually, yeah, that's why.

Yeah. Thank you, Steve. And then I think this is my pick. Okay. Though I have a couple more contenders after. Episode six, my queen, Susie, explaining why her dad took her computer by saying, not only was I breaking the law, I was dating an agnostic. Absolutely incredible stuff for Susie with like the Brigham Young.

Penn in on the wall and it's great stuff. Okay, I would like to also just nominate from the lore slash mythology division. Well, we hear in episode four when Victor is talking to Nancy and Robin in the present, and we are witnessing the past. And he says, I suppose all evil must have a home. And though I had not a rational explanation for it, I could sense this demon always close. I became convinced it was hiding, nesting somewhere within the shadows of our home. I think I suppose all evil must have a home is like really, really great and evocative in terms of just like, the lyricism of the language, but then in terms of what it is opening up on the upside down front

or how it connects to like the great veil of shadows, seen in season one that I love so much, or like the idea of the hellmouth thing I now know and understand. I thought that was really great. And then to wrap, I would like to nominate for the first time the worst quote, if you'll allow it. Please. And this is the only award that Jason will be winning today. That's not true.

He got scariest moment. But Jason's awards are all bad things. Jason's saying that's what they want you to think, but it's a lie. A lie designed to conceal the truth. It's like, yeah, Jason, that's what a lie is. A lie designed to conceal the truth. It's hysterical to me. Oh, Jason.

Oh, Jason, what a dummy. Most memorable visual. It devastates me that we're doing this over Zoom so you won't be able to watch. this. You'll only be able to listen. I don't even know if you'll be able to know what this is, but I do have a clip for this that if folks are watching this, which I recommend, you enjoy this visual. Carlos, we play this clip. Okay, Carlos very helpfully included them yelling Steve, Steve, but the visual is, it's, the reason I moved to the peanut butter category is I had this back to back with peanut butter. And I just want to point out, it's not really about the fact

that Joe Curie is shirtless in this moment, but it helps. because him being pulled down by the tentacle into Lover's Lake and then into the upside down and the red glow of the gate. So him with a tentacle wrap around his ankle being pulled down and sort of like hovering over the gate and then being pulled through the gate into the upside down. That to me looks like the cover of like a great pulpy 1980s paperback. Like the way that that shot, the way that the red light is just glistening off of his like torso. You're seeing

from behind, but it's just like the red glow on his skin and then just like the tentacle and the gate below. It just looks like a paperback design to me. And that is just like it's not about I'd put Peter Butter on that. It's really about this is just like a cool sci-fi

image and the red glow and the water and all of it just like all goes together really well. So that's my pick. That's like I love the paperback point. My pick is very proximate to this. It also involves Steve. in the Watergate. Mine's right before your pick.

I love when they pan out wide. Yes. I always pick that one. Yeah. It's like an eye. Yeah. It's like the slit of the eye of a sea monster glowing red. And he is just in the abyss.

And he's so small. I love that. It's so striking. And I also just like that shot and what you're picking, you know, literally when he has pulled through and kind of burst through. But just like another way. of reminding us how thin the veil between the dimensions is, between the worlds is. Like, we have seen gates in a wall or, you know, underground or like, okay, we have Jonathan

and Nancy are in a really ill-advised way, go through the trunk of this tree, et cetera. But like, it's the idea that that penetration can happen anywhere because that's what it means for these planes to overlap is I think it was really captured. beautifully and very memorably. And all of the, like, you know, we'll get to this in the back half the other, like, travel through the gate imagery that they have this season. But, like, all that stuff is so clever. The, like, upside down flip stuff is so good.

And, yeah, I'm so glad we picked similar moments. But it's very cool looking. Fantastic stuff. Favorite pop culture influence on this season for many decade or favorite reference. this season. What are you got? Gosh, there's so much. There are a lot.

I will say, I guess I have to say as a Californian. The sort of like Argyle Surfer Boy, 1980s, Hypercolor, California, O.P. You know, if you want to put it under the Fast Times bucket

and say like this Pekoli-esque sort of character that is Argyle. Of course, we get Phoebe Kate's reference a galore elsewhere in this season. But just sort of like that like 1980s California surfer culture stuff, which is like so part of my growing up is is my favorite pop culture influence. I have some others, but that's my main one. What's your? Great pick. I think my pick was was going to be the Mordor Exchange, which I just love so much. And I guess on the, on the Lord of the Riggs front, you know, we also, of course, have the get off the road. Yeah. Very, very fellowshipy.

But since we've toasted the mortar moment elsewhere, you know, I will go with, I feel like there is a lot of Luke and Yoda on Dagaba energy when Owens at the end of episode three says to 11, you may feel you need to go to them now. but if you do, you will risk everything, risk everyone. Like, that just feels very purposefully connected to that. And, of course, we get some other Star Wars elsewhere. You know, never, we never tell me the odds. For Boston. Great, great shit. Yeah.

Having just rewatched war games. Oh, the war game shoutout is great. Not only the war game shoutout, but like the changing the grades of the beginning of which is why I should have gotten that Spanish clash joke, but I did it. But, like, that's, you know, that's, you know, the classic war games, Ferris Bueller stuff. Now I'm on Elm Street we've already mentioned, but like Dream Warriors specifically is like really prevalent here. I have one. Okay, so the Duffers have cited, this is a question for you. They cited two movies, one of which is very core to me and one of which is very core to you.

And I actually am not sure I see the connection to either. So maybe you can help me. Exciting. The one for me is you've got male. And the one for you is ordinary people. So what is your, what do you think is the ordinary people like, comp here? I would say the, my guess, I've not, I'd have to go look at what they said exactly. My guess would be.

They just, like, posted them as like, like, inspo. And I was like, what? So my guess then would be that it's about Max and Billy and dear Billy and the like you, you let go. The wrong one, that you held on, like, you let go, you know, that regret that kind of is, is carrying. about what he did or didn't do. That would be my guess. Of course, that's great. You've got male.

Is it Joyce and Hop being separated for most of the season? Like, I don't know. Interesting. I'm trying to remember. Is it Vecna and 11? And he's like pretending to be someone else. He's like catfishing her. Like, I don't.

You've got mail. Yeah. Stranger Things season four. Hobb is, I've seen you've got mail one million times. Does someone eat caviar, even though it's. It's a garnish. Like, I don't know what the answer is. But hobbits and dragons and Gmail.com, if you know.

Is it the dial-up sound that we're here? I was going to say, is it like the internet? Yeah, like the dial-up mode? Oh, man. Good shit. Great one. Amityville Horror for the Creel Mansion stuff. Scary.

Hellraiser for Vecna's design. Silence of the Lambs for our visit to the asylum. You're just, honestly, you're just like, where's bigs? I mean, everything about the walk down that hall, what the guard is saying, everything. You're like, where is Miggs? Obviously, it's relief that Miggs is not here. I never want them there. Yeah.

It's very, very silence of the lambsy. The Great Escape in reference to the Cooler King himself. Yeah. Carrie, Bury mentioned. Carrie, Uncle Wayne mentions Michael Myers. Mm-hmm. Oh, I like when Robin, it's like pretty novel for the 50s Exorcist wasn't even out yet. Robin rules

Looks a great one Yeah X-Men with the Hellfire Club Of course Absolutely Absolutely Thrones we already mentioned For the sprawl

But also Barry Gower You know Thrones prosthetic king Yes Who designed the night king Etcett etc Does the Vecna prosthetics

So yeah Freddy Krueger We get another Madonna You know you're bigger Than Madonna Than them Another Madonna

mention I like that Argyle who wasn't in season three got to get in on the never-ending story of it all this time. He's like the nothing man that's just a proper existential shit right there it's great. E.T.

They mentioned E.T. for like sort of that California suburban sprawl aesthetic that we get where the buyers is living. So yeah. Love it. Yeah.

Okay. Next. It is now time to discuss. the most potent use of 80s nostalgia presented by Target. Oh. As we prepare for one last adventure. Joanna, what do you have today for the most potent use of 80s nostalgia in these episodes from season four? I got it.

Even though it makes an appearance here, I think I have to say the light bright for later. So it's tease, though. It's teased here. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the Encyclopedia Britannic. It is Joyce's entire career as an Encyclopedia Britannica salesperson. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which we owned a set,

Encyclopedia Britannica said, I loved our Encyclopedia Britannicas. But also those commercials were such an important part of me growing up. So, yeah, that's my main one. That's where they're based, the Britannica's Joan and Brian Patanica is one of my favorite Joyce Byers moments. It's like the specificity. We haven't really been talking about Joyce, but that's like a really good moment for her. Oh, my God. The specificity of the cover story for why she's leaving to go to Alaska.

She's sort of the Britannica. It's really good. Incredible pick. I love that one. I will toss out there. Nintendo Mania. You know, wide release in North America in 86, I believe Ben Lindberg can fact check us on that. And so you get multiple moments.

across these episodes where Nintendo is just in the air, right? I love when Erica has the conversation with Jason and is reminding him to remind Lucas of what covering for Lucas is costing him. And then Erica says, another week of this and he's buying me a goddamn Nintendo with duck hunt. Nothing could port me back to my childhood more powerfully than mentioning not only a Nintendo. but duck hunt. Right, because you could get it with the little orange gun

that you played duck hunt with or without, you know? My cousins had duck hunt before I did, and like, I was consumed by jealousy. I should mention every piece of Nintendo

that ever entered our house was deeply against my parents' will. My sister babysat and saved up to get the first Nintendo for us. And then I think, Super Nintendo I got. Oh, yeah. And we were allowed to, we only had like basically Mario games on there, which is great.

Great. Who needs more? Super Mario 2 is my favorite. Dr. Mario also iconic. Oh, interesting. I know. Super Mario 2 is an unusual one, but I really, really like it. But we were allowed to play, but we weren't allowed to play with the sound on.

Have I told you this before? So, whoa. We had to mute all the sounds. and we could like listen. So we would like listen to musicals and then play Nintendo. It's all becoming so clear to me. It's all going to get into place here in this story.

Yeah, we could listen to music, but we weren't allowed. Like my mom was so irritated by the noise of the Nintendo that we weren't allowed to like have the noise of the video game. That doesn't stop me from knowing all of the Mario sounds. Of course. And I can like, do it, do do do it. Like there's just some great stuff.

Pretty good. Thanks. Would you have participated in, you know, this is another Nintendo? moment in this stretch, the quest to win, this is the cover story for finding Nina, to win the Ameritendo 16-bid for Dustin for his birthday, even though his birthday is months away. Would you have participated? Absolutely.

Of course. I love a contest, you know. Same, same. We get a Police Academy 3 reference back in training. People looking up things in the paper in general. Yeah, that's my favorite part of that for the 80s, nostalgia. She's like, what's playing at the multiplex today?

Let me check the paper. Great, great stuff. Fantastic. I already mentioned Argyll Surfer Bro everything, and I mentioned sort of like the O.P. The Ocean Pacific clothing. But the way in which Mike shows up to California, it is the OP knock, Opie Sunwear knockoff that Argyll calls out. But I love that he shows up.

Like, he bought new clothing. Yes. To come to California. And that 11 and Will are just, like, wearing their Indiana clothes. And, like, Mike is there in his, like, neon, like, visors. So, like, that's great stuff. Mike's putting in the effort, you know? Also, this is kind of...

In Will's room, we love to poster spot, right? And Will has Jaws. Jaws made the trip. Yeah. 1975, whatever. He's got a poster for the little shop of horrors the movie's not out yet, stage show. Now, why is it a secret that Will Byers is gay

when he has a poster for the Little Shop of Horrors? Stage show in his bedroom? I don't know, but I would have paid a little more attention if I were Mike and I were in there. Speaking of paying attention to what people need, I would like to on the 80s nostalgia front highlight some of the you are hiding in a boathouse and we will bring you sustenance snacks

than Eddie consumes. Very good. You-hoo. This is core 80s nostalgia. Honeycomb. Mm-hmm. And this is not part of the rescue kit that the Pallaspring. This is what Eddie unearths for himself in the cupboards inside of Rick Stolls.

Spaghettios. Let me tell you what I loved to eat when I was a kid. SpaghettiOs. This may not surprise you given the fact that I had my first Pop-Tart, like, just two weeks ago when I was in L.A., but I've never had a Spaghetti-O. You're missing now. But I love that Jason, yeah, Jason's like, oh, Eddie was here. Like, he sees the SpaghettiOs.

He's like, this is the work of Eddie. Great stuff. Anything else. Jonathan makes a Chips reference. And then something we've talked about a couple times, but the, just like the satanic panic aspect. Very of the time. Eddie is modeled after one of the West Memphis three. You know, and so that's just, yeah, quite evocative.

I think there's something, too, this is obviously not exclusively in 80s. I wouldn't say I'm nostalgic for us. It would have roots you in a moment in time. It warrants you. This next thing is not like specific necessarily to the 80s, but I do think that the Owens 11 approach to the Nina site. Uh-huh. to that former missile silo in Nevada, just that open expanse.

I mean, for us at home, we kind of have a more modern, breaking bad, like, you know, out in the open space association with like a visual like that. But, you know, just in general, the Area 51 kind of conspiracy,

what is hidden beneath the surface that we don't have access to or know about, the grip that that held on the masses across the decades, you know, certainly in that time as well. And of course, we're in the like, you know, we talked about this a lot in our season three pods, but the Cold War aspect of that, too, with the hopper plot line, all connected. Is that it? Do we do it? Watergate, you know, in the 70s, but I think the volume of Watergate reference.

is feels very 80s to me. Hawkinsgate and then Watergate. Steve's like, wait a second, didn't those guys get caught? Very amusing. Do we do it? We did it. One more thing I want to add. I mean, we haven't really talked about the Walkman, but like

the Walkman is so integral to everything. And I love there's just like a couple things that are so specific to it, right? Like we have to find, we have to fast forward, rewind to find the exact right tape. They like make her, a loop later so that she can play it, but she has to, like, you know, stop and rewind it or flip it around or whatever. The way in which they, I'm so glad they thought to do this, they put the headphones on her head when she's in her trance at the gravesite.

But they also clip the Walkman to her belt. So then later when she levitates, it doesn't disconnect. She, like, keeps the Walkman with her as she levitates into the air. So, yeah. I think the Walkman is the pick. Yeah. It's the pick. 80s nostalgia, a Walkman.

How are we topping it? We're not. The light brights like, hold my beer for part two. Okay. The most potent use of 80s nostalgia was brought to you by Target. Prepare for one last adventure now at Target. Plus, they are dropping a nostalgia-filled spot celebrating their Stranger Things collaboration. And it's red. You can watch the full spot on Stranger Things Day, November 6 at Target.com slash Stranger Things.

Love it. That takes us to another 80s category. 80s parenting. We have some notes. I have a clip for this one. I hope it's Ted. It is. Carlos?

I think at this point anything's possible. Our children are not murderers, Ted. Don't put words in my mouth. So maybe the best moment in the history of the show. They all gather, all the parents gather at the Wheeler's House after the town hall. They think their kids are. When did the movie start four hours ago? They have no idea as usual where their kids are.

So it's just like, we're playing the hits. But it's like, Dustin's mom is like, we don't really think that they're involved with does anything. And Ted's like, maybe. It's incredible. I have a feeling we're going to come back to that very similar dynamic in part two. I have another Ted Wheeler moment. It comes from earlier in the season.

When Karen says, Michael, I know your D&D club is tonight. And Mike says, hellfire. And Ted says, why don't you call it the high school dropout club? unbelievable. Followed shortly by him saying to Karen, remind me, when do they become a reasonable human beings again? And then also, as we've mentioned, Joyce just fucking off to Siberia for when she has not only her own children, but like a damaged, bullied, you know, a child who still doesn't

speak English very well and is making sad diorama school. There's the one beat of cover choice. Like, should I have told them? You know? Murray's like, you don't want to get, you know,

you don't want to get their home. What's the worst that's going to happen? They'll like sexually experiment a little while you're gone. It's like, let's continue on. The entire home gets shot up. Oh, man.

We haven't mentioned, unless you have it planned for later, there is that like really cool oneer of like when the house gets shot up and the oneer of like the agent and the kids. Oh, actually that almost made my funniest moment but I did it when they've got the dying agent that they dragged it to the back of the car and Argyle's like flipping out or whatever and they all go drive

and then he's like Argos still talking and they just go drive like I just love when like a group of people say drive it's always agent man agent man good ship is he perhaps your pick for the next category the fit or hair lord of season four no is Argyle It's Argyle With Eddie right on his heels And the bronze medal

Goes to Robin and Nancy Drag Those are my three as well Honestly like how can anything else Even be in the mix here One two three Yeah You know as you noted the Argyle The Escape fit specifically

The visor The sunglasses The pants The pants All the neon It's incredible Remarkable stuff truly. We have another fashion category yet again. It's the shortest shorts lord.

Anything else you'd like to say about Mike Wheeler's rinkomania garb? I just want to shout out Mallor at Rubin for reminding me. I was like, should we cut that for this season? Because aren't they all wearing pants? And she's like, Joanna the reason you invented this category was so that we could talk about Mike Wheeler, Rinkomania, and his little stork legs on the roller rink. And she's right. Why the category exists. And then I tried to kill it before the payoff. But here we are. Mike at Rinkomedia is definitely the pick here, unless you have another option.

No, of course that's the pick. I like when he's like, I'm so bad at some like Bambi on ice. With his little Bambi on ice. Great stuff. Truly, truly remarkable. That's needle drop. I mean, I assume this is running up that hill. But can I just run through some other highlights?

There are some other great ones, yeah. There are like dozens. We've already mentioned. I was a teenage werewolf, the cramps. at his entrance. Dungeons and dragons. And then also in episode one, Detroit Rock City, the kiss, a song that plays during Lucas's game and the Hellfire Club game. Episode two, super weird placement of it, but it's one of my favorite songs, so it has to be mentioned. Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads plays at the end of Jason's speech. And like,

so I guess Jason is the cycle. Like he's claiming other people as Psycho Killer, but Jason is the Psycho, I don't know. Lucas looks pertur, but it's a banger, so I have to mention. it. All of the uses of pasta the duchy from the left-hand side for Argyle is simply incredible. It's extremely good. Dream a little dream of me, obviously, very iconic and important. And then this is one more really weird one that really struck out to me because I really love this song. When Yuri is taking off in the plane, Ricky Nelson's Travelin Man starts playing and then bleeds into the fisherman outside of Reefer Ricks. And it's like on their radio. And I was just like, this is such a weird.

Why is this here? But I love that song. So, yeah. That's a great one. That's another like, could we have cut this seat? Like the fishermen outside of Reefer Ricks. Because later Jason, like one of Jason's goons is like, someone spotted activity at Reifer Ricks.

I don't think we need to see the fisherman talking about seeing something happening at Reaver Ricks. That could have shaved easily two minutes off of this episode. but it's a great needle drop. But then you wouldn't be talking about it here in 2025 in the best needle drop. Traveling, man. There you go.

What else do you have? Where would we be? I think those are the, those are most of my runners up as well. Good use of California dreaming, you know, when Elle is writing her, her letter,

her letter of lies to Mike. A lie that conceals the truth. A lie that conceals the truth. Jason, my God. But yeah, Crowded Field of also Rands here but I think it just has to be Kate Bush Like you said, this just became

It's so central and integral to the plot of the season of television because it is the patroness And we get the tie to the Pennhurst lessons about the role of music and Victor's Ella Fitzgerald moment But like The fact that this became such a renewed sensation In real life is like

What a, what a, in an age where we only, we have to like take Netflix's word for like how popular their shows are because we don't have like a clear rating system to follow anymore. What an undeniable marker of the popularity of something. It's like this show is so popular that it sent a, you know, a 40 year oldish song like climbing up the charts. So yeah, there you go. If this had Netflix subtitles, when it does the most Netflixy subtitle. We're back at the moment. We're back at the moment. that started at all. This is when we started doing this, which was talking about flesh distending wetly for Vecna's pointy claw. That's when this became a house of our bit that

lives to this day. Is that your pick because it is so central to the house of our canon? Or should we almost say, that's known. Right. What else are we picking? Mine is the sequence you and I have already texted about. Is that also yours? Yeah, of course. This is Vecna's intro. Yeah. It's wet squelching, followed by creature gurgles, followed by desperate muffled screaming,

followed by flies buzzing. Upsetting. My run concludes with scuttling. I will continue from there. Thank you. Chrissy panting, creature groans, creature gurgles, messing guttural growling, And Chrissy Wimpers.

And then, of course, we build toward bone-snapping creature groaning wet squelch. And I would say we talk a lot about flesh descending wetly, rightly. But I would say this is the season of the wet squelch. Wet squelch is constantly deployed across the sub-titles. But Vecna entering on wet squelch is just 10 out of 10. No, no. It's really good stuff. Unbelievable stuff.

I did want to ask you, given how you feel about a crevice, what it does to you to see. fissure crackling and eerie sounds emanating from fissure. Oh, no. And the subtitles elsewhere in the season, those are from episodes three and six, respectively. Fissure gurgling is also in episode six. Is that Steve at those moments? Is that Steve at the Watergate?

Yeah, Steve timing down to Watergate. I wrote in my note, which was an absolute nightmare. The fissure gurgling. Oh, ma'am. also wanted to note that it is, I think, an underrated but really disgusting choice when Max in the Mind Palace steps on all the

like the spider nests and it says wet popping. So horrifying, but great. So disgusting. And I do think we should note that when Vecna in episode 5 claims Patrick, we get, we hear it, and it's subtitled.

Mones. Beckna, you freak Oh, man. Patrick's body crumpling over the water is like, you know, extremely horrifying and good television. Truly, truly, truly. See, it's an MVP time. We're doing three this time.

The kids, the mids, and the adults. We can no longer in good faith. I mean, Eddie has an entire speech about he's basically like, I've been in high school for like a decade and a half. Right. Can't really call him a kid even though he's in high school. Do you think they put that in there after they cast a whole adult man, Joe Quinn, in that role? Maybe.

So, you know, take it any way you'd like, but basically, like, this new middle cluster is basically for Eddie, Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, Argyle, Robin, etc. Run me through your three selections here. What do you got? This is all going to be obvious until my last one, I think. So in kid, it's a tie between Lucas and Max. for me. Caleb and Sadie. In mid, it's Eddie Munson.

I am with you once again. I think we might have the same adult. Okay, I'm giving it to Brett Gellman as Mary Bowman. Dude, this is great stuff for Murray. I would like to say, I'm just going to... But Jeremiah is 16, almost. His birthday's next month. And Jeremiah is a ferocious fighter,

lighting fast, very skilled, and I beat him that one time. And certainly, Yuri is not trained or something. skill like Jeremiah. Incredible. Yes, you're right. I can defeat Yuri. Okay, I would argue that the entire like Siberia, Joyce and Murray go to Alaska and then Siberia,

Hopas in prison, et cetera, et cetera, is some of the weakest stuff of the season, buoyed almost entirely by Brett Gelman as Murray Bowman. Like, he is carrying this. And we've seen him with Joyce before, but like Murray and Joyce together in this concentrated stretch is extremely good. Like really, really good.

And he's just carrying the adult stuff. I was going to say, oh, in the season five trailer, there's a shot of Murray and Robin, and I'm like, what's that? Like, I'm excited to know what is Murray plus Robin, like, so. I'm with you. We have all of the same picks for MVP's. I, yeah, you know, is Yuri's like,

I laugh at my own jokes thing. for everybody, maybe not. But Murray does, first of all, I think there's just like, it's one thing for people to seek him out in prior seasons. But like, he gets on that plane and goes to help Joyce, and you're like, Murray's a ride or die. There's kind of that, which is important. Yeah.

But the Jeremiah sequence, you already quoted, is this unbelievably amusing. The nipple bathing is hysterical. The risotto scene we already talked about is great. I also really like when they're in the motel and Joyce is like, for a second, trying to call home. And he's like, Joyce, there are certain things. one can be late to in life. A dentist appointment of one-year-old's birthday party because who cares?

That little idiot's not going to remember it, but for what is essentially a ransom exchange for that, for that, I think you very much need to be on time. And he's right. He is right. He's right. You got to be on time to get drugged by Yuri. Oh, man. I know.

I would not have accepted the coffee from Yuri. I don't think. And certainly Yuri is not trained or skilled like Jeremiah. It's really good. So good. those are our superlatives. We will now talk for like a minute about season five. I almost want to save this completely for the next pod.

I think there's one thing. Yeah, let's hit a couple quick things. But we're working at, we, if you guys are like, you really didn't talk about Vecna very much, like we're just going to talk about it a lot next time. Yeah. So what do you have here? Don't worry.

Vecna is wet squelching is coming. Don't worry. Oh, phrasing. Freezing. Okay. I think it's starting with 11 saying Joyce's time is funny like that, emotions can make it speed up or slowed down. We're all time travelers if you think about it. This is also my bet.

Because how can it not be? Given Mallory's most fondest wish that season five is a time travel season is very important. This reminds me a little bit. I won't get into spoilers for another television show that people might not be expecting here. this reminds me a little bit of a conversation we had around the identity of a certain character on rings of power and how at a certain point it goes from like hold the theory loosely and into like if you give us that many like honking horned signal something's he better be or else you're irresponsibly teasing right so i feel like that's where we are with some of the the end game um time travel Time travel stuff. Who knows?

Yeah. I mean, again, you know, you already used it. Maybe it's like a clockmaker or something. Why is this wizard obsessed with clocks? It's another one. But yeah, like, we're all time travelers if you think about it. I'm just like, come on. Okay, so like it's confirmed?

I don't know. I mean, will it bother? Like, if there isn't literal time travel, but we're like jumping through time, is that enough for you? I will say also that like this connects to, we're in the season five stretch so we can just speak more. freely at this point. This connects to what we'll talk about more in the next episode, which is just like what is coming in the back of season four about the upside down being frozen in time.

We've already, they've just already started to do it. So there has, that has to, that just, that has to be majorly significant. Does that count as time travel to wander through the upside down, which is frozen from a couple years ago, or 11 sort of flashing into her own quantum leap style into her own body in a different period of time? Is that a, is that a kind of time travel? I think so. Yeah. I think time has to, time and time periods and timelines has to have a bearing on season five. Yeah.

Yeah. Just has to. The other thing, I'll quickly mention two other things here, and we'll save most of the large Vecta stuff for the next pod. I've mentioned this before, but like, and I don't know if this is absolutely nothing. I just find that moment when Sullivan's. Who is Peter? Who is Peter? Yeah.

Oh, Wens' kid. Yeah. It's on my list. Especially because Vecna I, Henry is using Peter. as a cover name when he's... I don't think he is. I think that was an out-of-show thing. I don't think Peter has ever mentioned in the show,

but they called the character Peter. Yeah, they called the character Peter to sort of like, you know, hide the ball. Hide that he's Henry. But it has launched a million. Did Owens ever, like, foster Henry at some point before he, like, went into the lab or something. And then, do they have something of his then?

It's such a weird moment. That's Peter's stuff. Drawing attention to that. It feels so deliberate. So I feel like that has to come back into play, but who knows? Maybe not. And then I think the, you know, the only thing I'll hit on the like upside down cannon front here before we talk about some stuff more next pot is just what Dustin says about.

As far as we know, 11 didn't create the upside down. She opened a gate to it. The upside down has probably been around for thousands of years, millions. I wouldn't be surprised if it predated the dinosaurs. So just all the questions we still have will obviously learn more in the next few episodes. But a lot of questions still about the connection between the upside down and Hawkins and whether, like, what the kind of chicken egg is of some of the powering up aspects of what is happening here. So yeah, more to come on that front. Anything else that we didn't hit today that you wanted to mention?

I really think we did it. We did it. We did do it. Great. Time for thank yous then. Thank you to Carlos Chiroboga for producing this pod. Thank you to John Richter and Arjuna Ramga Powell for their production assistance. And thank you to Jomi Adoneron for his work on the social for this episode.

We will see you in a couple days for our best musical moments of the century. So far, Pod. Cannot wait for that. And then we will see you next Tuesday for our Stranger Things Season 4, Part 2, Pod, revisiting episode 7, 8, and 9. Aw. Pay off your home. travel for life drive a Ferrari.

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