Happy (belated) anniversary, and welcome to the seventh installment of the Summer TV Binge of Stranger Things, looking back at season one, episode seven (released July 15, 2016):
“Chapter Seven: The Bathtub”
Written by Justin Doble
Directed by the Duffer Bros.
In this episode, the kids are the run from Dr. Brenner’s goons, but eventually found and reunited with Hopper, Joyce, Jonathan and Nancy. After explaining Will and Barbara are in the Upside Down, Eleven proposes finding them via “the bath,” and everyone sets about creating a sensory deprivation pool in the school gym.
1. Silence is Golden
Much has been written about Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s eerie, synthesized soundtrack, which is a fantastic spiritual successor to John Carpenter’s music, but what’s fascinating in this episode is how their score completely stops when Eleven flips the government van over:
It’s a strong contrast to the scene’s counterpart in E.T., where the alien made the boys’ bikes soar to the sound of John Williams’s transcendent theme. It’s something Williams tends to do though: think of other sequences in films he scored, like the T. rex attack in Jurassic Park; the “liquidation” of the ghetto in Schindler’s List; the battles in Saving Private Ryan; or whenever Kylo Ren speaks in Star Wars: The Force Awakens — the music comes to a complete stop, making those moments feel more real and visceral. It’s great Dixon and Stein share Williams’s understanding that silence can be as impactful as the music itself, and the scene feels even more like a Spielberg film as a result.
2. The Journey to Redemption Begins With a Single Step
While nursing his injuries from his fight with Jonathan, Steve finally realizes his friends are more trouble than they’re worth, and gives up on them. He drives to the movie theater, and apologizes to the owner for the graffiti attacking Nancy, while offering to help him clean it up. Suffice to say, I like that Steve’s redemption officially begins with him climbing a ladder, and doing a menial task for someone he wouldn’t have looked at twice in the past.
3. Mr. Clarke is a Smooth Operator
Once all our protagonists are together and figure out what to do, Dustin calls Mr. Clarke to ask him how you would go about creating a deprivation tank. Mr. Clarke is watching John Carpenter’s The Thing with an Asian woman named Jen, but he still answers the phone, and doesn’t get exasperated by the (what must be to him a random) interruption — he appears unconcerned about excusing himself from his date. Likewise, picking a film as disturbing as The Thing, and helping Jen get through it by explaining how the special effects were done? Now that’s a man who’s confident she won’t pass on a second date.
4. Calm Before the Storm
This could very well have been the penultimate episode of the entire series, and it spends a lot of time just letting us leisurely enjoy these characters being in each other’s company. Seeing Mike and Nancy together again with a newfound respect for each other is great, as is the way their promise to be honest with each other from now on, is immediately superseded by them denying they’re respectively interested in Eleven and Jonathan. Hopper gives Jonathan some fatherly advice about understanding how important he is to his mother, and Joyce becomes the first positive maternal figure in El’s life. If this was a network or cable show, maybe there would’ve been feedback from execs that the episode needed to end with Brenner’s goons showing up at the school, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.
5. One Brave Little Girl
El reenters the Void after lying in the pool, and confirms Barb is dead, before finding Will in the Upside Down’s version of his fort. On paper, this shouldn’t have been the most nailbiting sequence, as it’s a little girl wandering around a black background while every other principal player looks on she floats in the pool, but it’s spooky and atmospheric, and manages to work. What’s intriguing is that Hopper and Joyce must be aware of how distressing it is for El to see Barb’s rotting corpse, but they don’t try to bring her out of the Void immediately to soothe her: they know as well as we do that she has to find Will first. She shouldn’t have to be, but she is definitely the bravest little girl.
Continued belowOther Things:
– In retrospect, Lucas’s reconciliation with El, Mike and Dustin is a little hurried, but then they were fleeing for their lives, and like he says, flipping the van was awesome.
– Mike and El nearly have their first kiss at the start of the episode, but Dustin interrupts them, which was sensible: less time kissing means more time running.
– It’s funny how all of Brenner’s agents searching for the kids in the junkyard wear three-piece suits, as if they’re at all conducive to hunting a target.
– It’s so skeevy how Brenner feigns being a concerned guardian to get Karen Wheeler to trust him.
– It is hilarious how wrong Ted Wheeler is about everything, and how his main concern about Eleven is “what happened to her hair?”
– Nancy recognizing El is wearing her dress is, hands down, the funniest moment in season one.
See you next week for the first season finale, “Chapter Eight: The Upside Down.”
