Welcome back to our weekly look at Stranger Things season four, today we’re looking at:
“Chapter Six: The Dive”
Written by Curtis Gwinn
Directed by Nimród Antal
While El continues to remember her life in 1979, Jonathan, Mike, Will, and Argyle go to Suzie’s home in Utah, to get her help tracing the modem they dialed. In Hawkins, the party finds Eddie, and learn from Dustin’s compass that Vecna has opened new gates to the Upside Down. In Siberia, Joyce and Murray force Yuri to take them to the compound, while Hopper and the other prisoners set to be executed by the Demogorgon are served one last meal.
1. I Smell a Sitcom
Unsurprisingly for a girl from Utah, Suzie has a lot of siblings, including an older sister, Eden (Audrey Holcomb, channeling Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club), who becomes love at first sight for Argyle. It’s been a dark season, even by the show’s standards, so seeing Suzie’s little brothers and sisters run around playing and making Super 8 movies, as noisily as children do, was a pleasant diversion. While watching these scenes, I recalled a comment the Duffer Bros. made, that if there’s going to be a TV spin-off, it would go in an unexpected direction, and it dawned on me: could Suzie’s large family be the subject of a Brady Bunch-style comedy? I wouldn’t bet on it, but it would be a fun, inconsequential idea, especially if Argyle popped in occasionally.
2. Wow, Brenner’s Other Subjects Were Jerks
El’s dive (no pun intended) into her past continues, as she remembers her friendship with the kindly Peter Ballard, who it turns out knew about her mother, and told her that she came to the lab to rescue her — Peter’s knowledge, and understanding of El’s trauma, helped her tap into her powers, and exceed the other subjects during Brenner’s tests. Unfortunately, that made Brenner suspicious of Peter, and order the other employees to torture him, while the other subjects became jealous of El, and bullied her. It’s an interesting choice that none of El’s fellow subjects come across sympathetically here: sure, it’s horrible they were all soon killed, but it does soften the blow a little, as if the show was saying, “well, none of them were very nice anyway.”
3. And a Child Shall (Mis)lead Them
At a Hawkins town meeting, Chief Powell loses control of the situation when Jason storms in and figuratively steals his mic, telling everyone (albeit without going into specifics) about Patrick’s horrifying murder, which “proves” Eddie leads a demonic cult. It feels very pointed that the people of Hawkins have more trust in what this white boy has to say than their Black police chief, even though they’re both completely in the dark about what’s really going on. It’s an accurate reflection of why privileged Christian kids like Jason have so much undue confidence: they behave like the invincible, infallible protagonists of the world because no one they respect ever tells them they can be wrong, that they can be too emotional, and more hindrance than help.
4. The Last Supper
Hopper gets another great scene when all the prisoners set for death by Demogorgon are served a lavish, candlelit dinner: he seizes the moment by pointing out the guards are fattening them up, instantly dampening the others’ mood, and making them listen to what he knows about their impending doom. It’s a magnificent scene, as dark as a chiaroscuro painting, and shot like one of Quint’s monologues from Jaws, with the camera slowly moving in on him as he tells them what he knows about Demogorgons. Jim Hopper, haunted monster-killing expert: you love to see it.
5. The Floor
The older teens — Steve, Nancy, Robin and Eddie — take a boat to the area over the lake where Patrick was murdered, while Max, Lucas, and Dustin watch from the shore. Steve dives down to confirm Vecna has created a gate, a cool, James Cameron-esque addition to the show’s memorable visuals, but he gets pulled into the Upside Down by a tendril after telling the others, forcing them to swim after him. The shirtless Steve gets dragged a considerable distance across the ground, which is fortunately pretty flat, but then he gets set upon by vicious Demobats, ending the episode on an effective (and wince-inducing) cliffhanger. That said, we know Steve’s probably not gonna die here, which means as it closes, the episode primarily leaves us with one question: why does the Upside Down’s ground resemble a tiled floor? Talk about a literal flipside.
Continued belowOther Things:
– It’s good that the Satanic Panic storyline gives the parents of the leads (who aren’t Jim and Joyce) more to do, but all things considered it’s not that much. Still, it does raise a good question about these kinds of children’s fantasy adventures: do the protagonists’ parents have a right to eventually learn about what they’ve been really up to or not? It’s a moot point with standalone stories, but not in series like these.
– Agent Wallace getting tortured by Colonel Sullivan was just gratuitous, isn’t it? On that note, Ebert Voices published a pretty critical essay on the show’s Black characters (including them), and while I don’t agree with everything in it (I love the Sinclair siblings, y’know), it is still worth reading and considering.
– You have to wonder how Steve would’ve reacted to hearing the word Mordor if he watched The Lord of the Rings movies.
See you all next week for “Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab.”
