Last month, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix. For those who have never seen it, it is about a group of teenagers in small-town Indiana in the 1980s. When I heard the show was wrapping, I finally decided to give it a look.
The show premiered in 2016 and, I must confess, I never watched it until now. The setting is a small Indiana town in the 1980s. It centers on a group of high-schoolers and the strange happenings in the town. Season one takes place in November 1983.
Being one who was a teenager in the 1980s, I dreaded that it would be nothing but a sea of anachronisms and clichés. Assuming the worst, I avoided it. I also didn’t want reminded of my high school years, but that’s another story.
Now that I started watching the show, I have to say I am quite impressed with it. I am only through the first half of season one, but it is really engaging. The episodes recall the 1986 Rob Reiner film Stand By Me, along with evoking the suspense of 1980s slasher films (minus the gratuitous blood and gore) and the coming-of-age elements of classic 1980s John Hughes teen comedies.
The story line includes the doings a secretive government research laboratory, recalling plot lines from “paranoia” films of the 1970s (Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View). Given what we went through so far this century—war on terror, economic panic, a global pandemic caused by a lab leak—I would say that element is a contemporary touch rather than a nod to the 1980s. We were not paranoid back then, but we did always wonder when everything would go up in a nuclear fireball.
If you want to know more, watch the show. I don’t do spoilers.
What the showrunners got right
Pretty much everything. I was particularly impressed with the details they included. For instance, despite what you may have imagined, 1980s homes were not full of neon and bright colors a la the Memphis design philosophy. Rather than other colors, shades of brown, beige, and wood dominated the decor, giving the show’s sets their authentic look. While people in 1983 were quite happy to move on from everything 1970s, they were not going to do a total remodel of their homes. Especially given that interest rates and inflation at the time and relative to today were still high.
Another example of a detail I found impressive was that they had one of the characters using a Trapper Keeper. These were plastic ring binders that included folders for each school subject. The idea was that you would take class notes and place them in the binder inside the folder for that class. Also, you would use the folders for storing class handouts, etc. I always thought they were dorky, but they did the job.
I hadn’t seen or thought about a Trapper Keeper since I left high school forty years ago.
What the showrunners got wrong
In one scene, a character wanted to replace her landline telephone. She goes to the hardware store and buys a new one. The setting for this was November 1983, and that would have been impossible at the time.
Back then, you leased your telephone from the phone company (Indiana Bell). If you needed to replace it because it was damaged, as was the case in the show, you needed to contact the telephone company, and they would send you a new one.
It was not until the next year, 1984, after the breakup of the Bell System, that consumers got the ability to buy their own telephone equipment and connect it to the network.
There was also a pool party scene in episode three where the kids jumped in the outdoor swimming pool. This could not have occurred in Indiana in November 1983. As anyone who lives in the northern part of the country knows, Novembers are quite chilly and no one except those participating in a Polar Plunge would attempt outdoor swimming. Also, pools in the northern United States need winterized by November, and that involves emptying half the water to allow for expansion during the winter freezes. The pool was filled to the brim with water.
Things that made me go “Hmm…”
In episode two, the kids are listening to The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” from the band’s 1982 album Combat Rock. Would normie-type midwestern teenagers at the time have listened to that? Perhaps, but more authentic choices would be Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard, or Dio. Recalling what the guys at my high school listened to at the time, any of those artists would have been more in line with the characters in the show.
Final thoughts
I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the series. Since I don’t binge watch, it will take me a few months to get through it all. But from what I have seen so far, The Duffer Brothers have done excellent work capturing the spirit of the 1980s. Hopefully this continues throughout the rest of the series.
Note to directors, writers, and producers: If you are making a period piece set in the 1980s or 1990s and would like someone to check your work for anachronisms, I am available for consultation services at a reasonable fee. Please leave a note in the comments or hit me up through my contact form.
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