At first I believed the hype was earned but I began to realize that is all that it is, hype.

This is really just Riverdale on steroids, it's the same stagnant, shallow, insular, recycled blueprint in a very expensive elaborate disguise with kid actors suspiciously shoehorned in.

Riverdale can be entertaining though only because it taps into our primordial instincts by throwing glamorized erotica, violence and turmoil at us wrapped up in decadent self congratulatory zingers, retorts and hollow poetic speeches.

Stranger things dials this up to 'eleven'. The first seasons were more organic and at least had this semblance of immersion, drama and freshness but as it goes on it begins to over rely on shock-and-awe and tired formulas.

It's beyond flat. It inverts and comes out to grip you like a magic mirror gone rouge, the flashing reflective tentacles gripping you into a stupor. It tells you, yelling, demanding, that it's sole perfection through loud leading music drenched over stale cliches instead of letting us simply experience it for better or for worse. It's the stench of desperation perfumed with the scent of blissful overconfidence, the recipe for nuclear hype.

There is a sense of protectiveness of the series by the creators and the fans which wandered into over-protectiveness which may explain the avoidance of stepping into new territory and clinging to obsolete blueprints. In the same way overprotecting a child can cause arrested development we can see the same thing with Stranger Things, outside of its highly curated bliss bubble it meltdowns at the slightest scrutiny just like that child that didn't grow or toughen up because they were suffocated by overinsualtion.