Six years ago, Matt and Ross Duffer whipped up a perfect streaming video dessert, low on nutrition but high in sweet pop culture calories. Season 1 of their Netflix series Stranger Things was an expertly assembled and precisely calibrated souffle of Generation X nostalgia, Spielbergian family melodrama and more intense-than-expected sci-fi-horror adventure. It was a delicious, entirely guilt-free indulgence.
The thing about a dessert, when it's tasty enough, is that the people who love it don't want it to change -- that's the condition for their choosing it over and over again. And the many devotees of Stranger Things have been lucky because as the show's fourth season -- which premiered seven of its nine episodes last week -- demonstrates, the Duffers' expertise and crowd-pleasing instincts significantly exceed their storytelling imagination.
