Five more shows I would watch in the STU (Stranger Things Universe)
The Reunion
Set in the present day, Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas came back to Hawkins for their high school reunion. A couple of the guys are doing well, a couple not. Someone is married to Elle. Maybe Lucas. One’s a millionaire. Whatever. Anyway, Nancy goes missing and they find out someone’s opened a portal to The Upside Down. There they find Nancy, but also the 1983 version of themselves, who are brought back to the current day. Yes, The Upside-Down can do that. Look, the important thing is there’s an awesome scene where the 1983 boys and Elle discover hover-boards while OK Go’s ‘Here it Goes Again’ plays.
The Trip
It’s the year 1966 and Martin Brenner is one of UC Berkeley’s most promising post-grad students. With qualifications in biology and neuroscience, Dr Brenner is heading towards tenure until, one day, he meets a visiting academic from Harvard academic named Timothy Leary. Leary convinces Brenner to ingest a rare organic substance, and the pair disappears into a kaleidoscopic other world which Brenner discovers is actually another dimension. The pair trip into, and study together, the dimension, until Brenner becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing items from the other dimension. Leary warns him that the two dimensions must live separately, and eventually cuts Brenner off from the substance. Brenner becomes increasingly manic, and eventually starts buying the substance from a local bikie gang. As Brenner spends more time in the other dimension, pressure builds as his debt to bikies increases, and Leary plots to stop Brenner from being able to leave our dimension (details TBD). Brenner eventually does figure out how to bring items from the trip dimension (also TBD), but finds they are unstable and poisonous in our dimension. Brenner uses the extra-dimensional items to kill the bikies, and gains immunity from prosecution by testifying against Leary and his anti-government drug empire. Season ends with Brenner walking into the Pentagon, dressed as a MiB.
Barb!
A Sally Jessy Raphael/ Donahue style daytime talk show hosted by Barb, looking at the burning issues of the day (1987) affecting Indiana. Barb asks Hoosiers of all creed and colour (white, Italian, evangelical, protestant, evangelical protestant) the questions the others won’t, like- ‘Is Chris Mullen the state’s hottest bachelor?’ ‘ Are building backyard nuclear bomb shelters your patriotic duty?’ and ‘What’s with Chinese people?’ Barb attacks it all with her trademark sense, no nonsense style, and beloved catchphrase: “Oh Nancy!” Scripted-period-faux-talk show with behind-the-scenes scenes. Danny McBride plays Barb’s producer. They have history.
Coming Home
In 1968 Benny the Chef is conscripted and sent to Vietnam, where he goes missing assumed KIA. His best friend, Jim Hopper, starts to drink himself to death, and is bought back to health by Benny’s girlfriend, Mary. Jim and Mary marry, but things become complicated after Benny returns, having been held in awful conditions as a POW. A love triangle produces a little girl well before DNA testing, and a blood feud develops between Benny and Hopper. There also a factory closing, and a bitter local election, and every TV is talking about the Iranian hostage crisis, and the little girl gets cancer, and Benny develops severe PTSD. It’s all heavy biscuits. David Simon writes and directs.
Alaska
This one would require a repurposing of the timeline a la the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. In the cold open of episode one we see the Hawkins Labs goons assault on Benny’s Burgers, but from the perspective of the faux-social service lady. We start with her approaching Benny’s door but in a sliding-doors moment, a very mysterious black cat rubs up against her, which sets her sneezing. This alerts Elle to the assault, who incapacitates the Hawkins goons and gives Benny time to put the pair in his 1983 GMC Vandura (the A-Team van). After seeing what Elle can do, Benny points the vehicle in the direction of Alaska, and Benny’s estranged, conspiracy-theory loving sister Constance, who disappeared in Anchorage while living in a commune with a shadowy group of super-organised hippies called The Underground. The series is a Benny and Elle road trip chase-caper, with Dr Brenner and the Demogorgon in hot pursuit, and peaks when the pair realise they’re only going to make it to Alaska is by taking a short-cut through…The Upside-Down.
