By
Pike on
Sunday November 5, 2017 01:49 pm
I watched the second season of Stranger Things this week and I was struck by one thing. The second season is introducing lots of new characters, such as Sadie Sink as Max, Dacre Montgomery as Billy Hargrove, Sean Astin as Bob Newby, Linnea Berthelsen as Eleven's sister Kali and Paul Reiser as Dr. Sam Owens.
I think that each and every character was plain great. The casting was brilliant (Dacre Montgomery!), the roles were really well written (Max, Kali) and they fit perfectly into the series universe.
I am amazed by it, in comparison with the way the new characters from The X-Files were introduced in the last season. The introductions of Agents Einstein and Miller were so poorly executed, it's really something to be ashamed of. And I openly blame Chris Carter for that. I think that Lauren Ambrose is a wonderful actress. She was simply brilliant in Six Feet Under and to see her reduced to such a stupid character as Agent Einstein made me feel really bad for her. Also, if I remember correctly, Chris Carter told her to play the role in a very unsubtle way, which she found peculiar. As for Kyd Miller, the actor is having such a perfect physique that I think he is totally unbelievable as an FBI Agent. He doesn't have anything special to him. He is just way too perfect.
And when it comes to the dialogue, I think that the writing of those two was mediocre and amateurish.
Don't get me wrong, I think we used to have great second characters in The X-Files: Cigarette-Smoking Man, Deep Throat, Walter Skinner, X, Alex Krycek, The Lone Gunmen (to an extent), John Doggett, etc.
I'm just very sad that for a series that lived for more than 25 years, the level of experience of the producers didn't help introducing new characters. Where on the other side, a show with only 8 episodes was able to start a new season and brilliantly introduce new ones.
What do you think?
