[octothorp]

A few thoughts:

Spoiler!

Steve and Dustin were the highlights of the season, and Dustin at the dance was perfect. I mean, that dance scene... man. Brilliant way to wrap up the season.

Overall, I think the way that this season struggled was in character groupings. Good ensemble cast writing takes existing characters, pairs them in interesting and unexpected ways to create new insights into the existing characters and relationships. Dustin and Steve, and Eleven and Hopper were the only instances of this. Elle had literally two scenes over the entire season in which she interacted with original cast characters beyond Hopper, and that felt like a waste to me. The new characters felt more like the writers didn't know how to move the existing relationships forward without external forces. Nancy and Jonathan's arc relied on the P.I., Eleven's relied on Kali, Joyce and Hopper relied on Bob, the boys' relied on Max.

That criticism aside, there was a lot I liked here. Even though I didn't like it as a stand alone episode, I did like the presence of Kali and I hope she's a bit of an antagonist for Eleven. The 'dark side of the force' scene was great, one of my favorite 80s pop culture allusions, in part because it was a bit more subtle than most. I also like Max... again, just not the way the whole arc of the boys' plot was hanging on her.

There's of course a bunch of minor plot hole things that don't make sense, but I really feel like those things should be given a pass in this genre.