Stranger Things 5 Episode 3 Review – “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap”

As Stranger Things has gotten larger and more unwieldy with each passing season, it has become an increasingly fragmented series, making its episode-to-episode themes and ideas much harder to cohere into something tangible – it’s the most telling sign of the show’s change from seasons one and two – where each episode has a distinct opening, central purpose, and ending – to its latter, larger seasons, where its plotting became more bloated and amorphous, and its characters became narrower and more streamlined.

An episode like “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap” feels torn between these two identities; under its superficial veneer of Alice in Wonderland references and flat character interactions is a more interesting, dynamic story just waiting to burst out. Unfortunately, “The Turnbow Trap” is but a marginal improvement over “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” ; the penultimate episode of Stranger Things 5‘s first volume can’t escape the fragmentation of its own ambition, which leads to an head-scratching 69-minute episode that feels like its both going too slow and too fast all at once, miscalibrated in all the wrong places and rendering the series of reveals the entire episode hinges on more muted than clearly intended.

It doesn’t help that “The Turnbow Trap” immediately begins raising questions about its internal logic from the moment it starts – and mostly because its character beats have become so thin and amorphous, it draws attention away from its overarching stories or incidental plot beats and towards the stretching of the show’s own internal logic. This episode begins with a number of eyebrow raisers: Hopper stabbing the Wet Wall, the sight of helicopters in the Upside Down, Dr. Kay’s unfriendly lieutenant pissing on the Wall… all of these things raise so many questions about the state of the Upside Down: like if Vecna’s really in custody as some believe, weakening the Upside Down… then how is Vecna able to somehow manifest another false reality that Holly is now in, and still control people, but not notice when grenades are going off in the Upside Down?

All of these things detract from the actual developments of the scene, both in character and plot; and from there, “The Turnbow Trap” continues to vacillate between stretching its own credulity and simply repeating itself.

For most, this episode will mostly hinge on whether its titular plan makes any sense, which involves everyone drugging the Turnbow family (with the knowledge of Will’s vision of Vecna-as-Derek, knowing that little shit is going to be the next victim of his still-unknown plan), dragging them to a barn, then destroying the Turnbow house to set a trap for Vecna’s Demogorgon – where the plan is to injure it, inject it with a tracking device (and then light it on fire, which… would most likely melt the tracking device, no? Silly question, I guess), and then have Dustin and Steve follow it across realities to track it back to wherever Holly is presumably being held.

This plan, of course, involves someone procuring drugs to knock out these people; and its here where even Stranger Things 5 leaves its own reality, pairing off Will and Robin (in what immediately becomes a thinly-veiled conversation about Will’s still-closeted sexuality) as they go back to Hawkins Memorial to rob it of sedatives (which they do with absolutely no drama or tension whatsoever; they literally talk the whole time, grab the drugs, and walk out). These sedatives are then cooked in a pie by Erica, who agrees to feed them to the family under the guise of getting one over on her former best friend… who she later stabs violently in the neck with a needle, when Tina refuses to eat Erica’s dessert.

While I do appreciate the occasional nods to Home Alone this plot offers (there’s even an Evil Dead nod, when Steve cranks a chainsaw to cut a hole in the floor), this plot requires a long suspension of disbelief – which I would be perfectly on board with, if the story in any sort of way served its characters, or was interesting or engaging as a self-contained story… which it never is.

Some of this happens because there are so many scenes, they’re often not given enough room: take Steven and Dustin, whose conflict is begging for a bit of room, especially in the moments when Steve is clearly reading Dustin’s lies about crashing his bike for exactly what they are. But these moments are fleeting, as “The Turnbow Trap” spends more time on preparation montages, or having Will awkwardly explain his Vision Logic (he sees through people as Vecna seeing through them, meaning his connection is to Vecna, not his victims… why this isn’t a psychic two-way street, Stranger Things never tries to explain, perhaps to its benefit).

Or it cuts away to the other, Technicolor-tinged plot of the episode, where Holly drops herself into some rather obvious Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood references (seriously, the costuming and direction is so overt, its homage becomes a bit lifeless) and eventually discovers Max in the woods. Again, the logic it requires to figure out what’s going on here is a bit absurd: I would think Holly and Max are caught in a Vecna trap somewhere, though Henry’s warning telling her not to go outside suggests Max is actually running around loose in here? Regardless, if Vecna’s plan is to trap a bunch of kids in a house, feed them a sugary breakfast and then tell them to go nowhere, he’s pretty dumb; though Stranger Things is playing so coy with the actual point of this story, besides being a vehicle to bring Max back from the brink of death she was left in during “The Piggyback”.

These sequences are the ones, strangely enough, that beg the presence of Frank Darabont behind the camera as the episode’s high-profile director; besides providing distinct visual palettes between the three different realms of Stranger Things, there’s nothing distinct or authorial about the direction of the episode, another sign that any depth of creativity has been sacrificed for the sake of another bloated, repetitive plot (I mean, it’s been eighteen months… is Nancy seriously the only one who can still shoot a gun? Are Eleven and Nancy the only ones training? What has everyone been doing for a year and a half?). Holly’s scenes at least give Stranger Things 5 an opportunity for something a bit different, but instead, it becomes a long trip down a short road, barely teasing Max’s presence before revealing her with a giant musical crescendo before cutting to credits.

Thankfully, we at least have the Demogorgon sequence, where the group’s perfectly executed plan plays out in grandiose fashion. But outside of Mike finally taking action, even this scene is but a rehash of what we’ve seen before; Nancy with a shotgun, Lucas throwing stuff at monsters, and a Demogorgon giving a bit, drool-y roar as it pauses to give characters enough time to get out of its reach. It’s a perfectly serviceable scene, but it adds nothing new or distinct to scenes and events Stranger Things has offered before – and thus, limits its ability to feel like an impactful scene in a season already offering so many repetitive references and images.

There are definitely some scenes in “The Turnbow Trap” that work; Murray’s delivery scene is a great bit of comic relief, and one can’t help but love the brief glimpse of old Robin we get, when she talks about experiencing young love with Vicki. But taken as a whole, it’s a concept for an episode that works better in theory than it does in execution; ultimately, “The Turnbow Trap” is a long trip down a fairly short road, as Stranger Things 5 doubles down and drags out the central mysteries of Volume I ahead of its conclusion.

Grade: C-

Other thoughts/observations:

• I think this episode marks six in a row (going back to Stranger Things 4) with a “Running Up That Hill” needle drop somewhere in it. Enough is enough, we get it!
  
• The idea Stranger Things 5 was originally pitched as a weekly release is wild, because I think even with the episode ending reveals, both this eipsode and “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” lose so much momentum from each preceding episode.
  
• the military calls the anti-Eleven devices as “the hedgehog”. There’s also a grunt who is very insistent in reminding everyone that group H stands for Hercules, a bit of throwaway dialogue I nonetheless found hilarious.
  
• I get why Steve and Dustin drive through a bunch of yards just to turn around, but… it really does suck the life out of the sequence, to Steve’s dramatic 180 and …. calm drive back out to the road.
  
• Joyce goes from sitting and talking on the radio… to driving and talking on the radio! At least she gets one other scene in the episode, where we get to watch Will awkwardly emote through another conversation (seriously… what is it with how Will’s character is being written, portrayed, and directed?)
  
• Eleven really can’t get over that guy pissing on the Wet Wall… I’m with her though, it’s weird!
  
• Yeah, that Derek kid really is a shit.
  
• Who is behind that wall? Some assume it is Vecna, though I’m wondering if Linnea Berthelsen’s presence at the Stranger Things 5 premiere suggests otherwise.
  
• The Will/Robin dynamic is such an overt piece of writing; it feels naked and cheap, and a reminder that Stranger Things has spent 30+ hours building to a reveal that Will likes boys.
  
• One scene after Jonathan derides Joyce for not being on board with more risky plans, she’s repeating his exact sentences, which is emblematic of the underwhelming character development this season.
  
• The joy Dustin takes in destroying the roof of Steve’s car is maybe the darkest we’ve ever seen him.
  
• Mr. Clarke talks to Erica about wormholes. WINK WINK.
  
• “Be polite. Unless its a Mormon. Or a Democrat.”
  
• This Dustin kid is an absolute terrorist, to the point I almost hope this plan doesn’t work?