Stranger Things 5 Episode 5 Review – “Chapter Five: Shock Jock”

After a game-changing end to Stranger Things 5‘s first volume, “Chapter Five: Shock Jock” is in the unceremonious position of trying to make sense of the reveals of “Chapter Four: Sorcerer”, while also quickly setting the stage for the show’s final showdown between Vecna, the people of Hawkins, Eleven/Eight, and the government – and somehow, still find space for its stories of friendships, romance, and self-discovery. Unsurprisingly, “Shock Jock” feels a lot of this weight, often stunting its own momentum with an uncanny ability to fill scenes with characters theorizing around events and emotions, rather than just showing them and trusting the audience to keep up with its many ideas, twists, and minor revelations across its 68-minute running time. However, in the moments it does stop telling the audience what’s going on, “Shock Jock” is able to deliver just enough haunting images and powerful moments to keep the episode from floating completely adrift amongst its many, many interlocking and overlapping plot details.

“Shock Jock” begins where “Sorcerer” ends, with Will providing a handy little miniature recap of Volume I’s final two minutes, before launching into a mix of intriguing teases and maddeningly long sequences of exposition that dominate the remaining hour of the episode. Like much of Stranger Things 5, it makes for a lot of awkward transitions in tone, and one can hear the creaks as the show piles on more and more narrative upon itself – but when “Shock Jock” does kick into gear, mostly around Will and Dustin as they try to navigate the new identities they’ve built for themselves, “Shock Jock” hums along, providing just enough space for a few of its characters to shine through the thick, weighty fog weighing down everything else around it.

Will’s journey of self-discovery, which stalled out for about 30 episodes until the end of “Sorcerer”, suddenly feels like one of the show’s more intriguing arcs of season five, as Will figures out how to channel himself in the real world (thanks to another conversation with Robin, as they set up a dead Demogorgon to try and facilitate Will’s connection to the hive mind) and in the Upside Down, with his third-act attempt to try and infiltrate Vecna’s mind and (quite literally) kill him from the inside.

Though it requires the show to be a bit formulaic in its approach – I understand Robin is the one who who ‘gets it’, but at this point, their pairing in a scene immediately signals an Important Gay Emotion Scene is about to happen – and will probably lead to some cringe-worthy moment of Will coming out to The Loser’s Club later this season – Will’s rejuvenation is a minor revelation for the series, perhaps the one example where the show’s increasingly unwieldy mythology still gives meaning to a character arc, rather than distract or detract from it. There’s also just a different energy to Will, from the deeper voice register when he goes into his Telekinetic Power Trance, to how his character has immediately become more active in every facet of his own life – for the first time since the end of season two, his presence in a scene hasn’t inevitably induce a groan, even though Stranger Things is still building up his coming out moment in a way that’s wholly unnecessary at this point (I’ve talked at length about how silly a narrative decision this is, and I think Robin’s recollection of her own lived experience only proves how unnecessary and reductive it really is).

Thankfully, it gives Stranger Things 5 something to ground itself in, an opportunity the proliferation of plot the rest of “Shock Jock” (and much of the last few seasons) never offers itself, as it cuts between its different groups of characters, all brainstorming plans of their own to try and take Vecna out. Once again, Stranger Things 5‘s combination of narrative ambition and thematic redundancy often becomes a hinderance, leading to scenes where Will, Joyce, Max, and Eight all end up standing around, explaining its way through multiple plot points in order for its various players to groupthink their way into a series of potential solutions, all of which slowly turn disastrous over the course of the episode’s final act (easily the episode’s most effective, as it is able to marry its many disparate plot threads with a growing sense of dread that something is going incredibly wrong in every scenario).

A great example of one of Stranger Thing‘s stories that gets lost in the mix of theorizing about Vecna and plans to defeat him is Jonathan and Nancy’s relationship, which predictably finds itself on the ropes after the two break off from the other warring couple of season five (Dustin and Steve; more on them momentarily). As the two find themselves entering the Waxy Cum Dimension that Dustin theorizes is the proverbial battery for Vecna’s impenetrable meat wall, Jonathan decides to press the issue of his relationship with Nancy, something nobody seems to want to make a priority when there are clearly more life threatening things at play. Unsurprisingly, this material falls incredibly flat, as the two try to talk around their feelings – or lack thereof – for each other, in what amounts to an unconvincing shrug for what was once a central part of Stranger Things‘s story of young adult romance, right as everything stands on the precipace of the show’s climax (as an injured Lucas reminds everyone, this is all probably going to end in the next 24 hours, on the anniversary of “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”).

Pairing Steve and Nancy with Steve and Dustin’s more emotionally potent conflict certainly doesn’t help; trying to compare the amorphous “love” Jonathan and Nancy share with the deep fracture in Steve and Dustin’s friendship makes for a terrible comparison point. Once Steve really digs into why he’s become so distant and frustrated with Dustin, that he’s tired of watching Dustin idolized the memory of Eddie, someone he thinks sacrificed himself for nothing (I’d agree), it’s easy to forget Nancy and Jonathan are even in the same building, much less the same plotline – and as effective as it is at pushing Steve and Dustin to their breaking point (so the healing may begin, of course), it also amplifies the weaknesses of what’s happening but a few floors higher in the same building.

Where the two stories meet, of course, is not through any emotional parallels, but in Dustin’s sudden, still-mysterious discovery in Dr. Brenner’s office in the Upside Down Lab, which he makes after him and Dustin fight outside the same room Eleven and Henry had their fateful first showdown. While we don’t learn the outcome of Nancy’s not-so-confident decision to put a shotgun shell into what is clearly not a shield generating field, Dustin’s reaction suggests it is not a good thing for anyone, from the people in his immediate vicinity to whatever is happening inside of Vecna’s little mind palace, where Holly, Delightful/Dipshit Derek, and 10 other children await their fate at the hands of Mr. Whatsit (who assures them all he has a plan to use the world he “found” to save Earth, which Holly and Derek are the only ones dubious of).

Holly’s time in Not-Camazotz is another story that gets completely bogged down by itself, as Max needlessly explains the plan to walk through Holly’s memories to find her connection to Henry, allowing Stranger Things 5 to make its obligatory The Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors reference (as you can guess, the plot is about a group of kids infiltrating Freddy’s dreamscapes to save someone) as it sets up a vague plan to spring a trap for Vecna involving a willing Derek as a distraction – which works for a bit, as the two work their way through Holly’s memories to find an escape back to the real world.

However, this story takes an unnecessary detour back to the opening moments of “Chapter Two: The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler”, where Holly suddenly feels inadequate for having done nothing to try and save her mother (which… what was she supposed to do?) and Max tries to remind her that she’s a “different person now” – which, for the most part, is what Stranger Things 5 offers up as character development, explaining its way through characters and their organic evolutions, rather than letting the tense moments of action and evocative images (which this episode is full of, from the waxy, melting Cum Dimension to the color-graded nightmare of Henry’s mind palace) speak for themselves and how they work to push their characters to new, challenging places, both internally and externally.

When “Shock Jock” is able to get out of its own way, it does a pretty solid job in building up a wicked mix of hope and dread in the final act, as Vecna hunts down Max and Holly and Dustin makes a still-unknown discovery that is clearly triggering the endgame of season five. There’s even remannts of the unsettling science fiction series it once was, as Eight recaps the events leading up to Eleven’s discovery of her in Kay’s lab, revealing that she’s not only the source of the weapon being used against Eleven, but the government’s attempt to try and recreate the conditions of Dr. Brenner’s original program, though Kali’s blood is proving unable to affect and change pregnant women in the same Henry’s was decades earlier.

Not only does it give this episode the haunting images of a dozen dying pregnant women that Kali runs past in her failed escape attempt, but it provides an unsettling parallel to Henry’s own attempt to affect a group of people he’s chosen as “special”, two individual plans with their own horrific implications – one of which helps reground the series a little bit in the disturbing human antagonists of Hawkins Lab, and another that provides the series with the existential threat it’s been teasing since the closing moments of “Chapter Nine: The Gate”.

There are still some incredibly maddening elements of this episode – Hopper and Eleven being sidelined yet again so they can spend an hour in a single location talking about the events of the past (while also trying to retroactively justify the show’s most lame, obviously forgotten character from its worst episode) being chief among them (also – what is their plan right now? Are they just driving around trying to find a way out??) – but in the moments “Shock Jock” is able to get out of its own way, pushing character and narrative forward in meaningful ways, it clearly capitalizes on the creative energy unleashed by the Will the Sorcerer reveal, as he breaks Vecna’s leg to give Max and Holly a last-second lifeline to find their way out of his twisted Camazotz – though it remains to be seen how their escape is compromised by Nancy’s misguided attempt to take out Vecna’s source of power.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

• Lucas’s excitement at Will becoming a “real life sorcerer” is the kind of good friendship stuff this series does so little of now.
  
• Steve’s frustration with a Rubik’s Cube is a good metaphor for an audience trying to make sense of the many moving parts Stranger Things 5 has at the moment.
  
• “There are no happy endings, Jane. Not for us.”
  
• The moment of Vecna “pushing” Will out of his mind was the appropriate mix of dramatic and corny I was hoping it would be, given this episode heavily references late 80’s horror movies.
  
• Vecna telling a dozen kids to never leave his house just seems like he’s setting himself up for failure.
  
• I get Steve is mad at Dustin, but his bitchy response to everything he says is a bit repetitive, no?
  
• Eleven gets mad at Hopper for what she took as a suicidal action at the end of “Sorcerer”; it’s an incredibly random moment shoved in between long stretches of Eight explaining her recent past, which makes the whole exchange emotionally inert. Remember when their dynamic was the beating heart of the entire series?
  
• “Find Vecna. Save Holly. Medals for all.”
  
• Will briefly takes control of Vecna, breaking his leg and facilitating Max and Holly’s escape, before being knocked unconscious while trying to cling onto control of Vecna’s mind. A tough sequence to make convincing, but one that is directed quite well by Frank Darabont, giving the moment appropriate sense of surprise when Vecna’s leg breaks, but also the unsettling image of Vecna using sheer force of Will to force Will out of his mind.
  
• After capturing Derek in the woods, Henry tries to scare him by showing him fake images of his family dead on the ground around him. Derek, admirably, is not fazed in the slightest.