For the second time a review of mine is declined for supposedly conflicting the User Review Submission guide. I'm going to post the entire review here. It contains spoilers for the first episode of "Stranger Things"' new season. Please, before marking my question answered, give me an exact answer, so that I may know what to do. I'm mentioning this, because last time you marked my question answered without giving me an answer. So, which of the rules have I violated and how? Here is the review (again, spoilers) (there are, sadly, also some typos):
After the first season I gave this show the rating of ten out of ten. I'm not going to change that because of this episode. The first season is still good and the second one, although deeply flawed, is pretty enjoyable. This one, though - I'm (probably) going to drop it, because, apart from the admittedly good acting and emotional moments here and there, it's just awful. Factually awful. I hope the show does get better after that, but, given the fact that almost everything I liked about it was basically obliterated, I don't think I can force myself to watch the rest of the season.
There will be spoilers. You've been warned.
So... First, as many reviewers here and on other sites have already pointed out, most of this episode is dedicated to a teenage romance. That alone is a huge problem for me as a person who rarely likes romance his shows and never if it involves teens, but the situation gets even worse, when it involves these particular teens. After everything they've been through together, am I supposed to believe that Mike and El will just abandon one of their closest friends, whom they haven't seen in a month, for a yet another session of pointless kissing? Did the Duffer brothers forget what they wrote in the first season? "She is our friend and she is crazy!" "A friend is someone that you'd do anything for." And so on. I mean, El is not a normal girl, Mike is not a normal boy, why do they all of a sudden act as if they're the douche bags terrorizing the nerds in the 80s high school movies? Yeah, hormones, growing up, and so on, but up to a few months earlier El was a killing machine who could barely speak, and now she's acting like the popular girl in school? Mike was willing to risk his life for his friends, and now he can't be bothered to spend a few minutes more with Dustin? Come on.
Second, Hopper. From a hardened cop he was demoted to a sitcom father. I hope this gets better in the next episodes, but, as I said, I don't intend to find out.
Third, Nancy and her storyline. I guess we were supposed to feel for her because of the way her bosses treated her. I didn't, though. Her boss, brilliantly overacted by Jake Busy, is made out to be an absolute piece of garbage. Maybe she'll get back at him later. I hope she won't, though. I hope she'll be put at her place as emotionally brutally as possible. Why? Because, although her boss treated her really badly and I definitely wouldn't approve this, I don't think she had any reason to expect anything else, the way she behaved. I know I'm going to get a lot of flack for this, but how exactly should he have reacted when she, a teenage girl barely out of high school, with no university degree, no experience in life, no job experience, and no proof of her abilities whatsoever (other than what her teenage boyfriend says about her), expect that the boss at a supposedly big newspaper would even consider working on her ideas? Why would he? True, he shouldn't have shut her down the way he did, but if the boss listened to any idea that came out of anyone's mouth, regardless of their position in he newspaper, he'd have no time to actually work. Nancy's job was to buy him food, not to suggest ideas for articles. (Not to mention the fact that her idea was not that brilliant, actually - because, first, every made would publish or air something about the way the new shopping mall would affect local businesses before they'd even started building it and, second, the situation surrounding this mall wasn't as black and white as she suggested - do you even imagine how many jobs are opened because of one shopping mall? Wouldn't that be a positive thing for a (relatively) small town like Hawkins?) Maybe this was supposed to be a comment on the sexism women faced in their workplaces back then, but what I saw was a prom queen trying to get a job she wasn't qualified for and being shut down by the actual adults. If she were as good a writer as Jonathan said she was, she wouldn't be so naive.
Fourth, time skipping is just weird. This season takes place in 1985 - the year when 'Back to the Future' came out. A few months after the events in the previous season - which was, at least to some extent, centered around Halloween in 1984 and the kids dressing up like the characters from 'Ghostbusters'. In the meantime, a huge shopping mall was built and, by the time the season took place, it was fully functional. How? We're not talking about a "McDonald's" restaurant here, we're talking about a massive building that has to go through countless stages of approval - before, during and after its construction - then the stores are rented out, staff is hired and trained, then... This is just not possible in such a short time frame, especially in the 80s, with the technology they had back then. The characters, as I mentioned earlier, were treated similarly.
Fifth, instead of showing me the 80s (or the movie 80s) organically, this episode relies on memes - like that hands scene from 'Day of the Dead' - but this just obliterates my immersion - although the movie is from 1985, the meme is relatively modern, and I could only think about the time I saw it for the first time - which was a few years ago. They used exactly the same clip...
Sorry.
After the first season I gave this show the rating of ten out of ten. I'm not going to change that because of this episode. The first season is still good and the second one, although deeply flawed, is pretty enjoyable. This one, though - I'm (probably) going to drop it, because, apart from the admittedly good acting and emotional moments here and there, it's just awful. Factually awful. I hope the show does get better after that, but, given the fact that almost everything I liked about it was basically obliterated, I don't think I can force myself to watch the rest of the season.
There will be spoilers. You've been warned.
So... First, as many reviewers here and on other sites have already pointed out, most of this episode is dedicated to a teenage romance. That alone is a huge problem for me as a person who rarely likes romance his shows and never if it involves teens, but the situation gets even worse, when it involves these particular teens. After everything they've been through together, am I supposed to believe that Mike and El will just abandon one of their closest friends, whom they haven't seen in a month, for a yet another session of pointless kissing? Did the Duffer brothers forget what they wrote in the first season? "She is our friend and she is crazy!" "A friend is someone that you'd do anything for." And so on. I mean, El is not a normal girl, Mike is not a normal boy, why do they all of a sudden act as if they're the douche bags terrorizing the nerds in the 80s high school movies? Yeah, hormones, growing up, and so on, but up to a few months earlier El was a killing machine who could barely speak, and now she's acting like the popular girl in school? Mike was willing to risk his life for his friends, and now he can't be bothered to spend a few minutes more with Dustin? Come on.
Second, Hopper. From a hardened cop he was demoted to a sitcom father. I hope this gets better in the next episodes, but, as I said, I don't intend to find out.
Third, Nancy and her storyline. I guess we were supposed to feel for her because of the way her bosses treated her. I didn't, though. Her boss, brilliantly overacted by Jake Busy, is made out to be an absolute piece of garbage. Maybe she'll get back at him later. I hope she won't, though. I hope she'll be put at her place as emotionally brutally as possible. Why? Because, although her boss treated her really badly and I definitely wouldn't approve this, I don't think she had any reason to expect anything else, the way she behaved. I know I'm going to get a lot of flack for this, but how exactly should he have reacted when she, a teenage girl barely out of high school, with no university degree, no experience in life, no job experience, and no proof of her abilities whatsoever (other than what her teenage boyfriend says about her), expect that the boss at a supposedly big newspaper would even consider working on her ideas? Why would he? True, he shouldn't have shut her down the way he did, but if the boss listened to any idea that came out of anyone's mouth, regardless of their position in he newspaper, he'd have no time to actually work. Nancy's job was to buy him food, not to suggest ideas for articles. (Not to mention the fact that her idea was not that brilliant, actually - because, first, every made would publish or air something about the way the new shopping mall would affect local businesses before they'd even started building it and, second, the situation surrounding this mall wasn't as black and white as she suggested - do you even imagine how many jobs are opened because of one shopping mall? Wouldn't that be a positive thing for a (relatively) small town like Hawkins?) Maybe this was supposed to be a comment on the sexism women faced in their workplaces back then, but what I saw was a prom queen trying to get a job she wasn't qualified for and being shut down by the actual adults. If she were as good a writer as Jonathan said she was, she wouldn't be so naive.
Fourth, time skipping is just weird. This season takes place in 1985 - the year when 'Back to the Future' came out. A few months after the events in the previous season - which was, at least to some extent, centered around Halloween in 1984 and the kids dressing up like the characters from 'Ghostbusters'. In the meantime, a huge shopping mall was built and, by the time the season took place, it was fully functional. How? We're not talking about a "McDonald's" restaurant here, we're talking about a massive building that has to go through countless stages of approval - before, during and after its construction - then the stores are rented out, staff is hired and trained, then... This is just not possible in such a short time frame, especially in the 80s, with the technology they had back then. The characters, as I mentioned earlier, were treated similarly.
Fifth, instead of showing me the 80s (or the movie 80s) organically, this episode relies on memes - like that hands scene from 'Day of the Dead' - but this just obliterates my immersion - although the movie is from 1985, the meme is relatively modern, and I could only think about the time I saw it for the first time - which was a few years ago. They used exactly the same clip...
Sorry.




Alexander Mishkov
And sorry, but if IMDb's staff can spend hours reviewing my review, before declining it, they can spend a few minutes to give me some feedback as to what to avoid in the future. With the previous review they declined the problem turned out to be that I used the word "black" when referring to a black kid.
Ed Jones(XLIX)
The issue that you state above I used the word "black" when referring to a black kid is covered in the help topics. Not in certain hard examples, but none the less covered and explained. You must comprehend a simple set of rules and extrapolate from there as to the complete do's and dont's. IMDb only takes less than a minute, not hours to read your review. If they catch a few mistakes in the very beginning, they won't bother reading the rest. They do not have the time to answer all questions posed as you are doing now.
They are going to tell you to read the guidelines.
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Alexander Mishkov
Nikolay Yeriomin (Mykola Yeromin), Champion
As for Ed's copy and paste response I do found it helpful because it helped me to try and troubleshoot what's wrong with the review.
Alexander Mishkov