Stranger Things 2 Ep. 3: “The Pollywog”
Mike Sprague
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Welcome back to Dread Central’s daily recap/reviews of the second season of Netflix and The Duffer Brothers’ “Stranger Things”. You can find our recap/review of the previous episode right HERE. Now let’s get to it!
The previous episode of “Stranger Things 2” ended with Dustin finding something hiding in his trash cans. Turns out he caught a squishy little monster that he proceeds to feed Three Musketeers bars because, hell, someone got to eat those disgusting things, right? But something tells me this whole “Pollywog” business isn’t going to end well.
We then cut to Eleven and Hopper hanging out in their booby-trapped cabin in the woods. Hopper tries to feed his – for lack of a nicer term – captive an Eggo tower dripping with M&Ms, whipped cream, and calories. But Eleven merely throws the whole mess in poor Hopper’s face. Typical. I would have eaten two of those things.
Dustin then goes to the library to check out books on reptiles in an effort to find out just what the hell this trash can pollywog is, while Will spends time with Sean Austin’s Bob talking about facing their fears and a clown named Pennyw– Mr. Baldo. Point is, Will needs to man up and tell that shadowy Cloverfield monster of his visions to eat an upside down d*ck. Sorry for that mental image.
Meanwhile, Lucas tries to let Max in on what’s actually going on in Hawkins, but can’t tell her really anything so that doesn’t go well. Nancy and Steve have it out over her drunken rant the previous night, and Eleven walks right out of the cabin in the woods like it was the upside down and out into the world beyond.
Hopper is not gonna be happy about that.
Back in the AV room, Dustin shows the rest of the Scooby gang his new pet monster, D’Artagnan. Dart for short. Not a single one of them can figure out what the hell this new booger-mutt creature is, but Will thinks he knows when Dart came from… Yes, poor put-upon Will believes Dart is the throat-slug he coughed up at the end of season one.
We all knew that little guy was going to come back to cause trouble. And here he is. Maybe.
Meanwhile, Hopper finds out the black-rot is emanating outwards from, you guessed it, the shady energy planet on the hill. He goes to tell the powers that be there to knock that shite off, but Paul Rieser’s Dr. Owen tells him it’s nothing to worry about. Right…. Elsewhere, Nancy and Jonathan talk John Hughes-style about life and love on the hood of his beater, eventually conjuring a plan of some sort to take down the man with a tape recorder.
We’ll see how that plays out.
Eleven wanders the woods and bothers people in their backyards, while Joyce tries to figure out just what the hell Will saw on Halloween that scared him so much. She (eventually) hooks up Will’s camcorder and finds an image of the new big bad tentacle monster burned into the tape.
Speaking of Will, he gathers the rest of the gang back in the AV room and tells them he thinks Dustin’s new pet Dart may be something horrific and dangerous from the upside down. Duh. Mike tries to bash Dart to a pulp with a Ghostbusters trap, but Dustin stops him. Just in time for Dart to sprout two more monster legs and run off to hide somewhere deep in the school. NOTE: The score in this scene is a subtle homage to Gremlins. Nice touch.
The gang then split up (because of course, they do) and begin the search for Dart.
Meanwhile, Eleven walks out of the woods and right into the school looking for Mike. Eventually, Eleven does find Mike, but in a bout of bad timing, she comes across him just as he’s having some totally innocent alone time with Max. This causes Eleven to get jealous and mind-slap Max off her skateboard. But considering Eleven has blown up/off more than serval human heads, I’d say Max got off easy. This time…
The episode wraps up with Will finding Dart, only for the little monster’s shriek to trigger yet another flash-sideways for Will. He runs out of the school in terror, but good old Samwise-Bob’s words of wisdom stop him in his tracks. Like Bob did with that creeper clown, Will needs to stand up to the shadow monster and tell it to go the f*ck away.
This doesn’t go so well.
Instead of running off scared, the shadow creature turns to smoke – because why not at this point – and proceeds to, I guess, posses Will’s body. Way to go, Bob. Bet your bald clown buddy didn’t pull that shite, now did he?
Like the previous episode “Trick or Treat, Freak”, “The Pollywog” didn’t shoot the story off into any super new directions, but that said, I do like the inclusion of this Dart creature thing. And it was fun to see an episode that was so heavily featured the main gang. Not a bad episode. Not bad at all. Keep it up, “Stranger Things 2”.
Check back with us tomorrow for our recap/review of “Stranger Things 2″ Ep. 4: “Will the Wise”
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