I want to know your Thoughts on how they handled the whole El and Brenner storyline
Oh this is such a good question because I do indeed have Thoughts! Of every storyline in S4, it’s the one I’m most undecided/conflicted about, or at least it’s in the most grey-area one. Overall I think they handled it well, in that they hit all the marks I hoped for, and that brought the most amount of narrative tension, namely the fact that they made it so El “needed” Brenner (though that was a little thin) to get her powers back. At least, there was a brief period of time where he had to play on the good side, even though he’s always been a villain, and El’s truest adversary. To me El’s storyline would’ve felt incomplete without facing Brenner again in some way, so I’m glad it happened, aside from the pain she was put through obviously.
I loved the flashbacks, I loved the entire Hawkins lab storyline, and the callbacks to S1 with El having to go back into the sensory tank, having to revisit everything and bring a part of her past full circle. I loved when she told him he was the real monster, that she knew & believed that, and had the courage to tell him — Millie’s acting in that scene was phenomenal. I think that was her first true moment of freedom from all Brenner put her through, and again, the callback to S1 when she told Mike “I’m the monster”, to now naming the truth of it to her abuser, was an unbelievably powerful full-circle moment.
With that said, my biggest issue with the handling of it is, I think, a symptom of the larger issue I had with S4 in general, which was that style sometimes got in the way of substance (there are obviously exceptions, but that’s for another post). I know this is a relatively small point, but the way they did the first meeting between Brenner and El felt SO strange and contrived and like a weird villain-music reveal from a corny action flick. I don’t know how to describe it, but something was so… oddly melodramatic and understated at the same time? And I’ve said this before, but I think Matthew Modine’s performance has a lot to do with it. He seemed to do much better in the flashback scenes, even, then in the present-day timeline — he was either too one-note, or his energy didn’t mesh with the scene or deliver the heavyweight impact it should’ve at times. I felt this most especially in his death scene; tonally, it felt off to me. Him begging El to say she understood should’ve been so much more impactful than it was, and maybe I was just ready for him to kick it lol, or it might’ve been the over the top helicopter scene preceding it, but idk, it didn’t land (at least on first watch).
I also felt a lot was unexplained or just missing from his re-introduction. We know he’d been hiding out somewhere, but who was protecting him? What had his and Owens’ relationship been up until that point? How exactly did he survive a Demogorgon pouncing on him back in S1? Why did he still have access to that underground lab? Again, I’m sure I’ll do a rewatch and it’ll be clearer, but honestly after the bunker was stormed by like 4 different groups of government agents, and Brenner and Owen’s interactions were weird and stilted, I couldn’t keep track. (That was a larger S4 issue for me as well — the fact that they felt real comfy giving us way too much screen time at like, Yuri’s fish n fly but couldn’t be bothered to spend time on more necessary details)
So yeahhhhh that was a long ass novel but basically, I think the structure was there, they went in the right direction, and I’m happy with the overall conclusion, but some aspects of it fell flat for me, tone and theme-wise. It also kind of sucked that El had to be separate for so much of the season yet again, and I don’t know if I buy the argument that they couldn’t have done it another way. What if the Cali group could’ve been more involved, maybe captured along with El? Again I love that it was her alone who had to face him, but still. Let our girl be with her people!
