bastard from blue city
Winona Ryder is incredibly fucking annoying in this show. I mean, it's because she played the part well... but the part was pretty awful for most of the season. If I ever watch this season again, I will be skipping through her parts until the back half of the season. Eugh.
she/her/hers
dude, i love you, but no. she's not annoying, she's fantastic. she's playing the part of a grieving but hopeful mother who KNOWS what she thinks is insane but still 100% believes it despite (for most of the season) no one else believing her. it's fine if you found it hard to watch (which it should be) but annoying is a bit of a weird complaint.Originally Posted by seasonsinthesky
also, all the kids from the show have instagram accounts and they're all adorable and hilarious, especially dustin.
oh, and this buzzfeed article is great: https://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/s...ffb#.xlo2PMXkk
Active Member
What a strange sentence
More OT: I love Winona and thought she was excellent for the role but Spoiler: I do hope her character is given more of a confident space to exist in if there's another season. She's been through some shit and knows it now. It'd be great to see her go from the terrified and uncertain character she's been to a confident and hardcore, Ripley-in-Aliens style lead.
she/her/hers
i'm hoping the exact same thing. it would be a natural and (mostly) trope-breaking character arc, so even more points to the show if they do it.
bastard from blue city
Yeah, no. You described exactly what I already said: she had a rough character to play and did it really well, but there's nothing good about including her so often besides the obvious realism factor – and the fact that she's the only real 'name' in the series. The Joyce character has zero reason to be so focal for the story to progress, and when she is in scenes where other characters are the ones progressing or solving situations (so, every scene she's in with Hopper in the last few episodes), she actively makes the scenes worse by being the stereotype of hysteria. Yes, it is a trope in horror films and the '80s era, but that was not required for the series to be good. Furthermore, I'm aware not every second has to progress anything, and some scenes exist for character development or analysis alone – too bad she did not develop whatsoever and every analytical moment of Joyce shows the exact same thing ("ohgodohgodohgod"). She was fine for the opening few episodes but her character moved through the stages of grief and undoing them and redoing them for what? So Winona has lots of screentime. That's it. Joyce had zero payoff as a character. The reason you and kleiner want her to become Ripley is because the character went nowhere and you would like to see that change.
Active Member
I was entirely fine with her for that story specifically but just wouldn't want it to remain that way going ahead because it wouldn't make any sense. She was an anxious, stressed single mom going through one of the most traumatic things any parent could ever confront and dealing with things that would make almost anyone check themselves into the nearest in-patient facility. It made sense she was how she was. Now that she's come out the other side of that, it would be disingenuous for her to remain that way and static.
You could better argue that they should have gotten her mid-season where she'll likely be next season, but, eh, it wasn't like her character was the central focus of the series and when you're juggling, what, at some points five different narratives? I can accept that some aren't going to develop half as fast as others. She wasn't the standout for me at all but she wasn't anything I disliked by any means (as far as I'm concerned, Eleven and Co. are some of the most impressive performances I've seen in TV in a good long while and I find it hard to really care at all about any of the other actors because they were just that surprisingly good, and it was, in general, a very well-rounded cast to begin with).
Active Member
you're crazy, and in a major minority. Her performance was great, as was the arc they gave her. She powered through her despair to become a strong character integral to resolution of the story. She wasn't just "hysterical mom". Furthermore, seems like this will be a major bump for her career with all the buzz around her performance and the show in general. Expect to see her in bigger things again. I loved her here.
Active Member
Major minority? I'll admit that most of the opinions I've heard on this show come from friends and not the internet, but literally EVERYONE I've actually talked to about this show has said how the young actors just completely overshadowed Ryder's performance, and that they could have easily replaced her with someone else but that they couldn't imagine the show without those specific kids.
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