Let me take you back to a time long ago, an idyllic time when your local multiplex was rife with movies about kids getting caught up in wild, scary, dangerous adventures; when kids were free to be obnoxious and curse at each other; when parents put their kids to bed and went back to their bedrooms to smoke pot; when getting caught up in a government conspiracy and being chased by men in suits with guns was par for the course; and when all of that was rated PG.

I’m speaking, of course, about the early ’80s. So much of culture today is a giant nostalgia trip, with properties from our childhoods, like Ghostbusters and Pete’s Dragon, being resurrected to satiate the need to escape back to when we were young, before we had any real responsibilities. It’s been going on for years now, and hot on the heels of this apparently never ending trend is Netflix’s great new original series, Stranger Things.

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