What TV SHOWS are you watching?

- The dance was awesome. I loved that it was presented as a transition point for the boys- next season...girls!
- Steve has emerged as one of the best characters.
- Apparently that was actually Millie Bobby Brown's first kiss IRL.
- I hate that Bob saved everybody with his knowledge of BASIC and then died stupidly. The AV Club reveal was nice though.
- Billy may be something of a misfire. I think they are not sure what they want to do with him or how they want him to develop. We'll see.
- The entire Mind Flayer discussion was awesome.
- I did not like the conspiracy theory dude. I met way too many of him when I worked in the public library.
- Everybody going to the lab at the end was fun

I appreciated the dance scene, too. It was something they had been playing up to all season with the introduction of Max, as girls went from being non-entities to something that's enough to distract you from D&D (or even play with!)
I thought the BASIC thing was fairly simple-minded in the way that almost all interactions with actual computers are in movies and TV. Most government networks were running COBOL or Fortran by that time and even a knowledge of the language doesn't mean that you'd know the protocols to reboot an entire network. It's almost as wholly unrealistic as a gate to the Upside Down.
Am I the only one who thinks that Billy looks like a young and somewhat beefier Rob Lowe? In terms of his character, I guess I can see the concept that Maxine basically treated him the same way that his dad does and he cowered in the face of determined authority. But he was also drugged at the time, so it doesn't feel as distinct as it might have if she had made him submit when he was sober. I think that whole storyline remained way too much of a mystery until we finally meet their parents and then it had nothing to do with the main story that was building to a crescendo, so it felt kind of irrelevant. However, just like the Chicago scene, it lays groundwork for next season.