<em>Stranger Things</em> Isn’t TV. It’s Something Else.

This article contains light spoilers through the fourth season of Stranger Things.

Somehow, even thousands of viewing minutes in, my synapses numbed by a cinematic universe so squelchy that it induces visceral anxiety, I still don’t really know how to feel about . It’s hard to even say exactly it is. TV watchers today are accustomed to streaming works that coalesce, murkily, somewhere between film and television. (Try—if you can—to define , an almost-eight-hour, three-part work of living theater directed by Peter Jackson.) But the transmediality of is stranger still. Each season follows an immutable formula—kids encounter a monster, superpowered girl saves the world, sweet but expendable supporting character is sacrificed in the process—swiping from a grab bag of ’80s VHS tapes, nostalgic earworms, and . And each season is designed