Entertainment
Stranger Things Joke Undermines Character’s Intelligence In The Dumbest Way
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Season 5 of Stranger Things boasts a significant number of stylistic changes from previous entries, but there’s one shift in characterization that needs to be called out more than the rest. Joyce Byers has been written as a form of dull-witted comedic relief that undermines her obvious intelligence.
Season 1 introduced us to a frantic yet resourceful lower-middle-class single mother thrust into an extraordinary situation. When Will mysteriously disappears, the whole town thinks she’s losing her mind in her grief. She ignores the naysayers and strings up Christmas lights anyway. She figures out a way to communicate with the Upside Down through the electrical disturbances she notices, tracking down her missing son in the process.
Flash forward to Season 5, and Joyce is still a great mother. The shift in characterization isn’t about her intentions or her unwavering love for her family, but her situational awareness. This can be traced to a single joke in “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler,” when Robin makes an obvious reference to Back to the Future as a decoy, and Joyce totally falls for it.
How Could Joyce Possibly Miss A Back To The Future Reference?
I could be reading into this too much, but the entire “Flux Capacitor” exchange between Joyce and Robin, which was meant to be a light moment of comic relief before things get heavy again, doesn’t work in Stranger Things’ fiction.
Here’s the most basic rundown of the situation, and why the writing of this exchange is a disservice to Joyce as the character we’ve been rooting for since Season 1. Will has a hunch about Vecna and his hivemind after Robin makes an analogy likening his brainwaves to a radio antenna. Will subscribes to this theory because it makes a lot of sense. Joyce, rightfully protective of her son, who has been to hell and back across the previous four seasons, doesn’t want him going on yet another dangerous mission. Robin points to the red light on Joyce’s HAM radio, suggests that the Flux Capacitor is out, and uses this lie as a means to take Will on the mission anyway.
Later, after Robin and Will are long gone and well into working their theory, Joyce radios Jonathan, who’s riding around in the Squawk Van with Steve and Dustin, and asks him about the Flux Capacitor. This tips the gang off to Mike and Robin’s shenanigans. Furious, Joyce tears out of the radio station looking for her son, like any good mother would do. But here’s the problem: Joyce is way smarter than this.
A Mother Of Nerds Who Have A Bunch Of Nerd Friends
As I said earlier, Joyce Byers is a great mother who will chase her kids to hell and back if she has to. Is she spread too thin with parental and professional obligations like any single, working parent? Absolutely. More importantly, she’s quick-witted, resourceful, and clearly has a handle on various forms of complicated analog equipment that the average Hawkins resident doesn’t have a grasp on, thanks to the fact that she’s surrounded by a bunch of nerds. This leads me to believe she’s more than familiar with Back to the Future lore, which makes this moment involving Robin and Will make no sense for her character.
Let’s break it down. Will first went missing and returned in 1983. Back to the Future came out in 1985. The Flux Capacitor, and its primary function, is integral to the plot of the movie. Joyce, whose youngest son likes to dress up like a wizard, is fluent in Dungeons and Dragons, and eats, sleeps, and breathes sci-fi with the rest of his friends, had to have talked about the movie at some point. If I had to venture a guess, Joyce, the great mother she is, probably spent what little disposable income she had to take her kids to the theater and watch the film. At the very least, there had to have been a well-worn VHS copy of Back to the Future laying around the house.
It’s entirely possible that the Duffer Brothers wanted to use a well-known movie reference for mass appeal in an attempt to land a joke their entire audience would understand, but they couldn’t have picked a worse title for Robin to use to trick Joyce. The fact that she didn’t immediately shut down Robin’s ruse doesn’t hold up under scrutiny because it doesn’t fit her character. Despite Joyce’s eccentricities, she’s so much smarter than that. Writing her dumb is an incredible disservice to her character because it undermines not only her intelligence, but also how tuned in she is with her son’s interests.
Relax, It’s Just A Joke
There have been plenty of shifts in characterization since Season 5 premiered, but Joyce’s shift toward dumb comic relief is the most grating. She’s still an in-tune, situationally aware super mom, but somehow played dumber. It’s difficult to watch because she’s still the same Joyce Byers from Season 1, but lacking the skepticism and curiosity that once drove her character. Now she just fiddles with knobs in the background and misses obvious sci-fi references that she of all people should know given her involvement in her kids’ lives.
Either she never saw the movie, or Vecna is manipulating her behind the scenes, allowing Will and Robin to walk directly into the danger he’s laying out for the finale. Most likely, though, it was simply a faux pas in the writers’ room for the sake of an ill-informed throwaway joke.
