I mean he's some strange older guy in his 30's or 40's and he's got two underage minors he's never seen before staying at his house and he's giving them alcohol and telling them to go have sex in his guest room. I dunno they played it off like it was supposed to be funny and cute but the whole situation felt kinda creepy and weird to me.
shareWelcome to the 1980s.
Underage drinking was common, and it was always better to crash at someone's house rather than crash a car.
Then again, Indiana had its drinking age set to 21 before World War II, while many other states dropped to 18 or 19 until the mid 1980s when the federal government (likely unconstitutionally) linked drinking age with federal highway funds. So these characters were quite a bit under age. I don't know how the public handled that in Indiana compared to other states like Wisconsin and Minnesota which were pretty lenient as long as there wasn't DWI.
No, Murray just seemed like an eccentric but very perceptive guy who told it like it was and didn't care what anyone thought of him. If he'd been spying on Jonathan and Nancy that would've been creepy. But he wasn't their father. It wasn't his job to lecture them on underage drinking or safe sex. He was free to give them the kind of advice he would've given himself at their age.
shareNot creepy to me at all. He wasn't getting off sexually, or videotaping them, or doing anything like that. Murray was just genuinely happy for the two of them to get together, and celebrate the moment.
He was part of the free love generation of the late 60s and 1970s. People used to drink and get high, and even have sex, without suing each other or reporting it to the police. It was not a time of heavy-handed moral judgement like with the conservatives of the 50s, or the liberals of today. People could be a little wild without being labeled creepy.
This!
shareI'm not sure why you tried to slip that comment in. I find conservatives of today much more repressive than liberals.
It's not a question of repression. It's moral judgment, a presumption of one's own moral superiority. And the willingness to ostracize (or at least label as "creepy") anyone with different moral beliefs.
If anything, I'd say this is a problem among many on both sides of the spectrum today.
shareTry to say something to a liberal that they don't agree with,and you will see exactly how repressive the left has become.
shareYes, I thought it was a little off. I would have been looking for hidden cameras if I was Jonathan.
From a story perspective, I don't know why he was needed at all. They couldn't send tapes to the press themselves? They had the night in a motel if the writers wanted an opportunity for them to get together romantically.
Realistically, before the days of the internet there's no way a couple of 17 or 18 year olds (the age of their characters) like Nancy and Jonathan would've had any idea how to go about getting their tape to the right people, or how to present it so someone would listen. Tales of secret government experiments, telekinetic children, and interdimensional rifts would've gotten them invited to please leave and don't come back, if they'd gone directly to a reporter at the New York Times or the Washington Post.
They went to Murray because he was a private investigator who would probably know what to do with the information, and had been poking around Hawkins long enough that their story might fill in the gaps for him - i.e. he might actually believe the truth.
He was a funny character, I’ll grant that. I liked the scene of him sitting in a lawn chair watching the authorities descend on the lab.
Oh Murray was having lots of fun watching them pack up and leave town. And from the soldier flipping him off, I gather he's made himself quite a thorn in their side.
shareHopefully he returns in S3.
shareDefinitely!
The creators have been pretty clear that they are planning on expanding the scope of Stranger Things outside Hawkins for remaining seasons, and Murray is the bridge to the outside world.
The hero reporter who uncovers the conspiracy is not so much a staple of 80s sci-fi movies, but certainly a recurring character type in 70s movies like All the President's Men, Capricorn One, The Parrallax View, etc., which also influence the Stranger Things world.
Plus, he's damn funny and insightful.
It was creepy, but they were making a statement about the era, not the person. Having a random one night stand in a stranger's house and it being safe was a thing. Just like Eleven hitching a ride in a truck and it not turning into a news story was a thing. It wasn't cute or funny. It was awkward and kinda weird but that was the 80s.
shareBut Murray didn't do anything creepy, like spy on them. All he did was was give them some good advice, to just cut the BS and admit they're more than friends, then say "Hey, I'm going to bed now. Do whatever you want." The early 21st century is more uptight than the 1980's about a lot of things. In some cases that's good. In others not so much.
Eleven was perfectly safe hitching a ride from a random stranger. If the truck driver had tried any sort of funny business it would've ended badly - for him.
Today, if an older man spoke to a teenager they barely knew, it's not really appropriate or normal to tell that teenager to 'cut the bs and hook up' with a friend of theirs because they seem like they're into that friend. It's creepy by today's standards, but it's telling of the time it was occurring in, the 1980s. A time when a kid could more likely hitch a ride in a truck and not have the driver try something on you, whether she had secret powers to protect her or not.
That's what I'm saying. It is creepy by 2017 standards. It's normal by 1980s standards. I don't remember staying in some random older man's house who I and my parents didn't know when I was 17. Maybe that's just me though.
You probably weren't trying to funnel government secrets to the press either. Jonathan and Nancy didn't just randomly go visit Murray. They went there because they didn't know exactly how to go about getting stuff to the newspapers and Murray let them in because ... hey, here's information he needs practically gift wrapped on his doorstep!
I think our culture has gone, in some ways, from having its head buried in the sand and not seeing problems it should've seen to being hypersensitive and taking everything with deadly seriousness, to the point where even normal behavior has become, as you put it, "creepy". A middle ground position would be nice.
Teenagers today use the word "creepy" for just about anything.
Are we talking man in a van asking kids to find his puppy creepy or just someone slightly different than the norm creepy?
To me he just seemed like a thinly veiled plot device. It was one of the few scenes in season 2 that I straight up didn't like
The character is supposed to be a paranoid and cynical journalist. A person like this wouldn't give two shits about the personal lives of two kids
Yeah, I think even the Duffers admitted that Murray doesn't get out much.
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