Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for Stranger Things' first season.

Almost immediately, Netflix's Stranger Things transports viewers to a time, place, and feeling. There are vinyl records and cassette tapes, single-speed bikes providing endless freedom, and AV Club devotees with ham radios and walkie-talkies. The first episode even uses an epic, demogorgon-loaded Dungeons & Dragons campaign as both a delightful cultural reference point and a subtle roadmap for what's to come.

The four kids initially battling that demogorgon represent well-established roles: there's the quiet one (Will), the cynic (Lucas), the optimist (Mike), and the realist (Dustin). They have awkward, older siblings at opposite ends of the popularity spectrum, and they interact with adults we already kind of know at first blush—a flawed but capable sheriff, a stressed but determined single mom, a sage-like science teacher. Add allusions to Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, and a bevy of other era-appropriate pop culture entities, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you know how this "set in 1983" series will play out.

After all, this is a story that could happen (and has happened) in any era. A kid has gone missing, some dark forces seem to be at play, and it'll take a village (or at least a team of adults, our D&D nerds, and their siblings) to figure everything out. But what makes Stranger Things stand out after its eight-episode first season is that the show only uses the familiar as a backdrop; it doesn't wallow in it or simply retread known stories. This isn't Ready Player One, a new Ghostbusters, or any of the upcoming Star Wars onslaught. Instead, Netflix's lovely homage to 1980s genre fiction deploys nostalgia only to speed up and deepen world-building. Its story, by contrast, feels fresh by including enough twists and turns to keep even the most capable pop-culture detectives guessing and entertained.

Old setting, new characters

Without diving into spoilers too deeply, things begin to get enjoyably weird and different with the arrival of Eleven, a young girl thrust into Mike Wheeler's friend group as they search for their lost pal Will. Eleven obviously differs from the girls these kids know at school—she's got a buzzcut, doesn't say much, and seems to be followed by a few too many weird occurrences. One young girl changing the dynamics for a group of boys has been done before, but Stranger Things doesn't employ over-simplistic gender differences as the primary reason. The arc of her relationship with this group of friends ultimately drives the show as much as its action.

Stranger Things' adults help further separate it from any presumed source material. Sheriff Jim Hopper starts as an Indiana Jones-type of flawed-but-capable hero (more on the flawed end of the spectrum, initially), but maybe the modern pop culture obsession with complexity and anti-heroism led to the additional complications for this character by season's end; there's a reason Dustin continually shouts "Lando Calrissian!" in later episodes.

Joyce Byers comes across as another mom on an all-encompassing mission, but along with Eleven, she turns out to be one of the strongest characters. Together, the duo prevents the series from becoming as male-dominated as its various potential predecessors. It's no accident that in perhaps the series' most climactic sequence (from the penultimate episode, in an intense search for Will), Eleven and Joyce rely solely on each other.

Those older siblings eventually turn into fully rounded characters with unexpected traits, too. Nancy (Mike's bookworm older sister) ends up dating a popular, self-proclaimed Tom Cruise-lookalike named Steve. She dabbles in the world of house parties with beer, unsurprisingly (though unknowingly) comes to the aid of her younger brother's crusade, and eventually turns into someone who can stand face-to-face with danger (and still shoot accurately). Jonathan (Will's punk rock-loving, social-outcast brother) gets ridiculed at school and stereotypically takes photos of life because he prefers to observe rather than participate, but he becomes Nancy's capable partner without becoming her explicit love interest (at least not in S1).

Anna Armatis / Netflix

Anna Armatis / Netflix

Anna Armatis / Netflix

Anna Armatis / Netflix

Beyond characters and plot, Stranger Things also embraces modern filmmaking luxuries to keep things new. The synth-y soundtrack is entirely a product of Austin, Texas, band S U R V I V E (who will put out an equally synth-y LP this fall). In terms of great visuals, one standoff between the kids and some small-time bullies comes to mind because it uses tasteful visual trickery to make Eleven emerge as a true, Western-movie-styled badass. The show's most supernatural sequences appeal to both of these senses through a striking layer of visible fairy dust and an orchestra of eerie gurgles. (They have vastly different looks, but the fact that Mr. Robot's director of photography worked on this series speaks to Stranger Things' unique aesthetic.)

Stranger Things does fall into some tropes. Mike and Nancy's mom, for instance, shows signs that she's figured out something is up, but she doesn't get the opportunity to act upon it and show her capabilities like Nancy or Joyce Byers. And what Eleven does or doesn't know (and what she learns quickly) can seem very random, convenient, or lazy at times. When the kids disguise her in some of Nancy's old clothes and a wig, for instance, Eleven knows the word "pretty" applies to this stereotypical get-up and seems to place value in it. Simply dismissing such things as "era-appropriate" for the 1980s doesn't fly given this series has (and often lives up to) greater ambitions.

Despite this, Stranger Things succeeds on-screen in its first season. You'll get all of the timeless feels whether the show depicts the life you lived, the life you wanted after watching that decade's films, or a life you didn't even know existed beforehand (I can easily see my younger sister debating between Eleven or Rey costumes this coming Halloween).

Greenlight all of the things!

There's one additional bit of success to note when it comes to Stranger Things: it is reassurance that the Netflix production model can lead to great, original stories. While many might point to House of Cards (big actors, extremely popular) or Orange is the New Black (extremely popular, critical success) as already establishing this; there's been a string of less-than-stellar Netflix originals from the company's first big release year until today. Netflix has diversified its dependence on such things by dabbling in original film and being open to reboots and remakes (everything from Wet Hot American Summer and Arrested Development to Fuller House and the upcoming Gilmore Girls), but the company needs headline-grabbing originals to carry it forward as its other series experience growing pains or wrap up entirely. Hot and new is what will attract subscribers; prestigious (and the continued ability to offer money/creative freedom) is what will attract the next opportunity with a Fincher- or Wachowski-type.

Strangers Things proves the Netflix "greenlight everything" ethos can achieve this organically. Creators the Duffer Brothers were far from household names, but Netflix has incentive to deepen its library in diverse ways as more and more movie streaming licenses expire or go elsewhere. So the network took a chance on newcomers and ended up with the potential show of the summer. Suddenly, Netflix is back on the breath of TV critics everywhere.

"There is reward for services to let people realize their visions in a very idiosyncratic or personal way. My hope is we'll see more of it, but the risk is you empower someone completely indulgent and you get True Detective S2," TV critic Andy Greenwald told Ars. "The Duffer Brothers' IMDB page was an episode of Wayward Pines or something, and they've come out of nowhere to create the show of the summer for 2016." (Greenwald went on to discuss more of the Netflix-way's impact on both viewers and creators on our latest Decrypted podcast.)

The company's recent earnings report showed some stalling—it only added 160,000 new subscribers in the US last quarter, well below the company’s 500,000 subscription projection—so Stranger Things couldn't come at a better time for Netflix. The company entered the year with a negative cash flow and earmarked $5 billion for content and licensing (with a goal of making 600 hours of original programming), according to The New York Times. To use a sports analogy, if you're going to put up that many shots, you want to be Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson and not someone like Jimmer Fredette—a volume scorer and not a volume misser. And with the added offscreen context, Stranger Things really feels like a (forgive me) slam dunk.

Listing image by Anna Armatis / Netflix