Nathan Frontiero

Stranger Things 2 ultimately feels less like a cash in on the success of the first season and more like its narrative complement, allowing the creators to fully explore the ramifications of the world they created.

The series depicts the realities of living with trauma most honestly when it leans toward attributing Cora's behavior to a culmination of physical and psychological suffering. But when The Sinner turns to the investigation and the courtroom, its shifty execution only serves to demonize Cora and reaffirm harmful stereotypes of mental illness as source of irrationality and violence.

Creators Francesco Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller rely too often on their performers' sketch-comedy and sitcom experience to craft amusing situations that seem natural even at their most ridiculous. But no amount of charisma can revitalize the season as it ambles toward its finale, bloated with so many gags that it unravels like old friendships strained to their breaking point.