Who ya gonna call?

The long awaited season 2 of Stranger Things dropped this week, and the show touched on racism a bit in episode 2.  The writers message comes across great and honestly I made the same assumption Mike did,  and just assumed their black friend, would be the black Ghostbuster.  It made sense as far as the original show went, but Lucas the young African American breaks it down.  All I could do was laugh, and agree, realizing that I had walked right into the writers trap.

Showing up to school sing the theme song as they park their bikes, super proud of their costumes.  Everything changes when they realize that both Mike and Lucas have Vankman name tags, and that Lucas was not Winston the black Ghostbuster.  Mike is flustered and tries to say they had agreed on it months ago, and tries to say the Winston is cool after Lukas denies agreeing.  Mike tries to play it off and says that Winston is “cool”, and Lucas breaks it down for everyone.  “If he’s cool, then you be him,” Lucas says.  Mike tries to say he can’t, and stops before saying anything.  Lucas continues, because he knew he what he was gonna say and ask Mike “You can’t because you’re not black?”  Embarrassed Mike tries to say that wasn’t what he says, but Lucas finishes it off with, “But you thought it though.” They are interrupted by Dustin, and suddenly they have a bigger problem then have two Peter Vankman’s.  The rest of the kids are showing up for school, and no one is wearing costumes except them.

It happened so fast and smooth, it was perfect and like I said I made the same assumption as Mike.  I thought it was great of the writers to do, a perfect little addition to the script.  Way to throw a real life lesson into lives of the kids in your sci-fi horror flick, a little nest egg hidden for folks to think about.   High five to the writers.