It’s hard to remember what watching the first season of Stranger Things was like. Years later, with a final season pending (and pending, and pending—), the show has become a cultural juggernaut; the way it brought D&D terms to the foreground of culture seems like but a glint in the eye of a thoroughly merchandised monster. But there was a time when Stranger Things was just the hot new Netflix show people were talking about, something that excited people for its blend of various horror, sci-fi, and ’80s influences. It braided together a triumvirate of stories that all came clashing together with a huge battle against evil.
It’s that energy that feels most aptly captured in Hysteria!, the new show from Peacock that dropped all at once this week, and makes the perfect Halloween marathon for the year.
The scene is the late 1980s; the setting is the fictional sleepy town of Happy Hollow. After a football player goes missing, the town is on alert — or, at least, most of it is. Dylan (Emjay Anthony) and his bandmates, Spud (Kezii Curtis) and Jordy (Chiara Aurelia), are mostly concerned with how to get their metal band a little more attention. A pentagram gets painted on the football player’s house; Dylan catches wind that a hot girl at school thinks satanism is cool; one thing leads to another and suddenly they’re in a satanic rock band, just in time for the Satanic Panic to set in on Happy Hollow.
In the larger sense, Hysteria! is about the madness people will engage with in order to finally feel seen. Dylan’s desire to be liked (and liked liked) isn’t all that far off of Bible-thumping mom Tracy (Anna Camp) spinning up fears of a cabal doing ritual sacrifices in a small Michigan town to allay anxieties and feel important, or even his mother, Linda (Julie Bowen), trying to make sure her son is a good person. Hysteria!, thankfully, never lets these big-picture ideas overwhelm the story. Instead, it stays focused on the sort of comedy of errors Dylan sets up, as frenzy over satanism sets in and the band has to decide how much they’re doubling down on the whole thing.
It helps that showrunner Matthew Scott Kane utilizes the advantage that an ensemble affords the show. With Tracy hard at work drumming up fervor, Hysteria! can let Police Chief Dandridge (Bruce Campbell) be a voice of reason. Not every adult is a soldier of God, and the narrative’s mystery blossoms with the freedom of that choice.
Which is great, since Hysteria! has more mystery to give. Because while the town knows the quarterback is missing, Faith (Nikki Hahn) was taken at the same time. And for some reason no one knows she’s gone yet. All that and there actually are some weird paranormal shenanigans; people are floating and dragged around their house, and getting strange rashes.
Letting us in on that bit of enigma is exactly how Hysteria! ends up feeling like genuinely great genre programming. The story can bounce between Dylan and his misguided quest to get laid, or Faith’s harrowing kidnapping by people in creepy masks, or Linda’s concern that she’s let her son and community down, or even the police chief’s relationships with the town’s residents — and it all makes for a more robust sense of time, town, and terror. Mysteries abound and something nefarious stalks the night, and nobody has the full story. Within the town limits of Happy Hollow, everything feels possible. Everyone is in their own version of the story, and that impacts the perspective they have on the overarching Hysteria! of it all, the same way the three factions of Stranger Things season 1 needed to come together in order to rescue a kidnapped kid.
Unlike Stranger Things, Kane indulges the story as much as he balances it. Hysteria! is a bit of a tonal tightrope, with thriller and dramedy splashes becoming fuel to the fire of the horror influences. Throughout it all, the characters feel like characters, not just half-remembered Amblin archetypes. The choices they make inform what happens next, for both Happy Hollow and Hysteria!, and the show is better for it — even if Dylan’s musical aspirations are in for a rough go of it.
Hysteria! is now streaming in full on Peacock.
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