MELTDOWN MADNESS

It’s all about the chocolate in this episode, but Ed’s struggles with the literal-minded magic coin he found in the series opener (Stranger Things, 2013) continue.

Ed unwisely chooses a carton of chocolate bars to sell for a school fundraiser and then compounds the error by urging a helpful friend to carry them out of the hot sun “as fast as possible!” Ed arrives home to discover that traveling at just under the speed of light has melted the bars into unsalable mush. As if that’s not pickle enough, thanks to the magic coin in his pocket, references to certain well-known proverbs leave money talking and the temperature zooming up and down after Ed’s little brother Derwin does something about the weather by making a cardboard thermostat (instead of just complaining about it). Even mentioning “pigtails” and a “ponytail” to his sisters has livestock leaving messes under the kitchen table—and “bangs” nearly results in a catastrophe. Easy of language and liberally endowed with jokes, twists and comical line drawings, the tale scrambles its way energetically to a chocolaty resolution based on an old saw about lemons and lemonade.

A goofy romp through suddenly fungible reality, not as self-consciously clever as the previous episode and all the better for it.