Stranger Things, a new limited series from Netflix, is often E.T., occasionally The Shining, and a little “Too Many Cooks” rolled into ready-made packaging. There’s no mystery—well, there is a mystery, which is predictable, and that predictability is because there’s no mystery about what the show is going for.

Among the recent decades and the pop culture each one contributes to Americana, the 1980s is the most forgotten in its peer group. There’s some justice in that. And yet, to whatever extent ‘80s entertainment is less collectively preserved, there are kids born in this century who would instinctively recognize this show as an embodiment of the ‘80s. Sort of. Creators Matt and Ross Duffer (The Duffer Brothers) ask us to accept the title sequence as a time machine—an extremely ‘80s creative ambition. If they didn’t strike the right balance, it could have been an out-of-the-gate turnoff that winnowed the audience of young viewers. Fortunately, it’s a trip.

The Duffer Brothers unabashedly plant their flag on old real estate, perhaps because they love that real estate (I’m sure they do), perhaps because taking ownership of their habitual recycling is the way to turn acerbic condemnations of unoriginality into mere observations of unoriginality. When Dustin, one of the nerdy kid heroes with a prepared explanation for his lisp, is bullied into his own version of the truffle shuffle, any remaining part of me that wanted to take issue gave in to the smirk on my face. Because who cares when it’s done well? Nostalgic satisfaction is a critical lobotomy.

Let’s not do a disservice to this show and the people who made it by ignoring the show and the people who made it. Quickly, Stranger Things is about a small town, a shady government facility, a monster, and an alternate dimension—elements that on their own are like the flour and eggs of making a cake.

So how is the cake made?

Well, there are basically three layers: regular old Earth, “the Upside Down,” and the spatial unreality that El—short for “Eleven,” a girl with special powers who has flown the laboratorial coop—channels to search for the monster and the missing boy, Will. In particular, the cinematography for this final layer is aesthetically beautiful and smartly withholding.

This lack of information is one of the show’s more masterful visual points of emphasis. Certainly it aids in creating suspense, but to reveal a fully realized version of a monster, or another world, or an essential piece of fictional technology is often to disappoint. By crystallizing any of these as one specific thing, they are by definition not something else, and often whatever they become on “film” is not as compelling as an abstract idea from the audience’s imagination. So darkness is scary, but it’s also wildly practical.

We may yet learn the Upside Down and El’s medium are different versions of the same thing, but lack of information is also essential to the plot structure. What’s a flux capacitor? Hell if I know, but Marty McFly is in a lot of trouble if he can’t capture 1.21 gigawatts from a bolt of lightning.

It’s better not to try explaining a gateway between dimensions in too much detail. There’s a flea and an acrobat, and the acrobat is on top of a tightrope, and the flea can crawl along the side of the tightrope, and physics affects them differently… Be satisfied with that description, because that’s all Stranger Things is going to give you.

Many of my questions could be answered in an unconfirmed but expected second season, so I pass no final judgments here. Still, there are some points that might be early indicators of runny applesauce. The explanation for El’s powers, for instance, is that back in the day The Man was doing hippie science on her mother. This veers into Minority Report territory, where the Precogs have special powers because, um, take our word for it.* When science fiction delves into the unreal, it shouldn’t bother applying principles of reality to things that can’t be reconciled with reality. What is important, however, is that rules governing the scope of the story are explained and followed. It’s hard to know if El’s powers make sense because I still don’t know the rules.

There are no weak links in the cast, to the point where some of the actors effectively smooth out some character-defining moments with rough narrative edges. Take Will’s older brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), a quiet kid desperate to find Will and make his family whole again. Jonathan prizes his camera as a way to connect with the world. Yes, he takes pictures of Nancy through the window as she takes her shirt off, but hey, he really wants to know where his brother is. Leave no shirt unturned, Jonathan. Nancy probably shouldn’t worry—Jonathan is just a lone wolf who works in a darkroom, and that guy is only a psychopath in 75% of similar stories. Rest assured, the script tells us: He probably just loves her. This is the kind of 1980s story logic that should stay in the 1980s, because it didn’t represent reality then, either. We just thought it did.

About Nancy (Natalia Dyer). There is some evidence to suggest small-town America is less whitewashed in Stranger Things and that Will’s mom, Joyce (Winona Ryder), represents an archetype that did not exist in ‘80s story language.** But if we’re going to talk about bringing the then into the now, Nancy—flawless student, girl next door, dressed to impress her parents—is refreshingly honest. Nancy wants to ace her chemistry test and quickly lose her virginity to the popular jock and not lose her sense of self. Teenagers who have sex in 1983 almost always earn a punishment suited to their crime—a grisly death—yet Nancy manages all of this without getting murdered, which is nice for her and nice for us. In a series of events that must have gone down on Opposite Day, Nancy and her sexual conquest survive while the killjoy is punished for being an entirely respectable killjoy. Whatever the moral compass is in this universe, it seems to point in the direction of the party house.

Every primary character is slightly more complicated than I expected, and every secondary character is exactly what I expected. And then there’s Matthew Modine. Did it take more than three days to shoot all of his lines? For most of the eight episodes, his thespian responsibility is to look like Matthew Modine, which, incidentally, he nails.

The irony of this show being on Netflix, premier content platform and pillar of the modern age, is its very 1980s-ness should be the reason it withers on the backlash vine that is the internet. But it doesn’t, or, I should say, it hasn’t. (Yet.) Do I have nitpicky critiques? Sure.*** Will you? Probably. But Stranger Things is a time capsule. If you find one in your backyard—and Netflix is the closest many people get to going outside these days—isn’t discovering it more special than what’s inside?