Friday, September 2, 2016

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY: 'STRANGER THINGS' & 'THE X-FILES'




Good news the other day regarding 'Stranger Things': my favorite new series of the year will be back in 2017 for a sophomore season with an episode total of nine, one up from the freshman season.  

My cousin Paul and his wife Angela have an interesting theory that Jonathan Byers will one day be John Fitzgerald Byers.  Angela posted this earlier this month and then we carried on the conversation in a private Facebook conversation:

Paul and I just started watching Stranger Things and we both really like it. I'm also digging Paul's theory (and granted, we're only two episodes in) that this is an origin story of sorts for one of the Lone Gunmen, Jonathan Fitzgerald Byers, from the X-Files, since the early adult life of the character named Jonathan Byers in this show is heavily influenced by government conspiracies and strange happenings. I'm excited to see if we can expound on our theory and also just excited to continue watching the show.


Toby O'Brien:
Charlie Heaton is 22. He's playing high school age, so 18, unless he stayed back. JFByers was born 11/22/63, thus the name. So he's 20 years old at the time of 'Stranger Things'. Keep that in mind. I think it could work with those conditions added in.


Angela Dabkowski:

Yeah, Paul said if he was 20 in the show, it would work.

Toby O'Brien:
I'm envious.

Angela Dabkowski:
It seems like John Byers is already out of high school.

He hangs the missing poster on the school wall and then leaves the building as the other kids go to class.

Toby O'Brien:
I didn't read that far into his wikia bio

Oh! You mean Jonathan!

Okay, but I did see that JF Byers was supposed to be named Bertram, after his father. So Winona (blanking on her character name) could have been married before Lonnie. This could be why Jonathan is so antagonistic to Lonnie - step-dad issues.

Angela Dabkowski:

Oh, you mean Lonnie...

Gunmen?!

Toby O'Brien:
whuh?

Angela Dabkowski:

Paul thinks maybe his name was inspired by the word Lone.

Toby O'Brien:
Bertram Myers could have been Bertram Alonzo Myers and even though they were going to name JFB "Bertram", their intent may have been to name him the full ""Bertram Alonzo Myers, Jr." But everybody called him Lonnie growing up.....

Angela Dabkowski:

That could be... it could also maybe be like parallel universe thing that they're doing in order to have Jonathan Byers cross over into the 'X-Files' universe in order to bring the Lone Gunmen back to life in the X FIles. Or so conjectures Paul.

Toby O'Brien:
I think they are really most sincerely dead. It was suggested as such by that horrible drek of a sequel this year when they made a cameo in his drug dream.

Bertram Alonzo Myers Sr. could have been named after his Uncle Bertram Cooper, who died in 1969 just after the moon landing.....

[For those who don't know that's a 'Mad Men' reference....]

That theory is a work in progress for Paul & Angela and I wish them well with it.  As you can see I played with it for a bit and they're welcome to use any of my suggestions as they see fit.  For my own part, I try to follow Occam's Razor with my theories in everything Toobworld.....

OCCAM'S RAZOR
a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities [Merriam-Webster]

I think I'm going to stick with this Theory of Relateeveety:

Jonathan Byers of 'Stranger Things' is first cousin to John Fitzgerald Byers of 'The X-Files'.  They are contemporaries in age, but their first names come from different sources.

I'll still stick with them being related to Bertram Cooper of 'Mad Men', however, and that the Lone Gunman was originally meant to be named after him as his own father was.

Thanks, Angela & Paul!  Without your theory, I never would have even realized there could be any kind of connection between the two.....

BCnU!

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