How do you do, fellow “Stranger Things” kids? Original photo courtesy Tina Rowden/Netflix.

What a season-ender for “Stranger Things.” It was big. And I think I finally figured out why it’s not just so good, but how a how a show set in the bright, plastic, superficial ’80s works so well.

The genius of “Stranger Things” isn’t in beating us over the head with a Kate Bush song, though it doesn’t hurt. Besides lovable characters like Finn Wolfhard, imagination, humor, self-awareness, heart and optimism told through children not old enough to be ruined yet, the secret is the subtlety.

At first glance, lightening, blood, explosions, demons, death, etc. aren’t very subtle. The subtlety lies in the lack of cynicism. In all that apparent noise, there’s a lot of love and unapologetic, unconditional belief. Just like in the ’80s.

And instead of making a supernatural show merely set in the ’80s – and trying to be merely authentic – its creators made a show that actually would’ve been made in the ’80s.

I was there; not in Indiana, but in the ’80s, and “Stranger Things” feels more like the ’80s than anything I’ve seen since. My ’80s cred is pretty legit. I spent all my teen year there, graduated high school in 1985. The only time I miss the ’80s is when I think about my people back in the ’80s I no longer see.

Otherwise, I laugh along with everyone else at the ’80s on TV and in movies, because – like any era – you truly had to be there to appreciate it. I did, even though the ’90s were a relief in comparison.

But Stranger Things makes me crave the ridiculous ’80s every time I watch it. It’s the closest I‘ve been since Dec. 31, 1989.

They nail the cheap-but-electric special effects for sci-fi, glowing larger-than-life malls, video games the size of refrigerators … the hair, the fashion, the music – which they nail, for the most part (they mismatched a couple songs, but it can slide).

It’s extraordinary. It’s “Goonies” meets “Aliens” meets “Fast Times” meets “Red Dawn” meets “Poltergeist” meets “Teen Wolf” meets “Beetlejuice” looping back to land on “The Goonies.”

They even have a real Goonie in the show (Sean Astin) dating Lydia (Winona Ryder) from Beetlejuice. The casting was perfect; beside some terribly talented kids, they went for some authenticity in Matthew Modine (“Vision Quest”) and Paul Reiser (“Aliens”).

The show gets so much right. The pre-Internet naiveté we thought was totally futuristic, the Reagan-inflamed sense of white suburban optimism, the Cold War backdrop (a secret Russian base beneath an Indiana mall is genius); things that were so ’80s that no one even knew they were so ’80s back in the ’80s.

It’s as if the creators asked themselves, “How would we make this show if we were actually back in the ’80s?”

Listen to the music. Not the stuff pulled from ’80s MTV. I’m talking about the score (the background music). Listen to the opening credits roll as if someone with a 1985 synthesizer decided to record something semi-creepy but ’80s cutting edge (back then) for a theme song. The authenticity comes from the absolute immersion.

The sometimes-cheesy special effects aren’t because Netflix can’t afford better (strobes and people just turning lights on and off were big). That’s how they did it 35 years ago. Have you seen “Ghostbusters” lately? “Weird Science?” Fun, bright, vivid, imaginative … but not very realistic. (Speaking of “Weird Science,” Bill Paxton would’ve been perfect in this show).

The other superpower of “Stranger Things” is its unrelenting optimism, another ’80s factor. Why else was everything so bright, dramatic and unreal? Suburban white kids whose parents believed in Ronald Reagan’s new day dawning in America, after the rotten ’70s, with Vietnam and Watergate and all the ugliness. MTV arrived and hope was rampant. We smiled a lot, believed in magic, wore horrible glowing clothes, used an ozone layer’s worth of hairspray, and believed two really great concerts in one day would eliminate world hunger.

In a decade when people thought playing some records made kids kill themselves and other records played backward summoned the devil, we probably would’ve believed in an Upside Down. Russians in the Midwest? Why not? We were afraid of dying by nuclear weapons.

Even with the big ending, I’m ready for another season. Then they should seal it all in a time capsule, before it gets to be too much; Just like the ’80s were at the end.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.