YMMV / Freddy's Nightmares

• Broken Base: Elm Street fans are still divided on whether the show was a cheap cash-in on Freddy's popularity at the time, or if it was a genuinely good anthology series, albeit one with Freddy kind of shoehorned in as a draw.
• Complete Monster: Freddy Krueger is once again portrayed as a sadistic monster. In life, he molested and murdered more than a dozen children, with victims as young as four and six. After his death, he returns as a demon to continue killing by murdering people in their dreams. Freddy murders his arresting officer, and proceeds to target his daughters, killing one and framing the other for her own sister's murder. In one episode, he tricks a sleepwalking man into killing his own wife and daughter, while another suggests that he murdered nearly half of his former class from school, which had 300 students. Freddy also appeared in segments in which he would interact with people to torment them. In one instance, he offered a girl the ability to change the past so that she could prevent her mother's death, but then revealed that now her father was dead instead, and promptly took away the ability. Evil as always, Freddy proved just as monstrous on the small screen as on the big screen.
• Fridge Sadness: Considering that the first segment of “It’s a Miserable Life” ends with the revelation that Bryan is dreaming this while dying after getting fatally shot by a robber at work, his father is going to feel a lot of guilt and sorrow considering he made him work the night shift after the original worker called in sick.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many viewers have expressed indifference toward the episodes (and scenes within episodes) whose primary focus is not Freddy Krueger.
• Narm:
  • Cower in fear as you watch the show's opening, with its terrifying family photos and people screaming awkwardly!
  • Even by the show's standards the acting in "Prisoner of Love" is completely over the top and cringeworthy.
  • Freddy's oddly out-of-character condemnation of drugs in "A Family Affair".
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In the second episode, it turns out that it's all just the product of the main character's broken neurons misfiring as he's dying from a gunshot to the head.
  • Then there's the fourth episode, where the main character has a flashback of her as a kid having her grandma forcing her to get her hands "clean" with steaming hot water, all because she allegedly touched a boy.
  • Lt. Blocker’s death at the end of “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” While much of it isn’t shown, the teeth fragments flying and Blocker’s screaming combined with the truly fearsome sight of Freddy’s drill-glove and his obvious glee fill in all the blanks for the viewer, doubly so if they have a fear of the dentist.
    Freddy Krueger: (to Blocker, restrained in the dentist's chair) All those teeth! Mm, mm, mm, mm, no. I'm afraid they'll ALL have to go! You tell Freddy when it doesn't hurt!
    (Fredddy raises his glove, now outfitted with fierce-looking dental drills)
    Lt. Tim Blocker: But... YOU’RE DEAD!
    Freddy Krueger: Big deal!
• Retroactive Recognition: Oliver Michaels, the self-proclaimed aura-reader who appears in "Photo Finish" and "It's My Party and You'll Die If I Want You To", is The Trickster from Supernatural.
  • Perhaps the most famous example of this for the series is a young then unknown Brad Pitt staring in the episode "Black Ticket".
• So Okay, It's Average: The episodes starring Freddy are largely considered this in the grand scheme, much lower quality than most of the films, but leagues better than the episodes without him.
• The Woobie: The whole Blocker family is basically this:
  • Lieutenant Tim Blocker is a honest cop, who caught Freddy just as Freddy was about to abduct his twin daughters Merit and Lisa (perhaps the worst fear possible for a parent). He captures Freddy... only for Freddy to get off on a legal technicality because he didn't read Freddy his rights when he arrested him (clearly distracted by the overwhelming emotions he must have felt in the moment). He is blamed by the angry parents for screwing up, and feels guilt over his mistake. Knowing the mob is after Freddy, he tries to prevent the mob from killing him, because Tim wants to go by the book and get Freddy brought to justice legally. However, Freddy manages to make Tim snap by talking about how he will try to go after his daughters again, causing Tim to kill Freddy. This weighs heavily on Tim's conscience, and also makes him paranoid that someone will find out. Freddy then returns and kills him out of revenge over what happened.
  • Merit and Lisa have it just as bad. On top of the above (which traumatized them, especially Merit), Freddy, immediately after being let go because of the technicality, tries to go right after them again. After Freddy dies, he starts to terrorize Merit in her dreams and it's implied she briefly was in an institution from the whole ordeal. Merit is bullied constantly by mean students, and soon Freddy is back to stalking her, and then goes after Lisa too. The twins team up to stop Freddy. However, in the end, Lisa is killed by Freddy despite their plans, and the episode ends with the implication that Merit is going to get blamed for Lisa's murder.
  • Mrs. Blocker across two episodes has lost her entire family: she lost her husband, and believes her one daughter went insane and murdered the other one.

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