Stranger Things, along with The Hunt for Red October and No Country

IMO B
Stranger things is the subject so A, D are out.
Commercial should modify success hence E is out.
For counted as Vs counted among, I feel like counted among is the idiom.

Stranger Things, along with The Hunt for Red October and No Country for Old Men, are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful works set in the 1980s.

Strange Things is a proper noun. Hence, it is a singular. 'along with' doesn't affect to the subject of the sentence. Therefore, we should find a singular verb.

(A) are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful---> out. Are is misused. We don't have to analyze other errors as we have found an obvious mistake.

(B) is counted among the best examples of commercially successful---> this is the right choice.

(C) is counted as one of the best example of commercially successful---> One of the best example? Why not examples? So, out.

(D) are counted to be one of the best examples of commercial success---> Out for the same reason as in A option.

(E) is counted as one of the best example of commercial success---> Out for the same reason as in C option

Nice to see you still solving questions
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Stranger Things, along with The Hunt for Red October and No Country for Old Men, are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful works set in the 1980s.

Intended Meaning : Stranger Things (a commercially successful work) is counted among the best examples of commercially successful works set in the 1980s.

Also, one more thing to note here is that there is only one MAIN SUBJECT in the above question. The other subjects are the part of the non-vital modifier, so they cannot contribute to make a complex subject.

(A) are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful
PRONOUN NUMBER AGREEMENT ERROR for a singular commercially successful work -- Stranger Things.

(B) is counted among the best examples of commercially successful
CORRECT.

(C) is counted as one of the best example of commercially successful
Meaning Error. As per the intended meaning, Stranger Things, along with 2 other works, is counted among the best examples of commercially successful work. Option C, instead means that Stranger Things is only the best example of commercially successful work. As it says 'ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLE' and not 'ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES' of commercially successful work. INCORRECT.

(D) are counted to be one of the best examples of commercial success
PRONOUN NUMBER AGREEMENT ERROR for a singular commercially successful work. Here, as per my understanding, the usage of ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES is making sense.
COMMERCIAL should be replaced with COMMERCIALLY. As an adjective cannot modify another adjective. So, the construction 'commercial success work' is incorrect.

(E) is counted as one of the best example of commercial success
Meaning error similar to choice C.
COMMERCIAL should be replaced with COMMERCIALLY. As an adjective cannot modify another adjective. So, the construction 'commercial success work' is incorrect.

Yeah, I have grown to like this.
Also, If you don't mind me hijacking this post, During my exam I saw a "this" all by itself in the non-underlined part.
I don't remember the question exactly but It was like "this suggests that ..". As per my understanding and manhattan SC, "this, these, that, those", when they are used as pronouns, they can't exist by themselves and need to be used as "this finding suggests that" or "this observation suggests that".

what do you think?

I see that your finding is odd, too. Many said that GMAC consider the structure that use "this" as a pronoun ambiguous. Did you see those questions in SC section or in CR and RC?
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In SC, and in the non-underlined part

Really odd. Want to see others' opinions
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IMO B

A & D -- SV disagreement
C -- Meaning error
E --Similar to E

I think I've also seen something like that before. Appears to be very rare on the GMAT, but not impossible. In the explanations, they tend to say that such usage leads to lack of clarity, which is not really absolutely wrong.
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things is plural or singular?? i have confusion here

Hey,
"Stranger things" is the name of a TV Series.
The two words combined form a singular subject.
You can know this because AjiteshArun has put "Stranger Things" in Italics.

Stranger Things, along with The Hunt for Red October and No Country for Old Men, are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful works set in the 1980s.

(A) are counted as among the best examples of commercially successful - SV disagreement as subject is stranger things which is singular

(B) is counted among the best examples of commercially successful - Correct, SV agreement and counted among is correct in usage and structure
st
(C) is counted as one of the best example of commercially successful - Meaning error, Stranger Things alone is not counted as best but along with The Hunt for Red October and No Country for Old Men together counted as among the be

(D) are counted to be one of the best examples of commercial success - SV disagreement as subject is stranger things which is singular

(E) is counted as one of the best example of commercial success- Meaning Error as in choice C and further it must be commercially rather than commercial
Expert mikemcgarry sir Please guide whether my reasoning is correct

Notice that options C and D use one of the best example.

After one of the, you're really looking for a plural noun (examples), not a singular noun (example).
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Dear vasuca10,

I'm happy to respond.

To tell you the truth, I am not a fan of this question. The trick of a singular subject plus an additive phrase appears sometimes in official questions, but I have never seen an official question use a singular subject that is a title in the plural. Here, the movie Stranger Things is the title. The reference is a single movie, but the sentence does not clarify this by saying "the movie Stranger Things." For GMAT test takers not familiar with popular US culture in the 1980s, this might not be clear. I think that part of the question was poorly designed.

The rest of the question is somewhat pedestrian in its design: the adverb/adjective swap might be confusing for non-native speakers, but this particularly combination would not be very challenging for native speakers. In fact, in general, the entire question would not be particularly challenging for a 600+ native speaker. The official questions hold to a much higher bar: among other things, they are quite challenging even for native speakers.

For this relatively straightforward question, your analysis seems fine. Here's a considerably more challenging GMAT SC practice question.
The CEO of Laminar Flow

Does all this make sense?
Mike
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Update:
We can now say with confidence that this approach is the correct one.

Official question SC17041.01

Here are my thoughts on this:

Generally, in English
The usage of this to refer to some person, event, or thing mentioned in the sentence (or even outside the sentence: Don't do this) is acceptable. Here are a few examples:

1. He studied at Stanford, and this allowed him to develop the network that he needed.

2. Companies in the area want MBAs; we know this because we've spoken with them.

3. Electric cars are generally quite expensive, but this is not.

4. You should take accounting and marketing as these are the most important for you. (these is the plural form)

Such usage is allowed in English, but may not be very precise. For example, in (3), the one after this is understood:
3a. Electric cars are generally quite expensive, but this one is not.
or
3b. Electric cars are generally quite expensive, but this electric car is not.

Similarly, in (4), the sentence assumes a word like subjects:
4a. You should take accounting and marketing as these subjects are the most important for you.

An interesting point here is that that and those are much more common than this and these in such constructions (something like 10:1 if I remember correctly). For example, we can generally expect people to prefer

1a. He studied at Stanford, and that allowed him to develop the network that he needed.
to
1b. He studied at Stanford, and this allowed him to develop the network that he needed.

and

4b. You should take accounting and marketing as those are the most important for you.
to
4c. You should take accounting and marketing as these are the most important for you.

On the GMAT
Such usage is vague, but I would not go so far as to say that it is "unacceptably vague". It is, however, a very good sign that the option we're considering is incorrect. All in all, I'd advise you to use it as just that: a sign. Be aware of this concept, use it, but don't put it all the way up there with something like SVA.
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