FROM has had a bit of a slow stretch over the past few episodes. We’ll call it the mid-season lull. Last week’s, in particular, was really weak, making us sit through far too many unpleasant encounters between angry townsfolk.
The lull is over. Episode 8, “Thresholds”, amps the action back up, giving us scene after scene of the good stuff. The big mystery in the headline that I’m referring to made my jaw drop. We may as well start with that.
Julie In Wonderland
I’m not sure it was a particularly good idea for Julie to take her little brother, Ethan, with her to the ruins. Things could have ended quite badly for both of them. She wants him there because he’s got the mind of a quest-giver. She wants to know what the characters in his stories would do if they were in her shoes. He tells her they would go into the ruins. So she does.
Immediately she’s thrashing on the ground, Ethan at her side and then running for help. She’s transported back into the chamber where she, Randall and Mari were held captive by the Music Box Monster. She hears screaming and sees all three of them chained to the wall. When it stops, she sees the old, emaciated man that Boyd encountered much earlier in the show when he was trapped in the well.
The old man tells her that she needs to toss the rope down into the well. “Who’s down there she asks?” “Please,” he tells her. Throw the rope. So she does, and we see Boyd down below. It’s always been a big question in the fandom: How did the man, chained to the wall, manage to toss the rope down to Boyd so he could climb out and they could have their “tip of the spear” conversation. Now we know it was Julie all along.
But this raises big questions: Namely, how exactly does time work in this place? Clearly it isn’t linear, if Julie was able to go back in time and throw the rope down. And that makes me wonder, who exactly is this old man? Does he also exist outside of time? Could he be a character we already know, who has somehow aged into an old man by being sent back in time? Maybe not, but even though we’ve gotten one big answer, we’re left with far more questions.
He tells Julie she needs to leave this place and she goes back out the chamber door and finds herself in the tunnels below the town. She hears voices. “Anghkooey…Anghkooey…”
Ethan managed to find Kenny and Acosta—who, by the way, is acting less intolerable this episode, though still annoying—and they rush to the ruins and drag Julie out, presumably just before she finds herself in grave peril . . . or learns something big and important. I wonder if she’ll return, or if she’ll be drawn to the tunnels. She’s clearly on the same path as her mother, and Jade. Speaking of Jade . . . .
Jim Is Totally Going To Die
Jade continues to be the character with the clearest and most rational approach to solving the town’s mysteries. He’s also the only one who isn’t just taking Tabitha seriously, but is helping her find answers. So naturally, Jim has to go confront him and act like a territorial ape.
I’m not sure why the show’s writers are making Jim so terribly unlikable this season. My working theory is that they’re going to kill him off by the end of the season. He’ll be the big death in the finale, probably doing something heroic to redeem himself after all this nonsense.
He accuses Jade of taking Tabitha and Ethan to the settlement, that this is somehow reckless and that he needs to back off and leave his family alone. Tabitha isn’t a child, Jade tells him. Jim accuses him of a big ego, saying that he’s doing all this to feed said ego. “So what?” Jade fires back. “If it helps us get home, so what?”
Indeed. After Jade storms out, Henry—who Jim hasn’t met yet, and who watched the whole confrontation go down—asks, “Do you mind if I give you some unsolicited advice?” He tells him that he needs to shut the blank up and listen to his wife. Take it from someone who didn’t, he says, who thought his own wife was going crazy. He wishes he’d listened and helped her by listening instead of trying to “fix” her.
Jim softens at this. He realizes that Henry is right—at last realizing what a jackass he’s been this whole time. They have a nice conversation and Jim reflects on the birth of his oldest child. He went over to a bar, ordered a big glass of whiskey, and then stared at it, promising himself that he would be a better father and husband than his own dad, who was a drunk. It’s a nice moment, but I’m still a little annoyed that Jim has been written into this corner. I just don’t see Jim from earlier seasons acting this way about Tabitha’s dreams.
Victor Remembers
Victor and Sara are trying to get Jasper the doll to speak. Or, rather, Sara is humoring Victor and trying to play ventriloquist with Jasper and Victor is growing increasingly frustrated. So Sara goes and gets Tabitha, and she comes and steps in to help. The two women are able to calm Victor, asking him questions about the day when he heard the dummy tell Christopher the things he’s trying so badly to remember.
After much spelunking down memory lane, Victor has a revelation. It wasn’t the doll speaking to Christopher at all, it was the Boy In White. The boy told Christopher several things:
- The answers to the end are at the beginning. This is pretty cryptic, but fits nicely with Julie’s time-traveling. There is a cycle of some kind taking place. Events are repeating themselves somehow.
- The children are at the core of the mystery. They were murdered in the dark by the people they loved. But someone told them a story which gave them hope. When the laid on the stone slabs, they poured their hope into the roots and that created the symbol. These are the roots of the Faraway Tree.
- The Boy In White told Christopher that to save the children, he’d need to go through the Faraway Tree, just like Tabitha.
I’m not sure how to parse all this exactly, but it sounds like some kind of human sacrifice, as though something is feeding off the hope of these children. But it’s hard to know exactly what it all means. Were they told this story of hope so that they town could feed on their hope and then killed? Were they killed first, and it’s the undead versions of these children who were given hope? Hopefully this is cleared up in a satisfactory way. We’re clearly moving toward answers about the Anghkooey Kids and how they tie to this place and to the tree.
Elgin Pulls A Sara
Finally, we return to the misadventures of poor Fatima. After she kills Tillie, Boyd takes her to a shack in the woods and tells her to sit tight while he figures out what to do. Instead of just staying with her, Ellis runs lots of errands. He has to get her stuff. After he brings it to her, he has to go away again for some reason. I hate how the characters in this show never learn from their mistakes. Leaving Fatima alone was what led to Tillie’s death in the first place. Now that you know things are very, very bad with her, why leave her alone again?
Oh, right, so that the plot can happen. It happens in the form of Elgin, who continues to receive instructions from the Kimono Lady via polaroid picture. We see him fill a jar with his own blood. Then he tracks down Fatima and tells her that she needs to come with him. Ellis is waiting.
He brings her to the cellar where he was in last week’s episode. There’s a room made up with a bed, and he tells her the baby will be safe here. “There is no baby!” Fatima says, clearly uneasy with all of this, especially since there is no Ellis in sight. But Elgin has always been a nice guy and she has no reason to mistrust him—yet. “There is,” he replies. “It’s just not yours.”
Okay, that’s creepy. Doubly creepy because Elgin isn’t acting malicious. He’s acting enthusiastic, like this whole kidnapping thing is an altruistic act. He genuinely believes he’s helping Fatima, but generally when you kidnap someone and lock them in a cellar so that your ghostly Kimono Lady can take their monster baby, well, that’s not exactly the most altruistic thing, whatever your motives.
It’s clear that Elgin has been corrupted in a similar way as Sara, who genuinely believed that killing Ethan would get everyone home. He’s not hearing voices or seeing words appear on his skin, but his visions are making him do things, and he’s doing them in secret, without telling anyone. Boyd really needs to implement a new policy: If you have a vision, dream, otherworldly encounter, find ruins, recall old nightmares, etc. come tell us about it. Share that information with Boyd and Jade. If you think a doll can tell you about the past, tell Boyd and Jade. No matter how bizarre or scary or crazy or possibly insignificant, add this knowledge, insight, or insanity to the information pot. This is how to not only piece together answers to the town’s mysteries, but potentially avoid horrible things happening to people.
All told, a really solid episode that left me on the edge of my seat. We only have two left this season, but I suspect we’ll get some more answers and some crazy stuff in the finale. It’s going to make waiting for Season 4 really agonizing, though hopefully MGM keeps releasing seasons each year so that we don’t have too long to wait.
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