Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
4.5
We may have gotten the answer to the long-simmering question as to why the townspeople don’t talk to one another during FROM Season 3 Episode 5.
The town hall meeting was a hot mess from start to finish, leading to even more division, anger, and fright.
And another casualty. There’s always another casualty.
Coming out of FROM Season 3 Episode 4, you could sense that everyone was even more on edge, and that’s to be expected after the night they had.
Holding a meeting, especially in light of Tabitha’s return, was the right call if only to avoid the inevitable whisper down the lane set to start immediately. But when you get a bunch of frustrated and terrified people in a room, things devolve rather quickly.
I’ve been wondering why no one talks to each other on a loop for what feels like years now, and it’s also a popular question among fans.
You have all these different people experiencing different things, and no one sits down to talk to each other about them. If they all started to compare notes, they could make connections and, if nothing else, get a deeper understanding of their surroundings.
But that’s never really happened. Someone may talk to their significant other, like Jim and Tabitha. Or Boyd and Donna will fill each other in, but those more extensive conversations never occur.
Well, not before this hour.
Considering everything Tabitha had just gone through, taking a day or two to decompress would have been more than understandable. Still, she wanted to attend the meeting to tell people what happened.
Tabitha wasn’t trying to hide, and that was commendable in its own way.
But when she started to talk about what happened, and everyone started to push back, I wondered for a second who was right and who was wrong in the situation when, realistically, it was just a bunch of scared reacting to their circumstances.
No one knows what they would have done in Tabitha’s position. No one knows what they would have felt like waking up in pain, alone in a hospital room, and suddenly thrust back into a world that had continued without them.
She was rightfully most concerned about no one believing what she had to say and being put away or put in a position where she couldn’t figure out the why of it all. Why was she dropped in that place, and what was she supposed to do to help?
It’s impossible to say what could have happened had Tabitha just started telling her story.
Even though she ended up back in town, with Henry to boot, maybe in hindsight, that will end up being something that saves them. You can’t know right now, so it didn’t feel right to attack her when she was doing the best she could.
But on the flip side, everyone was tired, and knowing that Tabitha made it out, even if it was by some small miracle, galvanized everyone to want to try.
Dale being the most outspoken at the meeting tracks because he’s a selfish, loose canon, but Fatima’s thinking is shocking at first until you remember what she’s dealing with.
She knew something was wrong with her and that pregnancy, so when she heard the tale about Tabitha getting home, she longed for the same thing.
Ellis backing her up and essentially going against what Boyd was saying took his father off-guard, and I was glad Boyd later got a chance, to be honest with him about the realities of what was currently happening.
As predictable as some parts of their current world can be (you see the tree, you can’t leave, the monsters come out at night), so much of it is unpredictable. The faraway trees don’t guarantee you a pass out to the lighthouse, the boy in white pushing you out, and you wake up in the real world.
Knowing there’s a way out is good news, but deluding yourself into thinking you’ve now found the way when there’s also tangible proof that faraway trees will lead you somewhere terrifying doesn’t do anyone any good.
Hold onto what you know to be true and work from there.
Dale, Fatima, and Ellis essentially said they wanted to jump in the tree and see what would happen. How is that helpful?
Harold Perrineau is just so damn good, and everything about that talk with Ellis was great. His controlled annoyance and genuine concern for his son and why he couldn’t see that fanning the flames does nothing to help the people in town was so well done.
Because the truth is that they still don’t know what they’re dealing with, yet trying to protect people from themselves very quickly turned Boyd into the bad guy.
There’s something to be said about taking chances, but how many times must we see people take chances that end in disaster? Tabitha’s didn’t (though you could argue finding yourself right back in town WAS a disaster ending), but hers was a unique situation that led her directly to someone connected to the town.
It’s not like she landed on the beach in Miami to just resume living.
When Dale walked out of that diner, I knew he was going off into the woods, and there was probably no stopping him. Even with Tabitha and Jade there warning him it was a terrible idea, there was no getting through to someone like Dale, who has proven time and time again that he’s only concerned about himself.
There was negative way Dale was making it out of that tree alive, but the manner in which he died? Just absolutely brutal.
The motel pool with the truck having its little moment earlier in the season was some nasty foreshadowing. The pool was just an eyesore previously, and now it’ll be known as the place where Dale died, and the hopelessness only got worse.
Dale’s stubbornness set Boyd off, and it was almost as if he couldn’t help himself yelling at the people to fully understand what was happening. The magical trees would never be the solution, not with their current limited knowledge.
Look at Dale! Not even a few hours after their meeting, he’s now dead because he chased after something he didn’t understand.
Who’s next?
Hope has been dwindling all season, and that will only add to it. Boyd’s in an odd position as the leader, trying to keep people from losing all hope while helping them understand what they’re facing.
While the town was melting down, some people chose to forgo the town hall, and Victor struggled with the realization that his dad was there.
Can you even imagine what that must feel like? Victor surely had to have made his own form of peace with never seeing his father again, and then, out of nowhere, he was just there.
The emotions swirling through Victor had to be overwhelming, and that flight response kicked in. He needed a minute. It’s not like he could avoid Henry forever; the town would never allow that, but taking a beat to process when he was for the best.
If Henry had just been thrust in his face, that may not have been what was best for either of them at that moment.
Victor’s a grown man, albeit stunted from a forgotten childhood and so much time spent alone, but he’s not the young boy Henry knew. That’s scary.
What if you look your father in the eye after all these years, and he doesn’t recognize you?
Victor had every reason to be scared, and Henry also had his reasons.
It’s wild because he’s lived without his family, having to bury them away, and now he’s transported to this nightmarish place where his wife and daughter died, but his son still lives.
Talk about bittersweet.
The reunion between father and son may have been one of the saddest moments in the show’s history, which is saying something when we had to hear Tian-Chen’s screams during FROM Season 3 Episode 1.
Ethan summed up Victor pretty well when he told Henry that Victor was grumpy but didn’t mean to be. He’s still very much childlike in many ways but incredibly wise and sincere. He may seem accustomed to that place, but he’s just as terrified as everyone else.
Henry and Victor have much to discuss, but it will also be nice to exist together and get to know one another as they are now.
Elsewhere, Fatima finally came clean to Ellis about her raw diet. What in the world is he going to do with that information? Knowing him, he probably won’t say anything, but there’s no way this gets better.
There are many theories about what’s happening to Fatima, and I’m still inclined to believe she’s infested with one of the monsters. This sounds simplistic enough but also makes no sense.
So, basically, it’s FROM’s whole premise, in a nutshell.
If Ellis DOES tell someone else, like Boyd, what does he do with that information? Do they all go to Kristi and Marielle together? Do they think they’ll be able to help Fatima figure out why she craves rotten food and blood like it’s a regular occurrence?
This is unchartered territory for everyone, and at this point, there doesn’t seem to be much that can even be done besides indulging Fatima with that spoiled food, I guess.
But at least now Fatima isn’t hiding from Ellis anymore because that would have eventually become too much to bear on top of everything else.
As we turn into the back half of the season, the town has perhaps never been more fractured, cold, and barely hanging on.
Loose Ends
- Officer Acosta really tried it with Boyd. Maybe she meant well, but coming in and thinking you have the answers when you know 1% of the story takes a lot of nerve.
- Victor and Sara are a pairing that works well, all things considered. Victor doesn’t sugarcoat anything, and Sara’s at a point where all she can do is be herself and hope for the best.
- When Randall is up and walking around again, good luck to Boyd.
- Do Tabitha and Boyd ever really talk? It would be interesting to see a conversation between those two, Jade, and Victor, because all four of them have had very unique experiences, but detailing them to one another could be helpful for all of them.
- Donna seems to be struggling, and I don’t know that anyone outside of Boyd has noticed yet.
- Elgin and Julie are the pair-up I never knew I needed! I was sure something horrific would happen in that basement while they channeled their inner Madonna and Michael Jackson, but nothing happened! They got to have some silly, goofy fun without the worst thing imaginable bringing them down.
We’re officially halfway through this season, and there hasn’t been a bad hour yet!
From Dale’s death to Fatima’s confession and THAT father/son reunion, there’s plenty to discuss, so please drop all your thoughts below!
You can watch FROM on Sundays at 9/8c on MGM+.
Watch FROM Online
