FROM Season 4 Episode 7 Reinforces That Hope Comes at a Price

Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

4.5

That ending still has me absolutely shook.

Anytime an hour ends with this sunset, and there’s still plenty of time left, you just know something bad is going to happen.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this one is that things didn’t end as catastrophically as they could have.

When Boyd develops a plan, that’s it. He’s going to throw himself into it completely, and there’s not much anyone can do to stop it.

FROM Season 4 Episode 7 was the build-up to the inevitable collision at the end; the collision was the payoff, of course, but the build-up was equally gratifying.

I’ve constantly questioned why people don’t talk in this town. Communication is nonexistent at times, and while there are certainly situations when it makes sense to keep certain information close to the vest, there are others when tragedy could have been avoided if people had just talked to one another.

When it came to Tabitha and Jade being past reincarnations of former townspeople, it felt like a secret worth sharing, especially to Victor and Henry, who deserved to know before some random lady at Colony House we had never met.

Boyd’s basis for sharing the information was mostly rooted in his desire to follow through on the plan to enter the tunnels, and there was no way he could get anyone on board with it unless he explained everything that led up to Jade’s visions.

Those people have heard all kinds of cracked theories and seen the wildest things imaginable, so you’d think they wouldn’t be that surprised by reincarnation, but it was a harder sell than I thought.

It may all boil down to the realization that many of them have had about that place continuously messing with their heads.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me!

If you’re constantly being made to look a fool, you become increasingly jaded. And Julie’s a perfect example of that.

She spent the early part of FROM Season 4 obsessing over her storywalking ability because she had hope. She hoped that it would allow her to go back and stop Jim from being murdered, but every time she failed, her resolve fractured.

She’s now that curmudgeonly, Scrooge-esque caricature in the story who believes everyone is wasting their time and has effectively given up.

Her attitude may have been drastic, but was she wrong? She’s been to hell in back, like everyone in that place, and she’s tired.

It’s very much two steps forward, two steps back in that place, but it’s made all the more frustrating and depressing when those steps lead to death. And it’s just a simple fact that the more hopeful they become, the more the town comes back at them, reminding them who’s really in charge.

Her conversation with Elgin was one of my favorites of the season because it was two people who’ve been beaten down by that town in different ways, adopting vastly opposite viewpoints.

While Julie has abandoned all optimism, choosing instead to acknowledge that the town has won and will continue to do so, Elgin still believes there’s an answer.

He refuses to accept that there’s no truth in that place and that nothing can be done to change their situation. And he’s not saying it simply because he wants it to be true.

He’s steadfast in his words, and he’s unwavering in what he believes, and, more importantly, he’s right.

That town persistently throws things at them, messes with them, and keeps them off balance, but it does so for a reason. It hopes everyone will turn into Julie.

They want you to stop asking questions, stop searching for answers, and stop looking too closely at the things it’s trying to hide. Once you’ve accepted your fate, the town no longer has to fight you and can simply wait for the perfect moment to pounce.

But there’s a truth buried underneath it all. There’s a truth that’s hidden and not easily identifiable, but it exists. And if you stop believing that, you’ll never find it.

When Boyd rallies the troops to get on board with his plan, he also harps on the idea that part of the reason the town is pushing back and trying to scare them is that they are making progress.

Your voice doesn’t start shaking when someone is across the pool while playing Marco Polo. It’s when they are a hair’s breadth away that you start to panic because you’re about to be found.

To know me is to know that I am a Boyd defender through and through, and that Boyd’s always at his best when he takes all of his tightly wound, reactive energy, channels it into something positive, and thinks ahead.

He was doing his best here to do that, recognizing that the only way they would have a chance in hell of escaping those tunnels without losing someone and getting what they wanted was to go in as prepared as possible.

That goes for pretty much any mission in life, whether that’s tackling a trip to the grocery store or planning to extract the bones of dead children from an underground tunnel crawling with monsters who want to eat you from the inside out.

Splitting people up to do recon on the town and to look into The Man in the Yellow Suit felt like the most Sheriff-like Boyd has been in a hot minute.

Of course, while he kept everyone both busy and useful, he planned to run out into the streets, ready to die if need be.

That’s Boyd in a nutshell.

FROM is a perpetually busy show, so storylines get dropped for various reasons and for varying lengths of time, and it’s been a minute since we really checked in on Boyd’s health.

I appreciate the show not forgetting about it, and as much as Boyd tries to minimize his symptoms and shield those around him from what he’s going through, Parkinson’s remains a reality he has to contend with every day. No amount of determination can completely overcome that, and there are limitations.

I’d never bet against Boyd, and his plan to see if the totem pole would kill one of the monsters made sense, even though I already knew it wouldn’t work.

Tabitha stabbed one of those life-sized dolls, which was a very different thing from the monsters that haunt the town. But Boyd’s looking for any advantage heading into those tunnels, and it was worth taking a chance to see if the totem could help in any tangible way.

Remember when Ellis lowkey hated Kenny? The two have come a long way, and the way they essentially tag-teamed Boyd to make him see reason was a nice reminder of those two relationships and their importance to Boyd.

They are probably the only two people in there that Boyd would be completely vulnerable around in every single way, and the only two people he’d listen to, even when everything inside of him was screaming to just go through with the plan he laid out.

Part of being a leader is making tough decisions, but it’s also stepping in to protect people. Boyd would always step in front of someone and absorb the blow if it meant someone else would be all right.

But being a leader also means understanding when your choices could cause more harm than good.

Let’s be honest: losing Kenny wouldn’t be devastating, but that town cannot lose Boyd right now. Not when they’re on the precipice of believing in something again.

I’ve been worried about Kenny ALL season, and when I tell you my anxiety was through the roof watching the last few minutes of this one, I am not exaggerating in the slightest.

The number of times I said “NOOOOO!” was staggering.

Now, after Boyd unknowingly told the Devil herself, Sophia, about his plan, you knew something would happen, but Kenny did himself no favors by just standing there staring at the milkman monster he’d stabbed instead of hauling ass to literally anywhere else.

Nothing is more frustrating in a horror scene than someone standing rooted in place when they have plenty of time to run.

(I say this as someone who would 100% be too scared to do anything if I were in Kenny’s shoes.)

Smiley not making his triumphant return until now was so perfect, and the reveal that he and Fatima are linked in a way that goes beyond Fatima just being able to feel him, extending to her ability to control him, completely changes the game.

Imagine everyone sitting the hell down and realizing that Fatima has at least a semblance of control over Smiley, that Julie can story-walk, and that Tabitha and Jade have visions of the past.

IMAGINE WHAT KIND OF CONCLUSIONS THEY COULD COME TO IF THEY PUT ALL THEIR BIG BRAINS TOGETHER.

We’ll have to wait for that blessed day, but at least Kenny is safe because I was beyond worried. A town without Kenny would really be hard for me to come to grips with.

You know who else is having a time coming to grips with things? Henry.

Listen, Boyd had no choice but to tell Henry and Victor that day, because there was no time to waste. And there’s never really a right time for that kind of life-changing information, but I wish someone had babysat Henry or something.

He’s a grown man, of course, but his ambling around the town all day could have ended so much worse.

Henry’s persistent denials and Victor’s acceptance, marred with dread, were just heartbreaking on every level.

I think Victor accepted the reality so quickly because he had seen all the similarities along the way. He’d also felt a calmness and trust with Tabitha, so learning she’s the reincarnation of his beloved mother? Hardly the most unrealistic thing he’s ever heard.

Tabitha is stressed and grieving, spread so thin between what’s happening around her, within her family, and within herself, but the way she snapped at Victor was so disheartening.

His delivery was intense, yes, but he didn’t mean to scare Ethan or upset anyone. He was making the very real connection between Miranda and Tabitha’s family, and preparing Ethan for an uncertain future? That may be the most important thing either of them does in there.

Maybe that’s too harsh on Tabitha, who was just protecting her son, but that’s also what Victor wants as well. Asserting there’s something wrong with him irks my spirit, because Victor is nothing if not someone who cares for and wants to protect Ethan infinitely, even if he sometimes doesn’t know the “socially acceptable” way to do so.

Victor’s trying his damndest to help, as evidenced by his urging people to look more deeply into The Man in the Yellow Suit, which comes at the right time, as Sophia has ramped up her reign of terror.

Bringing Roger back to life just to cause even more panic is exactly what Julie and Elgin were discussing earlier, because it’s another case of the town throwing out another lie to get them to shrink away.

Can their dead friends now come back to life to kill them?

Sophia just unleashed a whole new level of fright, because if death is no longer a fixed point, then there’s truly nothing in that world they understand.

Loose Ends

• Henry hallucinating himself in the hospital was not at all what I imagined would happen when he drank that blood cocktail. What could that possibly mean?

• I want a Man in the Yellow Suit origin episode so bad because who the hell IS he? Or better yet, WHAT is he?

• Kenny, being an administrator for youth sports, is so on-brand.

Much to like about this one as we creep closer and closer to the end of this season.

As always, let me know in the comments what you thought about this one and share all your predictions.

Only a few more hours to go!

You can watch FROM on Sundays at 9/8c on MGM+.