Maybe my ego as a critic is a factor here, but I get the nagging feeling that the town meeting held in Season 3, Episode 5 of FROM was done specifically for me—and specifically to prove to me what a fruitless endeavor it is to have such a gathering in Fromville. After all, I think I probably mentioned the need for some kind of town meeting in nearly every one of my Season 2 reviews. This feels almost like a bit of an attempted dunk on yours truly, given how badly the town meeting plays out.
It was way back in Season 2, Episode 4 where I believe the idea originated though maybe I started suggesting it sooner. There, I wrote:
“The town’s inhabitants need to have a big town meeting where they compare notes. I think Jade, Edgin, Ethan, Sarah and Victor are the main characters who have special sight (either dreams, visions, the Boy in White, etc.) Tabitha now has her own visions as well, and Boyd. That’s a pretty big team of people in the know in some way or another. They need to combine their knowledge of the Faraway Trees, the Boy in White, the crap that Boyd saw in the dungeon etc. Jim hasn’t been seeing things, but he’s smart. Put enough heads together, maybe you start getting answers.”
This is not what happens in the actual town meeting that takes place.
When Boyd brings the citizens of the Town to the diner so that they can ask Tabitha questions about her journey to the real world, it doesn’t go as he—or Tabitha—had hoped. She explains her voyage and pretty much everyone, including Fatima and Boyd’s own son, Ellis, decides that the best way to behave is to complain as much as possible and make Tabitha feel bad. The extras are always complaining, as is Dale—Captain Complainer himself—but it’s unfortunate to see Fatima and Ellis join in the fray. I’m with Boyd on this one. He confronts his son afterward with pretty stern words. “Whose life are you willing to take a chance on?” he asks his son, making it very clear how much more difficult it is to actually lead than to just complain about it.
The Fromvillians all seem to think that if they had been in the real world, they would have handled things differently and far, far better than Tabitha. They would have told people about this place. They would have gotten help. How exactly they would have convinced people they weren’t lunatics—and what help they possibly could have secured—remains totally unconsidered by the hecklers. They just know, deep down, that if they had been there things would have gone much, much better.
This was a good episode, but I’m annoyed at how the town meeting played out. I’d expect some frustration, sure, but not only frustration. I’d expect people to also be a bit empathetic and inquisitive. Some would complain and say stupid crap (real world town meetings are certainly filled with this behavior) but there’s no balance to it here. Everyone is an idiot. I would think a few others would chime in with more constructive or supportive tidbits.
I understand why people would want to go to the Faraway tree and make the journey themselves, and I’m glad the episode gave us such a gruesome and shocking example—concrete proof, to quote Boyd, heh—of what awaited this understandable, yet clearly foolhardy, desire. When Dale goes through the tree and ends up not in the lighthouse, or a cramped well, but inside the concrete facade of the empty pool (the pool that belongs to the missing motel that Victor’s dad, Henry, muses about) nobody’s eager to go teleport themselves anywhere anymore. The question is, do some people have the ability to pass through these safely and others don’t? Would Tabitha, for instance, be able to cross back to the lighthouse this way? At this point, it’s too dangerous to find out.
Jade’s response whether he would attend the town meeting is more proof that this was a direct rebuttal to my critiques last season: “Town meetings are a waste of time,” he says bluntly. Clearly, when the town is populated mostly by total morons whose only qualities are complaining and insulting one another, Jade is correct. But I had a very different kind of town meeting in mind. What I have been suggesting for well over a season now is not that all the idiots are gathered together to hear one story and then whine about it, but a meeting of the town’s principal characters to share knowledge with one another. This means we’d have a smaller, closer-knit gathering including (with the most important characters in the top batch):
- Boyd — The de facto leader of everyone who has been to the dungeon, both bottle trees, through Faraway trees, destroyed the music box, killed a monster and more, including the black worms beneath his skin.
- Victor — The longest-surviving resident of Fromville, Victor has the most unique and harrowing relationship with this place. He’s been there since the beginning—or at least as far back as anyone can remember—and has experienced most of the town’s horrors. He knows more than anyone, but much of his knowledge is locked away. He knows the forest is moving. He has visions, sees the Boy In White, has been through Faraway Trees, and possesses knowledge of long-gone residents like Christopher.
- Tabitha — Not only is she the only one to have reached the lighthouse and return to the real world, she’s having visions of the creepy children and sees the Boy In White. She hears the word the children speak, Angkhooey, and had visions of the lighthouse before she went there. In some ways, it seems she has been passed the mystical torch that Victor’s mother, Melinda, once carried.
- Jade — Along with Tabitha, Victor and Boyd, probably the most closely linked character to the Town. He sees visions of the ventriloquist dummy, Jasper, as well as the ominous sign that Jasper’s former owner, Christopher, saw. He found the children on the stone tablets in the tunnels. He’s by far the most proactive of the “do something” crew there is outside of Boyd.
- Jim — One of the “do something” crew, has received several phone calls from the monsters (or whoever is on the other end) and is clearly willing and eager to get stuff done. Can work on mechanical and electric stuff with Jade.
- Donna — The de facto leader of Colony House, and an important figure in the town who basically ought to be involved in every meeting even if she hasn’t experienced as much of the magical phenomena as others. She and Boyd work well together. People trust her.
- Ethan — Victor’s squire and one of the few people in town who sees this as a quest, also sees the Boy In White, perhaps the best team player in town despite his age.
- Julie — One of the three victims of the Music Box Monster.
- Kenny — Boyd’s deputy and one of the “do something” crew. While he hasn’t suffered or experienced magical phenomena, he’s been closely tied to all events and has lost both parents to the creatures.
- Sara — After being possessed and manipulated by the evil of the Town, Sarah tried to kill Ethan and ended up killing her own brother. She’s deeply involved in the Town’s mysteries and the only one of the current survivors who was possessed in this manner. She can also see the Boy In White.
- Randall — While rash and often unpleasant, Randall is not only a member of the “do something” crew, he was one of the three victims of the Music Box Monster and has now been wounded and scarred by the creatures but left alive for some reason.
- Marielle — Despite her drug addiction, Mari is an important figure in the town because she’s one of its only medical practitioners. She was the third victim of the Music Box Monster.
- Kristi — Kristi is the town’s only doctor and has been in the thick of most important events, despite not suffering as many magical phenomena as others. She’s also generally level-headed and reasonable.
- Ellis — Ellis I include here mainly because he’s Boyd’s son and Fatima’s partner. He hasn’t really shown that he’s particularly useful or sensible and hasn’t had visions or experienced other phenomena.
- Fatima — Poor Fatima is suffering one of the worst fates of any character so far. She is pregnant, but there is something malignant and odious about this pregnancy. This has manifested in her only being able to eat rotten food or the blood of a corpse (one imagines she could have partaken of its flesh as well—and may still!)
- Elgin — Elgin is the Dreamer. He saw things that hadn’t happened yet in his dreams. He was assaulted by the ballerina from the Music Box but not taken possession of. He’s now seeing visions of an undead woman pleading for his help, who I believe is connected somehow to the Music Box.
- Henry — Victor’s dad knows the history of his wife Melinda’s visions and how those manifested as paintings, the bottle trees in Maine, etc. He’s a newcomer but still has the deepest ties to this place other than Victor.
These are the characters you put in a room together for a town meeting. Not Dale. Not bus driver lady. Not random extras. And if you can’t get them all, go down the list and get as many as you can so that they can share information about the visions, the Boy In White, the trees, the lighthouse, the music box, the phonecalls, Tabitha’s voyage, Father Khatri and the bartender showing up as ghosts etc. etc. etc. That wouldn’t be a “waste of time” at all. Communication is key. Keep talking and nobody gets torn to shreds by a monster or teleported into a concrete wall.
I realize that this little tangent has taken up a good portion of my review, but this town meeting has been a long-time coming and I had to respond.
Elsewhere, we get more great scenes with Victor and Sara as she tries to convince him to meet with his father. Victor is worried that his dad will want him to be the little boy he was rather than the man he’s grown into. “What’s he gonna think . . . when he sees . . .” he says, and it’s so sad. I just want to give Victor a hug every time I see him.
“I know I’m supposed to say it’s all going to be okay and that he’ll love you no matter what but I don’t know if that’s true,” Sara tells him. “You’re really bad at this,” he replies. Moments like these are among my favorite in the entire show.
The actual reunion of father and son happens quite by chance. Ethan and Henry are walking at the same time as Sara and Victor and they see one another. Father approaches son slowly and then hugs him in a tight embrace. It’s such a sweet, sad, wonderful reunion. I get a bit of whiplash between how well scenes like these are written compared to the town meeting.
“I didn’t know how to get home,” Victor sobs. “I didn’t know how to get home.”
“It’s okay,” his father tells him. Ugh, tears. I love Victor so much. I’m so glad he got his dad back and the big hug he’s so desperately needed for so, so very long.
Julie and Elgin have some nice moments as well, digging through the basement of Colony House for new clothes. They have fun dressing up in 80s apparel, and while it’s a cute moment, it reminds me of the monsters and their costumes. There’s something very ominous about this whole scene. When they find a working Polaroid camera, I’m also filled with a sense of dread. What will these photos end up capturing?
Boyd’s meeting with the policewoman, Acosta, bugged me as well. I get that he wouldn’t want to take advice from a newcomer, but his insistence that she was so very, very wrong in accidentally shooting that idiot extra earlier this season irks me. She was being chased by monsters! She’d just seen two medics viciously murdered. More monsters were coming for her and she didn’t know that people were standing around in the windows. It was a stray bullet in a moment of sheer terror, and the kind of mistake anyone could have made, especially a young police officer from a small town who probably never fired her weapon in self-defense before.
Boyd should lead. He should take her under his wing. He knows better than most how horrifying this town is and how easily it is to make mistakes under pressure. Lord knows he’s made his own. I could understand his initial anger, and I’m glad he stood up for her in the town meeting, but he’s failing badly as a leader who could, with a little effort and empathy, have a new deputy under his tutelage.
Later, Boyd and bus driver lady talk on the bus. She apologizes for not being supportive in the town meeting. A little late, bus driver lady!
Tabitha decides to take Jade to the bottle tree. They pull down bottles and find slips of paper, each which has four numbers on it. “What if they’re dates?” Jade asks. “This one says 2-6-5-9” she replies, which could be February 6th, 1959. “I saw your kids you know,” he tells her, and shows her the symbol he saw when he found the kids on the slabs of stone. This is good information sharing! “I felt fear in that moment that I’ve never felt in my life,” he tells her, but also “I felt like there were threads that were finally starting to connect.”
I think I speak for the collective FROM fandom when I say, I sure hope so!
The episode ends with Dale’s gruesome and horrific death after he goes into the bottle Faraway tree. This is sort of a fitting end for the most cantankerous Fromvillian. I’ve never felt sympathy for the guy, but I admit I felt a little bad for him. At least he was brave enough to try! You can’t even blame him. “Look, somebody’s gotta try, right?” he says. “It’s okay, you guys can thank me later.” Dale is a jerk, but I do think he intended to go find help. I’m glad Boyd didn’t have to shoot him to put him out of his misery.
Nobody’s going through a Faraway tree ever again, that’s for sure. Unless they’re backed into a corner. “Who’s next?” Boyd asks to the gathered extras. “I am trying to keep you alive, don’t you see that?” he asks. “I can’t help you if you don’t let me!” Can I also just add that his use of an F-bomb in this speech is so much more effective because they’re not dropping them left and right this season? The F-word has a real place in writing strong dialogue. Just don’t over use it!
What did you think of this episode?
