FROM S1 Ep6 Book 74

It’s time for another round of madness. Let’s see what’s in store for our town folk on FROM this week. And for us viewers!

Before we start, a few questions: Do we have a name for this town yet? Surely, they’ve named it, right? Seems like a missed opportunity by the show. Did I just miss it?

Are we going to see the monsters in this episode? Still waiting to see how creepy they can be. I know they’re not vampires (are they?) but they remind me of the 30 Days of Night creatures.

Will we spend substantial time with the show’s worst characters, Ethan and Tabitha, again?

Let’s go!

This episode is titled “Book 74.”

In the “Previous on FROM,” Jim says, “There’s something missing here (the wall of questions). We just can’t see it yet.” I’m beginning to think he’s not talking about the question Tabitha raises later, which was “Did we survive the crash.”

The episode begins with the townsfolk shoveling dirt on a body draped in a white sheet. I’m assuming that’s Nathan’s body. Father Khatri’s voice interrupts the burial with these chilling words, as he delivers a sermon: “Chaos and Fate. That is the duality of our existence.”

You can say that again, Father.

As Khatri’s sermon continues, we see Jade ride up on a bike and start yanking on the antennae of an old car. He’s stealing it for whatever he’s got planned with the radio, I think.

Tabitha is picking through old scrapbooks as Julie looks pensively at open graves before going back to the cult-home. There are flowers on the porch.

Father Khatri’s voice speaks (warns?) us of our purpose and faith. Chaos, he says, is the meaning by which we find our purpose.

Amen.

The sermon ends and, as the townsfolk leave, Tabitha enters with a handful of papers. She hands them to Khatri. They were papers from the previous family that lived in their home. The family that was murdered by the creatures. Khatri asks about Ethan’s well-being. Tabitha says he’s scared and confused, and he doesn’t understand why Sara would hurt him. She asks if anyone has seen Sara. Father Khatri says No, not since he chased after her and she fled into the woods.

I don’t believe this guy. Something about him seems untrustworthy. We shall see.

Tabitha changes the subject. She wants to know if any of this is real. She asks, “Are we dead? Are we alive?” Thank you, Tabitha!

Khatri says, “Would it matter?” Uhm, yes, Father, it does matter.

He ponders his own question. Even if they were dead, they’d still be stuck, looking for a way home.

Good point.

He tells Tabitha that her family was already in the town when their RV crashed, so he believes them to be alive. I agree. I don’t think they’re dead. Tabitha doesn’t look convinced. She leaves Khatri to his church.

He walks toward the back of the church and through a door, closes it, and lights a lantern. Ah, ambient lighting. He heads down a flight of stairs and into a basement.

What is in the basement?! Something, or someone, hidden from the others.

It’s Sara! I knew it!

Father Khatri has her tied to a chair and gagged. He says to her, “We need to talk.”

I knew not to trust that guy.

The theme music begins, signaling the end of the prologue.

We begin our episode with Sheriff Boyd and Deputy Kenny digging graves in a field. Kenny is having trouble dealing with Sara’s treachery from the last episode. Boyd states that he wants to explore the forest more, now that they know the talismans work outside the homes. This is a call back to the first episode when Boyd and Kristin spent the night in the RV with an injured Ethan.

Boyd states that he’s going to take a talisman and go out into the forest. But before he can finish telling Kenny his plan, Kenny angrily storms off, leaving Body confused. Boyd stops him and asks him what his problem is. Kenny wants to know if he’s going to go into the forest alone. Boyd says he is and that he’s doing it to try and find a way out of the town. Kenny wonders what the point is and says that if Boyd is in such a hurry to die, then he should just go and get it over with.

Why are some of these characters so resistant to getting the hell out of this place? Makes no sense. He storms off with a confused Boyd looking after him.

Next up is Tabitha and Jim, playing house again. Jim’s messing with a pair of wire cutters and a plug to a lamp. Tabitha wants to know what he’s up to. Jim shows her the cord to the lamp. There’s no wire inside the plastic covering and the plug is missing one of the pins. Jim also points out that the outlets don’t work.

So, where’s the electricity coming from? It’s almost like this town is a model of a town and not real. Hmmm.

Before we can explore these (fundamental) questions, Jade bursts through the door demanding their help. Tabitha calls him an asshole for almost killing them (in the crash). Jade, meet Tabitha. Tabitha, meet Jade. Jade notices that Jim figured out the wire problem. Tech bro Jade was way ahead of him.

Jade needs Jim’s help. For what, exactly? We’ll have to wait as the show isn’t ready to tell us yet.

Instead, we’re back with Father Khatri and Sara. Khatri remarks that there’s not a single copy of the bible in town, although authors Robert Ludlum and Judy Blume are in abundance (Ludlum’s best-known works are the CIA thriller Jason Bourne series. Blume is one of the best-known children’s books authors). Does this tell us anything about the town? Not on the surface, it doesn’t. But a small town without bibles? Now that’s weird!

Father Khatri reminds Sara that by the rules of the town, she should be in “the box.” And he lets her know that Nathan told him about “the voices” she hears. Things don’t look too good for Sara right now. All she can do is stare at him.

Father Khatri takes off her gag and reassures her that she can still help the town. She nods in agreement. Anything to keep the dirty rag out of her mouth, I suppose.

Oh, we’re back with Julie and her flowers! I like Julie. She’s arranged them in a vase near the window. Playing house. I wonder who they’re from? Nobody good, I reckon.

Fatima, her always cheerful artistic friend, walks in and remarks how pretty the flowers are. She doesn’t find the found flowers weird at all and takes Julie to go do laundry. Everything is always sunny in Murderville. The camera lingers on the flowers as the two women exit stage left.

Jade and Jim (Jim and Jade?) are outside of town on the side of the road, stripping the car for parts that Jade was riding in when they crashed. What for? Must have something to do with his radio idea, but we aren’t given the answer yet. They must go back to town because they need the battery, which is the one thing that got stripped by others before they arrived.

At the diner, Tabitha and Ethan arrive to drop off a box of stuff in storage. Ethan’s worried that Sara is there to hurt him. Tabitha assures him that she is gone.

The storage unit is in the back of the diner, and it holds all the old stuff from the people of the town. Ethan blabbers about a book called The Cabin with The Lonely Dragon. I don’t know what that is. Are we supposed to? He mumbles on about a map and a rainbow sky. (I really dislike child characters. What is he talking about?)

Tabitha ignores him (Same). Then she sees a bracelet stashed in the room and she picks it up, looking at it in wonder. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she has seen that bracelet before.

Jade and Jim find a battery and are now in the middle of a field to test their radio. They need a tall tree to test their experiment. Jim is dubious that this will work. But he sticks with it and starts climbing the tree so that they can do whatever it is they are going to do. I’m assuming they’re just trying to get to higher ground to get a better signal. We’ve seen that before in LOST!

Boyd is back at the clinic, looking for Kristi. The place seems deserted. He opens a door to what looks like a boiler room and then Kristi shows up. He wants to know how Kenny is doing.

Kristi says Kenny is struggling with letting Boyd down and she thinks he needs less a sheriff and more a dad. Boyd seems frustrated that he might not have learned from his previous mistakes with his real son. Time to make up for those mistakes. The camera lingers on the boiler room before the scene cuts to Father Khatri and Sara.

Father Khatri is giving Sara a bible lesson. Sara looks tired. Khatri talks about how the bible is comprised of 73 books of tales, wonders, and darkness. This episode is titled 74 Books. Khatri wonders if they (the people of the town) are living the book that has yet to be written. They are the 74th book. Are they the chosen ones? He’s not sure, but he needs to hear about the voices from Sara.

Ethan and Tabitha are back at their pretend-home. Tabitha is admiring the bracelet she found as Ethan waits for Jim to return. The lamp in the dining room keeps fading in and out. Tabitha tells Ethan they’re going to go on a treasure hunt. The game, she says, is called “Where does the light come from?’ She takes a hammer and immediately begins destroying the wall near the lamp. Finally, Tabitha is doing something.

Jim is high up in the tree, now, helping Jade with his experiment. Jade puts his hand on the tree and blood begins seeping out of the trunk. He freaks out and suddenly headless bodies are dangling from the tree branches above him. Also, a mysterious symbol is carved into the trunk. Suddenly a soldier, dressed in civil war garb???, comes out of nowhere and starts shooting at Jade as he runs for his life. Clearly, we’ve entered crazy town.

Jade stumbles and the soldier begins stabbing him. Jade covers his eyes, and the hallucination is gone. Jim stands above him, asking if he’s ok. Jade is definitely not ok. He stumbles away, begging Jim to leave him alone. I’m wondering if this place is tied to past atrocities.

Back in Father Khatri’s pseudo-dungeon, Sara explains to him that the voices told her they are there to help and that they’d been there a long time. They were waiting for someone to come and help them escape and “go home.” Khatri wants to know why she believed them. Sara said they knew things they couldn’t know, like that the two cars were coming (the Matthews’ car and Jades’ car). The voices told her that it had happened before, two cars coming at the same time, and that everyone had died then. It was the people in the cars that got everyone killed, they said. If she did what they told her, the voices said, they would all be safe, and they would get to go home. I’m assuming they meant she must kill Ethan and they’d all be safe. One thing they promised was that Nathan would be safe. Clearly, they lied.

Father Khatri believes Sara is valuable as the only person that can communicate with the voices. He wants to tell Sheriff Boyd about it. Just then, Sara goes into a fit and demands to have paper because the voices demand to show Father Khatri something.

Cutting back to the tree again, Jim attempts to get the radio working. He calls through the CB for anyone but only hears static.

Jade is back at the diner, drawing the strange symbol he saw on the tree a moment earlier. The older Asian woman is trying to speak to him, but he doesn’t know what she’s saying to him. She looks at his drawings, and he tells her that he keeps seeing this image. She takes the drawings into the back of the diner. Jade follows her into the storage area.

Jade finds an old yearbook from 1972. He wonders aloud how many people have been stuck in the town. How long is also a good question. Before he can finish his thought, she shows him a book of drawings. Just like the ones he’s been seeing. “What the fuck?” he says. WTF, indeed!

Sara is making her own drawings for Father Khatri, but the effort is too much for her. She draws something for Father Khatri and tells him that the voices said they watched him bury a bag when he first arrived. This is supposed to be proof that they are real. Father Khatri looks at the drawing in horror.

Sheriff Boyd is digging around in his drawer for something. It’s a baseball mitt and a ball. Looks like he’s going to try and be a surrogate father for Kenny, who is busy carving wood in his home. They’re going to have a catch. How father-son like. We learn that Boyd was a ballplayer back in college. And he divulges to Kenny that he’s sick. The same thing his dad got. Parkinson’s disease. That explains his shaking hands. He seems certain that it’s his destiny to succumb to the disease and he wants to help everyone in the town find a way out before he’s gone. Kenny seems ready to have that catch now.

Jim is home from his experiments with Jade. He notices the torn-up wall, so he heads down to the basement where Tabitha is digging a giant hole. He wants to know what the fuck she is doing. She tells him that there must be power coming from somewhere, hence the giant hole she’s digging in the basement. She remarks how all the cords and lines from the appliances go straight down into the ground. Hmmm.

Tabitha wants to talk about the bracelet she found. She asks if Jim remembers the bracelet she made him after their first few dates; she made it from the laces of her father’s boots and that he lost it at the hospital the night that Julie was born. It’s now on a shelf right behind Jim. He seems less than convinced this means anything. She informs him that the bracelet she found at the diner is the same bracelet. This suggests that the storage unit houses lost artifacts from the townsfolk. Nothing makes sense, Tabitha says. No, it does not. But Jim is ready to believe.

Father Khatri is now in a field, digging up whatever it was he buried when he first arrived in the town. He finally digs up a worn, leather duffle bag. Inside are a bottle of whisky, a bloody shirt and some “Cosmo Chocolate.” The label of the chocolate bar is what Sara drew for him. I’d say he’s convinced she’s telling the truth now.

We’re back to watch Boyd and Kenny have a catch next to an empty swimming pool. Kenny wants to carve a bat for them to play with, for when Boyd returns from his trip into the forest. I think this trip is going to be eventful, to say the least.

We get a glimpse of the cult-house with a random character we’ve never seen before. Or have we? Regardless, he’s not a major player. Does he even have a name? What’s he looking for? He heads upstairs while everyone is sleeping and pulls back the curtains to a window. There stands a young woman outside the window, holding flowers. Just like the vase of flowers that Julie found! She wants to know when she can come inside. Don’t open that window, random extra character guy!

And that concludes episode six. Things are heating up. Will we see more of the monsters next week? What will Boyd’s journey into the forest tell us? Will Jim and Jade get the radio experiments to work? Will Tabitha find the source of the electricity?

Great episode!