FROM S1 Ep9 Into The Woods

It’s time for the penultimate episode of season one for FROM, titled “Into The Woods.” It’s been an exciting, and unnerving, journey for our Town Heroes, and with only two episodes left, we have lots of ground (and forest) to cover. Let’s get to it.

We begin our journey with the forest travels of Boyd and Sara as they try and find a way out of the hellhole that is The Town. Sara, still in handcuffs, asks Boyd how he knows where they’re going. He just has a hunch, he says, but he’s traveling back to the stone hut we saw him in in a flashback. It’s the hut with the talismans inside. Looks like they’re going to camp there for the night. Yikes!

Boyd isn’t taking any chances with Sara, as he doesn’t yet know why she killed Jade’s friend and attempted to kill Ethan. Sara wants out of the cuffs so that she can go to the bathroom. But that’s why Boyd cuffed her hands in the front, so that she can still use the restroom. I bet that those cuffs are going to come into play later in this episode.

Back at The Diner, Kenny is talking to his mom about the radio experiment that Jade has concocted. Kenny’s mom doesn’t like Jade and wishes Kenny well as the new sheriff. I still have a bad feeling about Kenny’s character, and he’s my main bet to be killed off before this season is over.

Outside, he meets up with Kristi, the medic, who’s had very little to do on this show so far. However, I like her character, and she has good chemistry with Kenny. She’s returning the book that Kenny let her borrow. Kenny asks her if she thinks there will be a happy ending in the book. She’s not sure, yet. Are they still talking about the book?

Over at the post office, Donna is bringing in some displaced Colony House folks for the night. The old drunk guy from Fatima’s party doesn’t want to play make believe and he tells Donna as much. She doesn’t put up with his nonsense. Does he have a name? He’s the guy that Donna slugged the night the monsters broke into Colony House. He feels destined to die. We’ll see.

Over at the Matthews’ house, Tabitha is digging her hole, still trying to find out where the power comes from. How far down does she plan on digging? Until they hit “rock bottom?” (I’ll see myself out.)

On her way up the stairs, as Jim calls to her that dinner is ready, she begins having a vision, and she hears a baby screaming (possibly their deceased child, Thomas). As she makes her way up the stairs, kicking over child’s toys, she sees Jim hanging from the ceiling. He screams at her, and then the scene cuts to the moment their RV crashes into the woods. Tabitha wakes up from the nightmare, and the prologue is over. Great beginning to the episode!

Another bird’s eye view of the town. My favorite part of this show is the atmosphere created by shots like this. They did such a great job building a set that looks like a nightmare living in the middle of nowhere.

Donna, sleeping in the post office, (also) wakes up to someone screaming. Eric, a character we haven’t seen before this episode, hung himself in the bathroom. Things aren’t going too well for the townsfolk right now.

Over at the Colony House, Jim and Kenny are working on building the tower. Donna stops by and says they’ve had a rough morning over at the post office. She’s in bad shape.

Inside the Colony House, Ellis joins Fatima on the couch. They talk about Eric’s suicide and Ellis says, “I didn’t see that one coming.” Foreshadowing! Something’s amiss!

Fatima has hope for the radio tower and admits that the idea of the tower working fills her with dread. She wants to know how they go back home, now, after having dealt with such a strange and horrifying experience. What’s your bet that any of them get to go home? I’m not positive this show won’t throw a major curve ball, and that someone might actually escape this madness before the show ends. Is it possible to escape The Town and then return again, aka leaving and returning to the island in Lost?

Over in the forest, Boyd and Sara survived their night in the hut. Boyd’s carving directions in tree trunks so that they can find their way back home. I bet that’ll come in handy.

Sara wants to know how Boyd doesn’t know that they won’t just end up right back in town, regardless of which direction they walk. Just like the road, she says, maybe the forest only leads back to town. Boyd says he doesn’t know for certain, but he’s going to find out.

Boyd asks Sara if she ever thought that maybe the voices that told her to kill Ethan were lying. Sara doesn’t want to talk about that. Boyd, rightly, brings up the fact that if they’re going to start second-guessing each other’s decisions, that’s a good place to start.

Sara explains that the voices told her there would be two cars and that if she didn’t do what they said, her brother would die. That was why she killed Jade’s friend and why she attempted to kill Ethan. Maybe the cuffs are justified.

Right on cue, Boyd takes the cuffs off. He says he’s seen this town make good people do bad things. I guess he just needed to hear from Sara her reasons for her actions, and now he can trust her.

Back at the Matthews’ house, Tabitha, Julie and Ethan are looking at a series of drawings. Ethan says that the drawings all fit together and tell a story, and that once they figure out the story, they’ll know what to do next. Where did these drawings come from? Did Tabitha find these in the house? Tabitha wants to put them away, but clearly Ethan knows something. It’s almost as if the drawings are part of a children’s fairytale. Hmmm...

Ethan wants to know what one of the drawings is a picture of, but before we can get a look at it, Tabitha changes the subject. She wants to play a game of “When I get home, I...” Forget the game, Tabitha! Look at the drawing. Clearly, that drawing will matter at some point. I bet we’ll be coming back to it.

Over in the Colony House, Jade and Jim are trying to figure out a power source that’ll last longer than just a few hours. Tensions are high as both men are desperate for the experiment to work. Jade wants to know if anyone has seen Victor, and he wants Jim to open the book and look at the symbol. This storyline is a callback to a previous episode, but it’s been glossed over quickly and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is it a book Jade got from Victor? I forget. But before we can explore this storyline, Jade and Jim argue about power sources again before the scene cuts to Donna and Kenny.

Donna’s been drinking, as she deals with the loss of Eric. Kenny offers an ear, but Donna isn’t having it. Kenny states that he and a few townsfolk are going to go get wood for the radio tower, and Donna decides she’s going to help them get wood. She’s upset, grabs an ax, and begins chopping at the floorboards of Colony House. She’s lost it. I don’t blame her. She storms off outside to get some fresh air.

In the forest, Boyd is still carving directions in the trees as he and Sara make their way deeper into the woods. Sara mentions that she knows what happened to Boyd’s wife, and that Boyd reminds her of her brother Nathan. He always puts other people’s needs before his own, she says. Not exactly the topic to be bringing up right now, Sara. She also states that Nathan had a theory about this place. He stated that if they pushed too hard to leave, the place would push back. I’m with Sara’s dead brother on this one.

Suddenly, they hear a clinking sound and decide to look for the source. They come upon some bottles suspended from a tree. There’s something inside them, and Boyd wants to get one of them down so that they can take a look inside. However, the voices in Sara’s head have other plans. She begins screaming and then convulsing. Hold on, Sara!

Back at The Diner, Donna is hanging out with the Philosopher-Bartender. We haven’t seen him since Jade had his first melt down, many episodes ago. Donna just wants to be alone, but Kenny walks in and wants to talk to her. He asks her if she’s ok, and Donna opens up that she’s not upset about Eric’s death as much as she just wants Kenny and the rest of the townsfolk to fuck off with their little radio experiment. What’s really bothering her is the idea of hope that the experiment brings with it.

Donna states she’s grieving what The Town almost was. A special place, she says. She’s grieving what the place will become if their radio tower fails. She’s mourning what Colony House had been. Donna doesn’t seem too concerned with leaving this place, only making this place as special as possible. And that was taken away from her by the monsters’ attack. She makes peace with Kenny and tells him that she’ll give the tower a shot, but she warns Kenny that if it does, somehow, work, that he’s going to miss more about this place than he thinks.

Over at Colony House, Ellis and Jim have a conversation. Is this the first scene they’ve ever shared together? I think it is. They make small talk before Ellis tells Jim that he’s got the coil for the CB that they needed. Jim’s happy that they’re making progress. Ellis seems dubious.

We switch scenes again, this time over to Kenny, as he’s walking through the town, ringing the evening bell. He sees Kristi sitting on the porch at the post office, and he approaches her. She’s upset about Eric’s death. We’re spending a lot of time with other characters talking about a character who, before this episode, we’d never even seen before. I wonder why that is. If there isn’t a point to it, it feels like a lot of wasted scenes and dialogue. But something tells me to trust the show.

Kristi wants Kenny to promise her that if the radio tower falls apart, that Kenny will come and talk to her if he needs to. Kenny promises her that he will and they embrace. We’re definitely looking at two choices here: the tower works and gives people hope, or the tower fails and drives them farther toward despair.

Jade is complaining to Kenny’s mom about the tower. She seems over it, as Jade complains about Jim’s attitude as well. She turns on the kitchen light and a light bulb goes off in Jade’s head. He states he knows how to do it (get electricity to the tower), but before he tells her (us), the scene cuts back over to the Matthews’ house.

Julie assures Jim that the tower is going to work, and when Jim questions why she’s so optimistic, Julie states that she’s been thinking about something Ethan said. That maybe they were supposed to come here. They never spoke, as a family, back home, but now they’re sharing their feelings and spending time together. Julie wants him to come help with the family dig the hole in the basement, and he agrees, so they head downstairs. As they head into the basement, the light in the hallway dims. Uh oh! I’m not sure what that means, but it’s probably not good.

It’s night time, now, and Boyd and Sara are in a tent. Boyd’s hung one of the talismans inside so that they’ll be safe from the monsters. Sara finally awakens from whatever fit/seizure she had earlier, and Boyd helps calm her down. She wants to know where they are and Boyd assures her that they’re safe.

Boyd managed to get one of bottles down from the tree. There was a note from 1864 in it. (If you recall, Jade, way back when he and Jim were in the woods together, had some type of vision with a civil war soldier.) Boyd says that’s all that’s on the paper, and that every bottle, as far as he could tell, had a slip of paper just like that.

Sara states that she thinks they should go back to The Town. She says that the voice she heard in her head this last time was a woman, and that the woman was screaming. The voice told her that they shouldn’t have come here and that there are things in the forest far worse than the monsters. The voice also said to “tell Mr. Fish and Loaves that I was wrong.” Is that the voice of Boyd’s wife?!

Before they can dissect the voice in Sara’s head, they hear a noise outside. Something bumps against the tent. It can’t get in, presumably because of the talisman. But is it a monster...or something worse?

Back at the Matthews’ house, the family is digging their hole as Ethan tells Jim that the drawings show all sorts of creatures. He states that they’re definitely on some type of quest. Interesting. Who would give them a quest, I wonder? Maybe that boy that Ethan and Victor have seen?

Julie hits something in the dirt with her shovel, but before we find out what it is, the scene jumps back to Boyd and Sara, who are still struggling with unseen forces inside the tent. They better hope that talisman doesn’t fall down. And it does! Boyd struggles to attach it to the inside roof of the tent again, but whatever creature was disturbing them, has finally gone away. Maybe the talisman wasn’t what prevented whatever it was from coming inside.

Boyd tells Sara that he thinks they’re ok, because the tent has stopped shaking. Sara doesn’t think they are, and right on cue, off in the distance, a horn blares. It sounds almost like a horn from a boat. Bright light encompasses the outside of the tent and the episode ends.

The show has set itself up for a great season finale. We’ve got three major plot points converging next episode: whether or not the radio tower will be successful; what the Matthews’ found underneath their basement (and how it relates to the “quest” that Ethan is certain they are on, and how the drawings relate to all of this), and what Boyd and Sara are going to discover out in the forest.

Some of the character unevenness from previous episodes has thinned, and as the show has built up the characters into more coherency (see: Sara and Donna), they’ve also built excellent tension toward plot. I’m excited for the season finale and what’s in store for our heroes!