#from paramount

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i wanna say that im a bit sick of this fandom, tbh. "nothing ever happens" this "it's so boring " that.... ARE YOU FUCKING WATCHING THE SHOW??? i dont understand you. people have formed this bias inside their brains and are so fixated on it that they're literally watching... what? nothing???

specifically this episode... people are complaining about it so much and for what? it was a GOOD episode! very good, indeed!

the best thing abt the episode is the revelation that these children getting murdered in this town by their parents... well, it's not an easy black and white thing as in "parents who want immortality bad for killing kids"... as a matter of fact it's way more complex as we finally have confirmation that people like abby and henry are themselves used, abused and mind-controlled.

they want to save their children and it's precisely this desire that makes them do terrible things. this take is way more interesting bc it's morally weird and grey and not an easy topic to think and talk about.

boyd is the perfect embodiment of all this: he wants to save these people and his son SO BAD that he's clearly going to make a huge mistake if he doesn't get back on track!!!

like, i got emotional during this episode bc boyd really thought he saved fatima AND YET HE WAS WRONG!!! it's heart-breaking!! it's like... when you care about someone and really want what's best for them but you either can't help them or what you do actually end up making things worse! like, it's such a horrible conundrum...

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guys, we need to talk abt Donna. she's ULTRA sus in this episode and i'm getting HUGE plot-twist coming vibes. i don't necessarily think that she's affiliated with the Man in Yellow but it looks like she knows way more than she lets on.

also, the children sacrifice site was under colony house the whole fucking time? there's a door IN colony house that connects to the underground caves? THEE colony house that Donna chose as her own domain? i mean, come on. i love Donna but i can't trust her anymore.

like, the whole deal with the dolls. first, she wants to drag them out, then she stabs them for *reasons*, then she says they shouldnt have dragged them out (excuse me?), then she fills them with rocks and yet they don't sink?

AND THEN she lights a fire and when ethan asks her why she just... doesn't answer??? i'm sorry guys but too many things aren't adding up.

i didn't particuarly like Jade's psychic trip. i don't like it when writers resort to psychedelics as deus ex machina. they did the same in LOST when Locke took some island shit and then sweat it out in a lodge. two seconds after and he knew where the bear (and mr. ecko) was. NAAAAAAH, lame (not to mention that's cultural appropriation).

i liked drunk Henry remembering a song abt escape, travels and family. he's also on my sus list but i really liked how the actor played that scene so im giving him a pass this time. i think it was the best scene of the episode, too bad that the actor playing Victor didn't look like he was vibing with it.

and that's my main issue with FROM, fantastic storytelling, mid, if not below mid, acting (with the usual exceptions). sometimes this mixed level of acting skills really takes me out and it's a shame. like, you see one actor pouring their guts out (sometimes even literally) and giving their all and then the camera goes on, i dunno, Ellis or Tabitha and their emotionless faces....

anyway. it was a good midpoint ep. but i expected a bit more from FROM. I know the writers can do better than that.

this ep. basically opened up ALL narrative threads and, ngl, it's not easy to follow just cause it's... like... A LOT of stuff and lore to remember and my memory is shit.

going under the matthew's house to retrieve ethan's books was not on my bingo card, i really don't know what to make of randall's scenes among the debris.

like, we have three people "helping" the remaining members of the matthews family: victor, randall and henry. so far only victor has actually helped ethan go to the place he wanted to go. henry has prevented tabitha from going through the bottle tree (apparently it was a good choice? not sure what the boy in white meant) and randall has gone undee the fall house in julie's stead, effectively not letting her do the things she wanted to do herself.

i don't know what to make of this. i only trust victor out of the three. i have always been suspish of henry but now, by virtue of the narrative parallel, should i distrust randall, too?

all the narrative parallels end with boyd/abby (acosta) and with the ominous hand emerging out of the soil. but boyd famously did not listen to abby and see what happened, not as a result but as in... correlation or something. so perhaps randall and henry are not as suspish as i think they are?

WHAT.AN.EPISODE.

From confirms what we've known all along: when it comes to the art and craft of storytelling it's the best tv series around.

wow wow wow.

and if you think abt how ep1 ended and you connect that plot-twist with what happens in the beginning of ep 2? WHOA.

ig the man in yellow has a penchant for dramatic reveals: he transforms into a pretty girl and jim is "transformed" into a sacrificial goat. the parallels between the two characters are insane and they reinforce my theory re: the identity of the man in yellow.

i disagre with u all, i don't think Ethan is the man in yellow, i just don't see it.

The man in yellow is a supernatural creature, just like the monsters are and it doesn't need to "reincarnate" into an actual child in order to become the man in yellow.

Ethan and the man in yellow are CONNECTED, of course, but they're not the same person. case in point: the man in yellow IS in town as Sophia so he can't be Ethan as well. And let's say he might be, for whatever magical reason: so what? Ethan is just some sort of "spawn of the devil" made flesh into our world? we've already seen how supernatural pregnancies work in Fromville, lol, why would the "entity inside" the man in yellow to "incarnate" in our world just to go back to Fromville? It doesn't make sense.

No, I still maintain Ethan is the man in yellow's nephew.

anyway. to go back to the episode.

there are just too many things to say. i like that we can't trust Boyd anymore, although Elgin stays suspish. Acosta and her little monologue on hell was interesting and I'm sure she'll be the catalyst for some other big traged bc she's the new jim: annoying in a white-supremacist way, know-it-all without having anything to back her confidence up, convinced she will save the town or at least herself as if the others are just idiots.

julie is starting to be my fave character, the storywalking arc is one of the best of the series.

kenny needs to be protected at all cost bc I AM SCARED FOR OUR BOY. SCARED.

jade is still under-shock and that makes sense so far but i need him to wake the fuck up.

SARA AND SOPHIA? very weird, weird vibes. im not sure if Sara is suspish of Sophia, I'd say yes bc they're both "church girls" and look what Sara did, lmao. I mean, if there's one person who can call Sophia's bluff is Sara, let's be honest.

Everyone in the fandom seems to have had it enough with Tabitha but I dunno... I feel like I still have it in me to cut her some slack, you all want her to be the perfect mother and the perfect wife, not to mention you're obsessed to ship her with Jade as if that's all that matters to her character while I see a woman who's going through hell. Worse than her only Fatima. and, I MEAN, Fatima's been through almost literal hell. So. that says a lot.

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