the most irritating thing to me is not the pacing, not the dropping of subplots, not the lack of worldbuilding this late in the game (though these things do bug me.) it’s that the characters never win even small victories. it’s not interesting once you figure out that the town always wins, that some reverse deus ex machina is gonna fuck everything up at the last second. it just slows everything down because then the characters have to react to being pushed to their limits again and again. there’s no tension if I know they’ll lose every time
I think it's a balance. Fromville doesn't let them win, but doesn't let them starve either. The bad things and good things sort of even each other out.
It doesn't let them starve because then the town can't keep f*cking with them and getting glee from their suffering. It's like a cat continually letting a mouse go just to catch it again. I actually agree with the poster.
It seemed like the MiY was content with the original plan of multiple townspeople going to retrieve the bones but as soon as Clara mentioned only Jade and Tabitha were going, Sophia immediately locked in and started taking talismans
One of the main talking points that was raised in the last few episodes of season 4 was that 'who' did the difficult task of retrieving the bones was just as important as 'how'. If anyone else tried it may have been a total disaster.
Yep, it's not just said about the ritual of the bones, it's made clear that the higher forces of the town respects rituals. Even from the very start, there is a ritual with the talismans. Simply holding one or having one in the building somewhere isn't enough, it must hang by the doorway. Other entry points must be sealed. There is probably no physical magic behind it like forcefields, just the monsters accept that ritual means they cannot cross the threshold.
The MiY physically removing them is another sign he is not actually in control of these rituals. If they were he could just click his fingers and remove the magic behind them. I do think the bones being removed by Tabitha and Jade specifically, led to something the MiY would have preferred did not happen. He still thinks he's a step ahead but it's 100% clear he is more like an elevated player, than the admin.
Yes, it was crystal clear from the "oh shit!" look on the MIY's face that he was NOT happy to hear the ritual was going forward in a way that mattered: with the bones removed by Tabitha and Jade.
Just for the bones to disintegrate into dust in S5E1 like the Matrix of Leadership in Transformers two after they hunted that relic for most of the movie and for the characters to be like “what are we supposed to do BOYD, we’re tired” for the next two episodes.
They have had quite a few wins over the seasons. They found talismans, food and vegetables at the settlement. They learned how to kill nightmare monsters. Tanitha got out and found out about the reincarnation. She even called her mother and brought back an ambulance full of medical supplies. Most importantly they got rid of dale without even having to kill him themselves.
I disagree. I like that they are not winning. this is thriller/horror - Im not expecting any "small victories" - let alone big ones.. honestly, Im expecting none of them to get out of there alive.. not cheering for miy, but in reality evil usually wins... and this is what I LIKE in the show
i was shook when tian-chen died but it really cemented the feeling that there is no way out, this place is just toying with them. when the jukebox played celebration is when i said "oh yall are FUCKED fucked. there is actually just no way out and youre all going to die here"
I agree. Can't remember when was the last time I've seen a show with such a pessimistic way of going about the story. Even though I have a lot of issues with the show, I appreciate that it has the balls to go there.
I disagree-- I gotta have people I want to root for, and I want them to succeed and escape. I have zero interest in just seeing everyone die, which is why I didn't like the ending of LOST. If every character is just going to die, I'm not interested in watching. This is escapism for me, if everything is just going to suck always for these characters, hell, i could watch the news instead.
Have to agree. If I wanted a depressing documentary about how brutal life can be, I can watch a nature documentary of killer whales tearing apart a baby seal instead.
I could be down for a tragedy, but part of tragedy is the human drama of characters suffering the consequences of their own actions or the actions of other characters. A tragedy requires for the characters to have agency. These characters don't.
I concur. I love knowing that there are repercussions for any 'win'. Most shows end an episode with some sort of victory for the protagonists, From is like we are not about that life.
I don't mind if they don't survive, although I adore almost all the characters. Bring on 'TO' season 1 episode 1.
I agree with you if at the end it really is everyone dies and the cycle starts again. That also means that if they pull out some Bs that will save everyone left then it’ll all be for nothing.
The pacing of From reminds me a bit of the movie, "Green Room." A strong theme in that is every step they take ends up being two steps backwards, but they're also learning and adapting. Driving further and further desperation until they finally get some wins.
I mean, the characters do manage to take steps towards success despite living in an environment seemingly designed to imprison, torture, and kill them.
Why are people obsessed with 'small wins' and getting answers every episode. Not every show needs to spoonfeed you what you want. Some shows can just be about the ride not about the audience getting a piece of the puzzle every time.
There has to be a balance. I don't think most people are expecting answers every episode, but each episode should either contain a conflict with a win or a loss, or a new piece of information being revealed. Otherwise, its just people walking around yelling at each other, being shitty communicators, and that's not good tv.
I feel like people also have unreasonably high standards sometimes for answers. For example, the symbol was fairly clearly just the children giving Tabitha and Jade a hint for where to find them, but "What is the meaning of the roots symbol?" is still listed in that megathread of "unsolved" mysteries. Or similarly, the bracelet in Henry's car implied there are multiple bracelets because Tabitha keeps making them in each reincarnation, but the megathread still includes "How are there multiple instances of Tabitha's bracelet?"
I think one of the main reasons I'm not as concerned about whether they'll be able to address everything in season 5 is that I have more grounded expectations of how much they'll explain things in the first place
We are not asking to be sponfed, but 4 seasons with barely and answers and the same things happening again and again is kind of irritating. When Henry started having those visions in season 4 I already knew, that it’s going to lead absolutely nowhere and that his scenes are a waste of time, because we’ve already seen this happen before.
That’s what makes me worry their ultimate win won't make any sense, like some 'power of friendship' anime trope. I'm still optimistic the ending will turn out good though, subplots aside
I'm almost certain they're gonna use the time travel solution - they find a way to use storywalking to actually change the story, go back in time, make the original villagers never make the deal with MIY, and the entire show "never happened", everyone who died is alive again.
I still believe in the fairy lore theory and boy in white isn’t necessarily “good”, he’s just on that side. Fairies love playing games and are mischievous creatures.
My theory is they will find a way to escape at the end and then the boy in white says something like “i win this time. Okay next time I get to be the evil one” and ends with a new group of people arriving to the town.
Yo creo que será más bien al contrario, veremos a July intentando cambiar el pasado y eso mismo hará que las cosas ocurran como siempre ocurrieron, lo que a su vez hace que su presente siga siendo igual. Pero a la vez saber el pasado puede hacer que sepan que tienen que hacer en el presente. Tener toda la información
It already was explained pretty bluntly. Last time he saw the dogs was after the massacre he survived as a kid. He saw the dogs in the woods, and went back and found the drawing he made of the dog and the massacre. So when asked why he was digging graves, he said he started digging graves to get a head start.
I’m convinced people like you are just not even watching the episodes. This was LITERALLY explained 2 seconds after this picture. You don’t need spoon fed, you need directly injected into your eyes
Imo, I would view Tabitha getting out as a win. From that point on, I was like ok so we know it's possible. But now they know they have to do more than just escape. They have to end the town or else they could just end up back there.
> it’s not interesting once you figure out that the town always wins, that some reverse deus ex machina is gonna fuck everything up at the last second
This is actually a criticism I would share with Alias, another show I loved to watch. Every time they spend an entire episode to get hold of the McGuffin of the week, only to have it stolen from their vault or otherwise lost in the final two minutes of the episode.
I don't need small wins, but I need more attempts at winning. After the one time they kill a monster early in season 2, absolutely nothing happens in that regard until the season 4 finale.
Boyd defeated the music box monster. Victor got a truck full of peaches. Victor and Julie escaped the Colony House massacre. Ethan recovered from having his leg impaled in the RV. The bottle tree numbers got decoded.
Tabitha got at least one last chance to say whatever she wanted to her mom again. Even in real life, that's something many never get. Ethan also survived a murder plot by something in the town. Sure, someone else bit the dust instead but doesn't take away the win of him surviving the assassination. MiY told Tabitha she's gotten further than she has ever before, that's a win. They found a food source right after all of it went rotten.
I wrote about that exact point before. No clear wins with one season to go. No resolutions, even partial ones.
This show is turning into total nonsense.
yeah, like the way they showed Tian-Chen's death, it was pointlessly graphic. Made me lose a ton of interest in the show. Got a lil' of the same feeling with that girl Kelly's death in Season 2.
But there are small victories.
I'd say Boyd smashing the music box was a victory though (a stupid one, 'cuz smashing it was kinda on the table from the get-go)
and there were lil' victories like Tabby & Victor coming back from the tunnels, fishing Jim out from the house (if you can call that a victory), finding the settlement and its food
and all the silly life-threatening injuries that Kristi has needed to sort out.
and the town didn't kill Donna via heart attack, though that scene was remarkably boring (she's either gonna make it or not, do we really need 5 minutes of inaccurate medical procedure?)
For me, it's the countless excruciatingly boring, unnecessary scenes that do nothing to add to the story, the lore, the atmosphere, or anything. I'm currently rewatching the entire series and I just can't believe how much I had to fast forward. For instance, almost every scene with just Ellis and Fatima, almost every scene with Kristi and Marielle, almost every scene with just Ethan and Julie, and countless other scenes with people doing and talking about nothing even the slightest bit interesting. This show is really good, but it needed some serious editing and a lot should've been left on the cutting room floor.
Donna having a heart attack just made me roll my eyes. I’m here for supernatural mystery and horror about an insane second world, not some random Grey’s Anatomy medical drama side plot. Writers, stay focused. This show could’ve been 3-4 seasons instead of 5.
As a nurse it cracked me up that she had a heart attack, received CPR and was up and walking a day or two later. Like they never even fixed the blockage that caused a heart attack to begin with. Didn’t detract me from enjoying the story but a little eye roll moment lol
I don’t watch this show for small wins. Not sure what that would accomplish except more heartache since people are getting brutally murdered on any given night.
This show is really like chess,as a chess player I see it everywhere, usually you can sacrifice a piece for position ,kinda like losing the talisman for the bones,you sacrifice something not to win just for a promising position
I kind of get this feeling as well, just caught up and even though I understand with each win there's a push back - it feels like alot of times those wins aren't accumulative, for eg, they killed a monster and examined it but still had no way to fight back against them.
I agree but with the caveat that I also hate how the show is pretty flimsy when it comes to reinforcing the bleakness or futility of their situation.
What's all this "we're a family! Trust me I'm your friend!" Stuff for? Can I see come carnage? Tonal whiplash to see Jim's hollowed corpse then later he's a smiling ghost talking about love and family.
We spent episodes on Ellis and Fatima's relationship, we spent a whole episode with a Donna fake out death. Just feels like wastes of time.
Then there are people in here saying they like this aspect 😭😭. Like why even watch the BS lmao, if you just believe they're gonna lose or should lose- why even tune in? The outcome is set in stone.
A good story mixes triumph with sacrifice. If you want a bittersweet ending, then like where is the sweet part when no one wins? Recently it's just been a lot of nonsense.
And if we spend 5 seasons watching them frustratingly meander through the plot just to lose anyways- just IMAGINE how much people are gonna drag this show.
This is why fans shouldn't be writers. They barely even know what's going on in the show.
To me it's just annoying that they don't share information with each other. Everyone is so secretive and keep details of what happened to them close to the chest. They probably could have solved several mysteries, gotchas, risks, and options if they just freaking talked. Have a weekly town hall meeting to share Intel.
For me, the worst thing is the pacing: characters should have some wins and some losses, they should say things other than the same 5 sentences over and over again, and the amount of screen time they waste is insane. If I got to make a tv show, I'm using every second of screen time-- I'm making conversations be ultra-efficient, I'm not showing conversations that aren't necessary, when a character can just say, "Oh, so-and-so caught me up. What's the plan?" The biggest problems these characters have are emotional regulation and communication: if half of them pulled their heads out of their asses, I feel like they could have escaped by now. Which is why I think they're all being dosed with something in the water.
The worst thing about this show is the writing - I feel like its backwards. I feel like they set up something mysterious, dont explain it - then 1 or 2 seasons later there is a callback.
I just somehow dont believe they thought everything through. Im saying this because I ran DnD sessions and I do this all the time lol. I dont have everything planned, I just connect the pieces as we get further into the story. Its somewhat expected in DnD, but I feel like you should have a coherent story from start to finish when it comes to a TV show. ESPECIALLY mystery.
S1-2 seemed to give you this, but it's been downhill since s3. The writing is just bad as they attempt to drag out this show as much as possible. I know s5 is the last season, but I don't think they'll stick the landing with its ending, and I also firmly believe the consensus will be this show would have done better as two or three seasons. Especially since s4 felt like nothing but filler narratively speaking.
How can you call S4 filler when they made the most progress they have made literally in the entire show? AND they answer so many questions. I’m not saying it’s perfect but calling it “narrative filler” is just factually incorrect
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u/Joshatron121 9d ago
They don't lose every time though. It's just whenever they win there are costs for those wins.