From: Season 2 (Full Season)

May 2, 2023 8:29 PM - Season 2 (Full Season)

The town gets a new busload of naive visitors.
posted by porpoise (40 comments total)

I'm a total chump and watching this in realtime instead of waiting for the entire season to be released.

Through the first two episodes, it's working enough for me to keep watching.

The treatment of the newcomers from the former-newcomers is done allright. I kind of want to go rewatch the original to compare the treatment of new-newcomers, and their responses.
posted by porpoise at 8:32 PM on May 2, 2023

If I was Boyd, I'd be asking for mega doses of helminthics (anti-worm medicine - like, ivermectin, ironically).
posted by porpoise at 9:45 PM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

That is an *excellent* idea, porpoise. I'm out until the season finale drops.
posted by Mogur at 2:58 AM on May 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm definitely waiting until the end of the season before I continue. Despite claims of learning from Lost, at this point the questions keep piling up and very few are answered. Looking at the fan forums, a lot of viewers at this point are feeling that way. Season 3 has been confirmed, but I think they need to realize that viewers are gonna need a bit more than "believe us there's a plan" to stick with the show.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:33 AM on May 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I got sucked into this show but realised very quickly that my approach will be to watch/mock each episode as it comes rather than expecting solution to any mystery.

It seems obvious that they're making it up as they go along, so I'll just tell myself that it's hell and/or the dreams of that boy in white.
posted by Marticus at 6:13 PM on May 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm digging this season so far! Excited to see where it goes.

I admit to having bias in terms of dragging out the mystery, since the more seasons we get, the more work I get as a BG actor. So here's hoping they don't really answer anything until season 6 or 7.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:24 AM on May 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mogur - is it ok if we spoiler this Season post?

For season waiters, I could remember to make a FanFare Talk post for when the season's done so you can take this off of your Recent Activities until then.

Hurray mrjohnmuller! For a second when I saw BG, "What does being a Battlestar Galactica actor have to do with the From universe?"

Did your BG character survive until the end of the season? =)
posted by porpoise at 9:40 PM on May 5, 2023

Season 1 Pilot, 2nd episode

Setup
- something fearful about sundown/ night
- an ugly thing (talsiman) by the door; touched
- first introduction of the 'let me in' seduction trope

After the skip
- in retrospect, completely idiotic that even a kid wouldn't have been seduced every night since they were there and would have been gobbled up or witnessed and thus know to demur

Fast forwarding
- newcomers arrive in the middle of a funeral
- SOP: designated greeter/ informer-person; might not be for the best
- (and everyone else is confrontation-averse and - reasonably - dour)

- "see for yourselves" ; must have been earlier in the day, time was available
- until it wasn't

Fast forwarding
- kid "stuck" in the RV is a nice plot bit
- only until >47' that the newcomers get pushed about getting indoors, and most of them have been receiving - or continue to receive - critical aid

So very large circumstances compared to this batch of newbies.

e02

- newbie in RV needed quality physical restraint
- "runners on the hill" - someone grabs a shotgun (knowing that they're ineffective against the supernatural), the intention is to disuade entry-level of seriousness
- at least one SOP has been established, not seeing any commentary about that - or disappointingly, continuation of information (or, much)*

So, not that much pushback the first 48 hours, but totally different circumstances

If this really ends up being a "if we don't remember history" thing, I'm...

It'll have to depend on how competently its done.
posted by porpoise at 10:45 PM on May 5, 2023

Mogur - is it ok if we spoiler this Season post?

Go for it, I think I want to know what happens before I invest the time in actually watching it.
posted by Mogur at 2:59 AM on May 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Okay, I watched another episode. Did Ellis the Sheriff's son actually say "We didn't learn anything! We're right back where we started!" to his dad? 'cause that's a writer trolling us if I ever saw one.
posted by Mogur at 5:39 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am so ready to be spoilered.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:32 PM on May 8, 2023

Did your BG character survive until the end of the season? =)

I can neither confirm nor deny. I wasn't available for the last bit of filming, so I don't know what happens. If they have me back for season 3 then I guess I survived!
posted by mrjohnmuller at 4:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

And in the latest edition of how the show is straight up just trolling us, I give you Jim talking to Tabitha and saying "Why? What the fuck is the point of all of this?"

My thoughts exactly, Jim.
posted by Mogur at 7:17 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh man I'm going to have to watch this episode aren't I? Welp, I have to do laundry today so I guess this will be my laundry watching material.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:30 PM on May 14, 2023

Theory from reddit that I find compelling: The worms are going to protect Boyd from the monsters and extend his life span. The monsters couldn't kill Martin because he was infected with the worms. Instead they trapped him in a faraway tree and chained him up. The worms have been keeping Martin alive for years shackled to the wall without food or water. In order for Martin to die he had to remove his worms by passing them onto a new host
posted by miss-lapin at 10:21 AM on May 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

In our latest episode, the writers get all passive-aggressive with us. After Jim gives Boyd his latest theory - that this is just a cruel psychology experiment - he adds, frustrated (we all are, Jim) "Well, if you have a more rational explanation for all this, I'd like to hear it!"
posted by Mogur at 5:07 AM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

How dare they give us a Donna free episode! At this point she's the only one I like.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:37 AM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

If they just keep teasing stuff every episode, they need to cram more in. It feels like a 20 min show stretched out to 50 min.
posted by Marticus at 4:21 PM on May 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

According to those who have seen leaked scripts ep 6 is supposed to be scary but yeah my hope for this show is gone.
posted by miss-lapin at 4:55 PM on May 21, 2023

Hey, something interesting happened this episode.

When it happened I hoped for more of a reaction to show that things weren't just returning to business as usual. Hopefully there are more worms.
posted by Marticus at 2:30 AM on May 28, 2023

So pretty much nothing happens for five eps and then they packed ep 6 to the brim. They need to work on their pacing. At least now I'm cautiously interested. Very cautiously.

It does seem the the theory that the worms protect Boyd from the monsters is true and perhaps Martin was chained up precisely so he wouldn't be able to share them with other humans trapped in Fromville.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:13 PM on May 28, 2023

Another episode in which a lot of things happen. I wish they hadn't wasted so much time at the beginning of the season.

My biggest issue was doing the autopsy inside particularly in a key building. They don't know if there is anything toxic to them in the body or what. I'd be autopsying that thing outside at the very least.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:51 PM on June 4, 2023

I was more concerned with it not being completely dead and thought they should have done that in the jail.

Still feels like it's padded out without revealing more than one small bit each time. The music box seems to be the next focus.
posted by Marticus at 12:31 AM on June 5, 2023

I mean there seemed to be a lot of safety issues (what if it's not dead, what if there is something dangerous INSIDE its body) that no one seemed concerned about except Kenny and even his concerns weren't really articulated well. The way they handled it seems like all around the worst way ever including Kristi just stabbing away after very little exploration. That was a lot of idiot ball for that group.

FINALLY Tabitha tells SOMEONE about the tunnels. That was just killing me. And the way she did it, casually mentioning it like she hasn't been keeping it to herself just...infuriating.

Even with things happening and being less frustrated with the pace, the writing is still pretty crap. I'll be impressed if it lasts through s3.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:46 AM on June 5, 2023

They made a point of mentioning that the fluid was bile - and I could see it was yellow. In modern medicine, bile is secreted by the gall bladder as an aid to digestion, but in medieval thought was one of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood). Yellow bile itself was "associated with a choleric nature (ambitious, decisive, aggressive, and short-tempered). The associated qualities for yellow bile are hot and dry with the natural association of summer and fire. It was believed that an excess of this humor in an individual would result in emotional irregularities such as increased anger or behaving irrationally." (Wikipedia)
posted by Mogur at 10:18 AM on June 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I can't believe Donna fell for that shit. Jim, sure, but not Donna.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:11 PM on June 11, 2023

I don't know why everyone wanted to hide the monster's corpse, that would have been a morale booster more than anything.

Everyone's off doing their own thing rather than working together. And what happened to Jim, he's really hogging the idiot ball?
posted by Marticus at 11:11 PM on June 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jim was going the way of Boyd's wife.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:15 AM on June 12, 2023

Well, that episode established Cicadas.

I hope for a collab with Seth Meyers and his play Cicada Cicada!
posted by Marticus at 1:42 AM on June 19, 2023

I'm staying for the finale but once this season is over, I'm out. I don't see how they can save the series after this season.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:44 PM on June 19, 2023

Maybe with werewolves?
posted by Marticus at 4:36 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

More like werecicadas?
posted by miss-lapin at 5:28 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

That ending, really? And all the heavy handed crap about hope?

I don't understand how season 1 was so well done, and this was season 2.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:32 PM on June 24, 2023

At least there's a little progress, even if the whole thing continues to have the logic of a fever dream. Still a bit frustrating that the few who are actively investigating still go their own way for every little thing.

With Tabitha apparently in the real world again, it might hint at not actually being purgatory; so I'm leaning to magic boy (sans cornfield).
posted by Marticus at 12:14 AM on June 25, 2023

A lot of people posited this is how the season would end even before the episode script was leaked, and I was like "If that's it, I'm definitely out." That whole people in a coma going to another realm has just been done to death for me. It's a trope that I've never had a lot of patience, but when it's the finale to such a mess of a season yeah.

Plus the whole OMG DREAMS WILL KILL US arc was over so fast. Consider how much different this season would have been if instead of the 5 episode of melodrama, those 5 eps were reduced to two and the dream killing you arc started episode three. It gives having a serious supernatural threat to the heart of the season instead of Boyd having to go every episode. So having that threat destroyed at the end of the season gives a feeling of some victory and dovetails nicely with the wedding. Instead we had a serious threat that was rushed through after waiting half a season for anything to happen.
posted by miss-lapin at 12:29 AM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

The arcs and pacing (the lack thereof) I could forgive. Everyone being incredibly annoying, not so much.

"I actually allowed myself to believe that there was a plan to all of this."

I read the hope thing as a pseudo Buddhist "desire = suffering" or something.
posted by porpoise at 9:02 AM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've definitely given up on there being some sort of original take here. At the beginning of the season, yes, I absolutely believed in the writers' ability to pull something like off, but now? The whole dreams will kill us arc convinced me that the solution is likely something incredibly disappointing that could easily be discovered if Boyd didn't always have to go so a five minute conversation could actually happen.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:00 AM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't read it as awakening from a coma, but being ejected from the town-space onto the hiking trail where she was found. Maybe I keep being generous to the writers because there are occasional good scenes despite the whole thing barely hanging together.

Like, if there was some direction behind the story, next season could have Tabitha being visited by Victor's sister who's some bigshot FBI agent or something and has been hunting for clues about the town after being shoved out that lighthouse herself.
posted by Marticus at 3:24 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't read it as awakening from a coma, but being ejected from the town-space onto the hiking trail where she was found. Maybe I keep being generous to the writers because there are occasional good scenes despite the whole thing barely hanging together.

Extremely same.

This show is very inconsistent, but it keeps delivering bits that are genuinely compelling through their creepiness or emotive content (such as the fiancée's arrival) that I keep watching. I do sincerely hope they have a plan for the overall arc of the series because it's not very clear at this point whether there will be anything satisfying or whether they're just making up more mystery as they go along.
posted by Cogito at 11:33 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

This show is so, so bad.
I don’t usually hate-watch stuff but we did that thing where we got the 1 week free trial of Paramount+ so we could watch The Curse but then I didn’t cancel in time (fuck!) so we’re stuck with a month of it and we had watched a few episodes of this show but we’ve now just suffered through the rest of it just to see how it ends before our month is up. Guess we’ll never know, since there’s a season 3.
We laughed, LAUGHED I tell you, at the whole music box thing and then OH NO SCARY BALLERINA. So dumb. Trying so hard to be LOST, even the music cues were dead rip-offs. And so many lazy tropes, such as the Joe Rogan truther “maybe that’s what they want you to think” guy, and the everpopular Mysterious-But-Wise-Child-Man-Who-Only-Teases-Out-A-Bit-Of-Info-At-A-Time™ (it’s funny because I recognized the guy who plays him, he was a friend of my film school classmate in the 90s and was in all her films.)
Couple of specific things:
• Every scene with Tabitha and her husband Discount Paul Rudd is excruciatingly bad and sends me to my phone until it’s over. Also their kids. That whole family can go.
• How did Jade (Jay? Jade? I don’t care enough to look it up), who seems to be perpetually channeling Griffin Dunne in After Hours, suddenly get a perm in this town?
posted by chococat at 8:44 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]