It’s Good To Be Back

From is quite possibly the most underrated show on TV. Those who have heard of the show tend to be diehard fans, eagerly telling everyone they know to please for the love of all that is holy, watch this show. Most people have probably never heard of it or the streaming service you can watch it on: MGM+.

I didn’t even know about MGM+ until I had so many readers tell me to watch this show that I finally got around to it, quickly binging Season 1 earlier this year. If this was a Netflix show, it would be a massive hit. But I don’t mind that it’s a little more obscure, a little less popular. It has that fun, cult-hit vibe. We’ve found something good and special that nobody else knows about.

In any case, it’s exciting to be back in this strange little town with its mysterious nocturnal monsters. I think it’s safe to say that they’re vampires, but a very different take on the classic blood-sucking villains. These are some of the most terrifying, gruesome monsters ever. They toy with their food. They seem to subsist not on blood, but on fear. And there is plenty of that to go around in From.

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This is a bit like the evil presence in one of my other favorite shows, Yellowjackets, which seems to feed off of fear as well. Hopefully From doesn’t have the weird slip in quality that I’ve noticed in Yellowjackets Season 2, but if the premiere is anything to go by, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

Well, there’s plenty to worry about, but it’s of the fictional, monstrous variety rather than bad writing. Here’s where things stand as of the season premiere, which picks up literally seconds after Season 1 ended:

• Boyd (Lost alum Harold Perrineau) is still stuck at the bottom of what appears to be a dry well. He had gone through a Faraway tree and ended up in the second worst possible spot you can imagine. We’ll get to the worst spot in a moment. In any case, after shouting for help he finally hears a voice. An old man up above who says he’ll help Boyd if Boyd returns the favor. A moment later a rope drops down and Boyd climbs out, faltering momentarily when he has a vision of his son down below. At the top, he finds an old man chained to the wall like he’s in some Medieval dungeon. The whole place feels like some stone castle or something. The man has apparently been kept alive here for a very long time. He asks Body to kill him.
• The worst place a Faraway tree can take you is where Victor (Scott McCord) ends up, though it’s lucky he does. He’s transported to the catacombs below the town where the vampires sleep—just in time to meet up with Tabitha (Catalina Sandino Moreno). He has a hard time convincing her to please be quiet for the love of god because you don’t want to wake the vampires up for obvious reasons. At one point, they come into a chamber with odds and ends and Victor sees a ventriloquist puppet. This—not the slumbering monsters—is what terrifies him so badly he almost shuts down completely, and Tabitha has to basically force him to escape with her. Which brings us to . . .
• Jade (David Alpay) and Ethan (Simon Webster). Along with Victor, these are my favorite characters. It’s these three who have, in a sense, joined forces on a holy quest to defeat or outsmart the vampires and escape. Ethan is the squire. Victor is the old knight. And Jade is the brilliant jester that hates everyone, thinks way too highly of himself, and still manages to steal every scene he’s in. I love that guy. He’s also fascinating because he can see things other people can’t: The strange symbol that keeps appearing and—in a truly bizarre, frightening and hilarious scene—the same ventriloquist doll that scares Victor. He rightly suspects that Victor is the guy to turn to for answers and even brings Ethan into his hunt for the truth, showing him the journal. Ethan says that symbols are important in quests, but they can be good or bad. Sometimes symbols can make people do bad things, he says ominously. “You’re a creepy kid,” Jade replies.

• Newcomers have arrived in the town by way of bus. One freaks out when he wakes up and sees them pulling into town. At first, I thought he was a survivor who had previously escaped, but he says he just had a dream about the place. I’m not sure. The other big shocker is the arrival of a nurse who just so happens to be Kristi’s fiancé. That’s no coincidence. The vampires must be targeting who they snare in their demonic web. They’re happy to see each other, but it’s a hard break for Kenny (Ricky He) who was just making some progress wooing Kristi. And, well, it’s a tough break for everyone on the bus, because things are about to get very, very bad.
• Finally, in his desperate attempt to dig down rescue his wife, Jim (Eion Bailey) enlists the help of the bartender and two of the guys off the bus but the more rubble they clear, the more the house shudders and shakes. They try to escape but it topples down on them, trapping three of them inside. If I had one critique of this episode, it would be that I don’t think Jim would refuse to leave as the house came down. He has two kids to worry about. He’s an engineer, not some dummy. And he saw the chamber below where Tabitha could have made her way to safety. At the very least, he knew there wouldn’t be time to clear any more rubble, so refusing to leave when the house was collapsing just felt silly. The big question: Will he survive the night?

The answer to that question, in my humble opinion, is yes. Some of the bus people ran off when Donna (Elizabeth Saunders) shot the tire off the bus. Kenny’s attempt to calm people down by firing his pistol in the air didn’t help matters, either. These poor suckers are all dead meat. They’ll provide a nice distraction for our heroes to make it to safety or, in Jim’s case, make it through the night. Assuming he’s not too injured already. Maybe half the bus’s population survives the first night. Next week’s episode will be a bloody one, I reckon.

All told, a great episode that felt just like Season 1. No tonal shift, no weird changes. This could easily be Season 1, Episode 11 and that’s fine by me. What did you think? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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