Unpacking The Confounding Two-Part Premiere Of ‘Before’

It’s unusual for me, but I’m perfectly happy to say I have no idea what’s going on in Before. The confounding drama from Sarah Thorp, streaming on Apple TV+, builds the outline of its plot in Episodes 1 & 2, “The Imposter” and “The Scientist”, but that outline is extremely hazy.

This is by design, of course. Asking questions but not answering them is a key dramatic principle. It keeps audiences invested. But Before is all questions, all the time, and just when you feel like you’ve reached the outer boundary of its weirdness, it gets weirder still. If nothing else, it makes for ideal October viewing.

Anyway, of primary concern are Eli, a widowed child psychologist, and an odd child named Noah who is selectively mute and keeps having visions of trickling water and Lovecraftian tentacles sprouting from his bedroom walls. There’s some kind of connection between these two, and between a cabin Noah keeps drawing eerie pictures of, but I have no idea what. Yet.

Eli, Meet Noah

In Episode 1 of Before, it’s immediately clear that Eli is grieving. He dreams of a man repeatedly diving into an empty swimming pool until his head splits open, and he converses with visions of his dead wife, Lynn. The first we see of the cabin is in a picture on his fridge, which his wife asks him the significance of. He doesn’t seem to know.

We meet Noah scratching something into Eli’s front door until his fingers bleed. He doesn’t speak or explain himself and runs off when Eli confronts him; the symbols carved into the door don’t seem to mean anything. But they must, mustn’t they?

Eli, as mentioned, is a child psychologist, but he’s worried that in his present state, he can’t do his job properly. He tells his therapist that he won’t even use the main bathroom, which is where Lynn committed suicide. He’s haunted by the loss and presumably fearful of any more trauma he might take on via osmosis in the course of his work. But it’s equally obvious that his work is important to him, and that he cares deeply about the children he works with, so when his colleague, Gail, tells him about a case that requires his urgent attention, he strongly considers it.

Eli Takes Noah’s Case

That night, Eli wakes up to find Noah standing creepily by his bed, and after a bit of kindly back-and-forth, follows him home (not creepily – it’s strongly implied Noah wants him to follow.) There, he’s Maced by Noah’s foster mother, Denise, who gives some vague intimations about Noah’s behavior but no concrete details. Noah hands Eli a very detailed sketch of his home, and he leaves Noah to his dreams – visions? – of leaking water and creeping tentacles.

Naturally, the case Gail wanted Eli to look into is Noah’s. At this point, five foster homes on, he’s the kid’s only hope at normality. But their early sessions are fraught with more weirdness; the water and the tentacles, Noah speaking in a foreign language that later turns out to be 17th-century Dutch, and visions of Lynn bleeding from the nose.

I’ve got to be honest – I think I’d leave this kid to it.

Before | Image via Apple TV+

Spiraling

Eli becomes more and more psychologically undone throughout Before Episode 1, and he isn’t exactly even keel by Episode 2. Then again, neither is Noah. Eli’s efforts to communicate with him in Dutch fall flat, but he has produced another drawing – this one depicts that log cabin, further establishing a connection between Eli and Noah that neither of them seems to understand.

Noah is prone to violence. He attacked Eli in their first meeting, attacked a kid at school while he was tripping about the tentacles, and in the opening of “The Scientist”, Eli has a vivid dream about Eli stabbing him in the neck with a pen. Nothing about the kid makes sense, but Eli still senses something deeply amiss and asks Gail to have every test possible conducted on him to see if there’s any underlying medical cause behind his behavior. Of course, aside from the MRI scan sending him into a screaming fit and a weirdly shaped birthmark on his chest that I’m sure will matter later, Noah is physiologically fine.

Eli Has A Connection to Noah

It’s clear from Episodes 1 & 2 of Before that Eli has a connection to Noah, though at present it’s not at all clear what it might be. Both characters are severely mentally unwell and have limited support systems outside of one another. Eli has his daughter, Barbara, but their relationship is strained, and he keeps things from her (such as smashing up his house in a meltdown). Noah has Denise, but as well-intentioned as she might be, she’s unsure of how to deal with him or what he’s afraid of.

The most obvious link between the two characters for most of the premiere is the log cabin that seems to feature in all of Noah’s sketches. But things become a little more explicit at the end of Episode 2. While working with Noah, Eli compels him to play a game where they build little towers with blocks, each block representing something that makes them angry. Noah’s choices are mostly understandable child-like things – Denise refusing to take him home from the hospital, people being mean to others, etc. – but he quickly gets carried away.

By the end of the game, Noah is speaking in Eli’s voice and directly accusing him of killing his wife – or being more involved in her death than he’s letting on, at least – and lying to everyone about it. So, there’s a connection for you. How accurate it is, and how Noah relates to it, is anyone’s guess, but it certainly throws Eli for a loop. The audience isn’t far behind.