Summary
Episode 4 is the best instalment of The Institute thus far, which each major subplot reaching key turning points.
I’m resigned to the idea of The Institute being a slow burn. It’s a mystery box on two fronts, drip-feeding minor clues and reveals without being in any hurry to get where it’s going. That can definitely create a feeling of dramatic inertia. But Episode 4, “The Box”, is the first time that the series has felt urgent, and on multiple fronts to boot. It would be fair to say that at this point, I’m invested, though it took a while to get here.
But it had to happen. The two main arcs both reached crucial crux points in the most recent episode, with Tim rightly becoming deeply suspicious about Annie’s death and Kalisha being suddenly sent to the Back Half, reiterating to Luke, Nicky, George, and Avery that they were working against the clock. “The Box” picks up these threads directly, but you can feel the change in tone. Luke’s efforts to withstand various forms of torture are more desperate, the Institute’s leadership squabbles are becoming more obvious, and Tim won’t be told no. The whole show works better as a result.
In the institute itself, more candidates arrive, though I suspect they’re a means to an end. Two of them are The Shining-style creepy twins, Gerda and Greta, and the third is Harry, a big kid with an aggressive, bullying demeanour who seems to soften a bit when the other kids send him sprawling onto his face. Sigsby allows the confrontation to play out uninterrupted, to see how the kids respond to stress. Given she’s already suspicious about what Stackhouse and Hendricks are doing to the kids behind her back, it’s a bit of a weird flex to endanger them even further. There’s something off about Harry and his sudden arrival, even before his presence becomes actively murderous.
This is what I was saying about the new arrivals being a means to an end. Harry later responds very badly to the drugs the kids are pumped full of as part of their initiation, and a bit after that, he strikes one of the twins around the head with a dumbbell, quite clearly killing her. The crucial detail is that Luke sees this in advance, as a snippet of the future, and then tries to intervene. Since he was close enough to see the carnage first-hand, Sigsby’s obviously false description of events sounds even more ridiculous.
But the point is to introduce the idea that Luke can see the future. This is an outgrowth of his burgeoning telepathic powers, which is the entire point of his being repeatedly tortured under the guise of various “tests”, one of which is the titular box. From what I’ve gathered, any facility in TP or TK suggests the ability to develop a talent in the other, and Luke is very much at that point, as we’ve seen. But he’s deliberately trying to downplay his blossoming abilities so that he isn’t sent to the Back Half, since the general theory is that it’ll be impossible to escape from there. What Hendricks and Stackhouse are doing, though, is rushing Luke down the PC path – PC presumably stands for “precog”, which is presumably a contraction of “precognitive”, in other words, someone who can see the future and be sold on to big bidders.
This is happening behind Sigsby’s back. When she figures out what’s going on, she tries to have Luke sent to the Back Half immediately, but Hendricks resists the notion on the grounds that connecting him to “The Hum” before his TP abilities have properly manifested could be calamitous. Hendricks must surely know at this point that Luke’s TP abilities have manifested, and that he’s lying to try to remain in the Front Half. Sigsby has figured this out, so he must have too. So, why does Hendricks want to keep Luke out of the Back Half?
Speaking of which, The Institute Episode 4 gives us our first glimpse of the Back Half, accessible very briefly through Kalisha’s mind. Since she’s a TP, Luke is a developing TP, and Avery is a TP of unusual plot-convenient power, they can create a kind of psychic daisy chain that allows them to communicate in private and see through Kalisha’s eyes. She gives them a brief tour of the place, where everyone seems dangerously strung-out and suffers from increasingly bad headaches, especially after movie nights. The movie nights are vaguely described, but we don’t have enough information for me to confidently comment on their purpose yet. But “The Hum” is also mentioned, a persistent low drone coming from the so-called “Recovery Room” that is clearly deeply interactive with telepathic powers. This is what Hendricks mentions to Sigsby, and when Avery tries to look inside, it severs the telepathic link to Kalisha.
Mary-Louise Parker in The Institute | Image via MGM+
The only person who might have an idea of what goes on in the recovery room, at least according to Avery, is Maureen, which is perhaps just as well since she’s the only vaguely sympathetic staffer, even though part of me thinks she’s still playing a long con. But the idea of the PC track in a roundabout way connects to Tim’s plot, which didn’t quite occur to me until this episode.
It involves Annie. Remember, in the previous episode, Tim found Annie dead from an apparent overdose, which he’s deeply suspicious about since he not only never saw Annie imbibe any substances, but she made a point of clarifying that she never does so as not to compromise her abilities. Her… precognitive abilities.
Tim’s boss isn’t interested in any theories. Annie was perceived as a conspiracy theorist nutter, and her death, while tragic, isn’t worth the money and time to investigate unless there’s any concrete evidence that foul play was involved. Tim believes there is, given the fact she didn’t drink and there was none of her trademark lipstick on the vodka bottle that supposedly killed her, but Wendy is his only ally for the time being.
When Tim presents his findings to Wendy, though, he makes an argument that led me to a theory. When Annie told him about the plane crash that killed a senator, she did so before it made the news, implying that she knew about it in advance. Was Annie a precog, perhaps one who escaped from the Institute? It would make sense.
Either way, Tim has a lead – the drowning of several teenagers at the Red Steps, an area that Annie has a hand-drawn map of. Wendy went to high school with the victims, and they feature in her yearbook. She also lets Tim borrow her car. If nothing else, it’s a start, and The Institute Episode 4 has that very distinct feeling of a show that, following a start, won’t be able to stop until the end. I’m just thankful it finally got going.
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