Summary
From Season 4 really explores its underpinning ideas about stories and storytelling in “Of Myths and Monsters”, but some of the character decisions continue to irk me.
It’s story time again in From Season 4. Even though the previous episode didn’t feel as thematically specific, it was an important chapter full of building blocks that allow Episode 4, “Of Myths and Monsters”, to calcify into a more focused exploration of storytelling in general and this show’s internal storytelling specifically. Because the characters are starting to realise that they’re in a story of someone else’s design, playing by someone else’s rules, and they’re turning to their own stories – their cultures, their histories, their art and their memories – to understand how they fit. And, obviously, how they might escape.
The discovery of the Man in Yellow’s suit has obviously thrown everyone for a bit of a loop. The easy explanations – that it might be the garish garb of a former resident, for instance – don’t hold much water, so the bigger implications have to be considered. It only appeared recently. Miranda used to paint a man in a similar suit. The mere sight of the clothing caused a grown man to wet himself. Everything points to some existing understanding of what the yellow suit is, what it might mean and to whom, playing into the cyclical underpinnings of the storytelling.
Whatever social hierarchy exists in the Township isn’t making this any easier to parse, since various characters are being kept in the dark about various things that other characters know. Henry has no idea, for instance, about Tabitha and Miranda’s connection, and Boyd is adamant about his not finding out. Fatima isn’t to be told about the yellow suit, either. You can sort of understand the logic behind keeping things siloed, allowing everyone to work on their own tasks, but I also find it difficult to believe that we wouldn’t make more progress if everyone properly put their heads together.
This feels especially pressing since the Township is clearly in its latter ebbs. We’ve got characters still trying to reconcile the idea that most of what is occurring previously only existed as artworks and dreams, and nobody really understands a great deal more now than they did, say, a couple of seasons ago. Jade suggesting that taking magic mushrooms might open his third eye seems as logical a suggestion as any in this kind of context. But it doesn’t mesh well with silly stuff like Jade writing off Ethan’s claims about the Lake of Tears as fanciful childish nonsense. We’re deep enough into the series now that anyone writing off anything as being too far-fetched just feels distractingly awkward. To be fair, though, Tabitha does eventually come around to the idea and agrees to help Ethan find the Lake. It might be out of guilt more than anything else, but if it gets her closer to understanding, then I don’t think it matters much either way.
Randall is similarly dismissive of Julie’s ideas about story-walking, but he, too, ultimately comes around to the idea. Inspired by a book about an elevator repairman named Fred who used bookmarks to move through various stories, Julie suggests deploying the same strategy in the Township. Her justification is that the internal story of the town is kind of bleeding out into the real world and being interpreted through storytellers in the form of paintings and books; in other words, the rules mythologised in children’s books might be the actual rules binding the place together. It’s a bit like only being able to see snippets of a larger image. Nobody has the proper context until the full thing is revealed.
I’ll be totally honest here, though – the theory is a bit convoluted. Julie’s plan involves making a mark on a bookmark, leaving it in the specific “chapter” of the story she visits, which will allow her to go back and forth at will (I think). In a macro sense, she’s trying to work out if things – or indeed people, this being in large part an effort to rescue Jim – can be brought from one part of the story to another. In short: They can’t. Julie is able to visit an earlier point of the timeline, where she encounters the Man in Yellow eating someone, but he charges at her and, in her panic, she drops the bookmark and is pulled to safety by Randall. There’s no connection between her bookmark and the one she dropped. The experiment is, technically, a failure.
But Julie must be on to something. Remember how the Man in Yellow said to her that they had to stop meeting like this? That implies that Julie’s story-walking efforts must become successful, since the Man in Yellow she encounters here in From Season 4, Episode 4 clearly doesn’t recognise her. This must be their first meeting, which means she has to meet him again at least one more time before he made that comment about them meeting. Am I making sense here? Let me know in the comments.
We might as well talk about Sophia while we’re on the subject of the Man in Yellow. Her seemingly inscrutable decision to move in with Sara begins to explain itself in “Of Myths and Monsters”, since there’s a clear link established between Sophia muttering some kind of instruction and Sara hearing the voices in her head, the same ones that compelled her to try and kill Ethan. This time, they want her to visit the diner and pour water into a glass, sip it, and then pour the water back into the pitcher, something which she later confesses to Elgin, who has gotten over the loss of his eye rather quickly. The idea of the Man in Yellow having command over everyone’s minds in this way, explaining away all the instances of seizures and hearing voices, is a pretty alarming one.
Meanwhile, Fatima is making a golem. I know that’s quite a significant thing to just throw in out of nowhere, but this is From we’re talking about, so I’m sure you can forgive me. Besides, it’s logical – at least to her. There’s a folkloric justification for it, something about providing protection and hope to a community, which is a nice idea and fits in with the underlying theme of how we personally interpret and relate to stories. But, again, this is From we’re talking about, so it’s easy to imagine the golem as a symptom of a deeper malaise, as Kenny suggests, or even more worryingly, that it might get up and start walking around. Still, whatever works. If the golem helps Fatima stave off her connection to Smiley, then so be it. At least she’s being proactive.
Speaking of which, so is Victor, who has once again taken to measuring the age of the cycle through the distance between Colony House and the treeline. His measurements support the idea that things are happening quicker than anyone would like. He also provides some more explanation about why the sight of the yellow suit caused him to have such an adverse reaction. He had met the Man in Yellow before, initially mistaking him for an ordinary resident, at least until he caught him eating Miranda, an event that he immortalised in one of his sketches. Needless to say, Henry isn’t a massive fan of the art.
But we’re making progress! So, too, are Tabitha and Ethan, who seemingly discover a lake that may or may not be the Lake of Tears. Ethan seems to be under the misapprehension that the lake’s waters have healing properties, and thus, when he finds a dead bird, he’s adamant that they should take it to the nearby lake and douse it in the waters. Tabitha obliges, still annoyingly sceptical of the whole endeavour. But there’s also a rope on the shore connected to something submerged in the middle of the lake, which, with a tug, sends that something – we don’t see what – bubbling to the surface. I hope it’s something horrible just so Tabitha stops stupidly claiming these things are implausible. But we’ll have to wait and see.
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