FROM Season 3 Review: Time to Finally Get Some Answers?
*No major spoilers will be in the first part of this review. In a clearly marked section below, I’ll have some thoughts on Season 3 that’ll have spoilers.
Let’s be real, if you watched Season 1 and Season 2 of From and enjoyed it, you’re probably going to be checking out this third season. At this point, you know what you’re going to get with this show. Season 2 brought a new threat for our characters, but, in many ways, it felt like a clear continuation of that first season. Well, Season 3 is pretty similar to that – there’s a new threat, but the show is very much a continuation of what came before it.
From, as a show, is basically composed of two main elements. Element one is the strong sense of atmospheric horror (that is really well done). This is the feeling that at just about any moment something bad could happen to anyone. The show doesn’t rely often on jump-scares, but almost every scene has this bleak, dreadful feeling that sort of lingers over it.
This aspect of From really works for me. There are a lot of horror movies that manage to be scary, but I can’t think of another TV show airing currently that falls squarely into the horror genre successfully.
Element two that goes into every From episode is the mystery aspect of the show with seemingly unanswerable and impossible questions. Basically, it’s when we, as viewers, and sometimes the characters on the show also, say, “Wait, how in the world is that happening? What’s going on here?! This is impossible and doesn’t make any sense!”
This part of From sometimes works for me. I enjoy mystery elements of a show as much as the next person, but when you just pile question on top of question, sometimes it can get a little out of control. This is pretty much what happened with Lost, a show that is similar to From in a lot of ways (that I brought up in my Season 1 review of the show).
I think From can get away more with being weirder/having crazy explanations for things than Lost could though since it’s always been presented as a sort of out-there horror show. In contrast, Lost had a lot more character-driven drama parts in earlier seasons before becoming a different type of show altogether – one filled with time-travel and characters in afterlife limbo (or whatever it ended up being) later on.
Still, I think the first three seasons of From cumulatively go a little overboard with having insane circumstances that continually present themselves. Before I get more into the actual plot of Season 3 though (which will feature some spoilers), I’d like to touch on some character aspects of the show that do and don’t work for me.
Considering what works, I think that our lead protagonist, Boyd, played by Harold Perrineau, is great. It doesn’t hurt that Perrineau, who also delivered quality performances on Oz and Lost, is probably the best actor on the show. Sheriff Boyd is the most multidimensional and fleshed out character on From.
Besides Boyd, I really enjoy the character Donna, the woman who oversees Colony House. I wish Donna had more to do in Season 3. She’s not really a part of any major storylines and her main role this season is yelling at Boyd about various things.
Coreton Moore plays Boyd’s son on the show, Ellis. I brought up in Season 2’s review that Moore’s acting isn’t the strongest, but it’s even more of an issue in Season 3. I’m sure Moore is a nice person in real life, but in some scenes his acting is bad enough to just about take me out of the show.
Another character issue I have with From is that the show has more annoying characters than any series should. I’m not talking about antagonistic or villainous characters – I’m talking about characters that are simply annoying/whiny anytime they’re on screen. Jim, the father in the main family in town, is quite annoying this season. He’s become a huge whiner. We get it – he wants to take care of his family.
Randall, who came in on the bus in Season 2, has more of a secondary role, but I also find him to be very annoying. He’s supposed to be more of a bad boy type character, but I think the way he’s played he comes off as more simply annoying. Maybe if a tougher/cooler actor was in the role the character would work better.
The worst culprit of the annoying club though is an officer named Acosta who’s introduced this most recent season. Acosta is supposed to be an antagonist to Boyd, and she is, but she’s also extremely annoying with zero redeemable qualities. I could definitely have done without this character altogether as I don’t feel like she adds anything to the series.
*Minor spoilers going forward. Nothing too specific will be spoiled, but thoughts on the direction the show takes are discussed.
I wrote earlier that I think From can go overboard with presenting more and more crazy circumstances. One major issue with this season is that we don’t get enough answers early on. By Season 3 of a show, we need to start answering questions, not only be introducing new ones.
Why is Fatima eating trash? How did Tabitha escape? Is the scary woman Elgin’s seeing good or evil? For nine episodes of Season 3, we get no answers and only more mystery. Then, in the final 15 or so minutes of the season, the show provides several major answers and twists. Had some of these revelations been more spaced out, maybe over the last three or so episodes, I think each of them would’ve been more impactful, and could’ve resulted in a stronger season.
I wrote in the final paragraph of my Season 2 review, “It’ll be easier to judge the show once we learn if the solutions to the mysteries we’ve been presented with will be satisfactory.” Well, by the end of Season 3 we do have some answers. Sure, everything is definitely not explained, but we have a clearer understanding of where the show is likely headed.
Whether you ultimately like or dislike Season 3 will depend a lot on how you feel about these answers. I think a portion of the viewership to this show won’t like the ending to Season 3. Personally, I think it fits with how the show’s been overall, but it does up the ante in terms of being even more out-there. We go from being in a TV universe that could somehow, someway be like the real world to a TV universe that is certainly not at all realistic. I think some viewers won’t like that.
With a show like From, it’s often more fun when there are new mysteries. It’s not typically as much fun when we’re answering them. I am, however, very glad that the creators of From do have answers for what’s happening. Before the finale, I was questioning whether they even knew what was going on, but now it’s very clear that they do, in fact, have a plan. I would say that, to me, the answers that we do get are satisfactory. They don’t blow me away or make me really go “wow,” but I don’t dislike the direction they take the show either.
It feels as though we’ve reached a major turning point of the show by this season’s end. I’m glad that’s the case. From might not be a fantastic show, but it’s still worth watching in its third season, and I’m curious to see where everything will end up in the years to come.
Grade: 7/10