Is 'From' the Most Exhausting Series on Television?

When From debuted four years ago, it was one of the more exciting mystery box series on television. But even in the beginning, for all its intrigue, it was an infinitely frustrating series for the way in which it served up questions but never got around to answering them. It was like Stephen King crossed with Lost, the latter similarity amplified by the presence of Harold Perrineau and frequent Lost director, Jack Bender.

But the difference between Lost and From is that while the mystery drove Lost, it could still operate on some level without it. The arcs were compelling, and the characters existed to tell personal stories. Beyond the central mystery, it was ultimately a story about these individual characters finding peace with themselves and each other — which, it turned out, extended quite literally beyond death.

From, increasingly, is an engine with no car. There’s almost nothing interesting about From beyond the central mystery, which the characters exist only to serve. They are thinly drawn question delivery systems, and the story itself has fallen prey to the worst of Stephen King’s instincts: the aimless bloat. It is a mystery in search of meaning.

Season four has been an absolute slog and, honestly, the only thing that keeps me going is the promise that it will soon be over — relatively, in television terms — because the fifth season has been announced as its last.

Here’s where we are: There are a bunch of people trapped, not on an island, but in a small town (not unlike Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines). There are smiling zombie-like creatures that come out at night, and they will kill the townspeople if they don’t remain inside structures adorned with a talisman.

The mystery is: How do these people get out? Through three and a half seasons, however, the series is still stuck trying to tell us about the mechanics of the town. What we learned in season three, for instance, is that it is possible to kill one of those zombies — Boyd killed Smiley — but the consequences of doing so are not great. Fatima got pregnant and Smiley was reborn. In other words, you can’t actually kill the zombies.

We also know, from seasons three and four, that the town has existed for generations — a lesson we learned, basically, from a three-episode arc with Jade that ended with a mushroom trip — that no one ever escapes and, importantly, in the end, it’s not the town that kills the remaining townspeople.

We also know that Jade and Tabitha are at the center of this mystery. Way back in the day, the townspeople sacrificed their children in exchange for immortality. That sacrifice is what created the smiling zombies. A couple named Miranda and Christopher refused to participate and tried to save the children. They failed. Their consequence is that they are reincarnated over and over again, returned to the town, and tasked with saving the children. Jade and Tabitha are the reincarnated versions of Christopher and Miranda.

They’re trying to piece together their memories so that they can save the children, but the man in the yellow coat — now in the form of Sophia — is out there trying to turn the townspeople on Jade and Tabitha before they can figure it out. Meanwhile, there’s one thread in season four that gestures toward an actual escape route: Tabitha’s daughter Julie has discovered she’s a “storywalker,” meaning she can travel through time and potentially alter events while they’re still unfolding — which is, at minimum, the closest the show has come to a plausible way out.

In the most recent episode, Tabitha remembered some dolls from a previous life, which basically crawled out of the lake in life-size form and pulled the jaw off of a red-shirt character before Tabitha remembered how to kill them.

And if you strip everything else away — the dead-end arcs, the endless talking, Boyd’s mental breakdown, and all the deaths — that’s where we are: Tabitha and Jade have the answers buried somewhere deep in the memories of their past lives and they need to figure it out — and maybe Julie’s nonsense storywalking ability will help — before the man in the yellow coat/Sophia turns the town against them and it all resets once again.

Admittedly, on paper, there are the bones of a great story. What it needed was two fewer seasons and a reason to care about these characters. What we have, instead, are answers that sit at the bottom of an endless abyss — and a journey down that can’t stop taking detours.

‘From’ is currently streaming on MGM+. After a one-week hiatus, the series will return this Sunday.