18 hours Ago
Notice anything about the people in this image? I count six faces (though other people linger in the background). Of these six, I can name exactly one character. In fact, I can’t even remember seeing any of these people other than Boyd—played by Harold Perrineau—before the show’s most recent episode.
Have they been here all this time? Are they just extras brought in for this episode’s shoot? It reminds me so much of Lost and the never-ending supply of random extras who you’d never seen before, used as padding that never made the slightest bit of sense. You can’t just have random survivors popping up on a remote island! Worse, there’s just no reason for them to be there. Same with FROM.
Every person on this show should matter, because it’s the story of a tiny town lost in some evil extra-dimension. Every character should matter, and we shouldn’t constantly see new people we’ve never seen before who serve no other purpose than as fodder for the creatures or to stand around and complain and be generally useless in every way. Don’t get me wrong.
There can be smaller roles. There can be bit parts like poor Dale, who everyone is gawking at in the above image. But this use of extras in this context is silly and feels cheap and really greatly diminishes an otherwise good show.
The fact that a lot of these people only get lines or scenes when they’re being rude and unpleasant makes it all worse. The extra that was shot by accident earlier this season was one such obnoxious jerk. The couple that was killed last season when they took Sara’s house and then treated her so horribly were also totally unsympathetic.
When these characters die, I’m not upset. I don’t feel bad. I feel relieved.
And so I will say this in no uncertain terms: Kill off all the extras. Give us a massacre almost as epic and gruesome as the one that took place when Victor was a kid. Kill them all.
Leave none standing, none breathing, none whining and complaining and being useless and miserable all the time. The remaining cast is big enough, and it’s not hard to have a car with a few people show up if you really need more cast members. Sure, it made sense to have extras in Colony House at first, but why now? Why not just have most of them die, and leave just Donna, Tillie, Elgin, Ellis, Fatima, Victor, Henry and whoever else is there now from the main cast? That’s enough.
That still leaves us with lots of town folk, too: Boyd, Kenny, Kristi, Mari, Jim, Tabitha and their children, Sara and whoever I’m forgetting. It’s a small town. Some houses can sit empty.
This would also solve the food shortage better than “hey we found magic food by a magical lake” (not that I hated that, this is a magic town after all). Just quit forcing us to choke down our disbelief at these new faces and the incredibly stupid way everyone who isn’t a main characters acts. It’s getting old and tiresome.
And please, when fans say time and again that they want everyone to put their heads together and share information, we don’t mean call a town meeting to listen to extras whine about stuff. We mean get the main characters together for a meeting to share knowledge and brainstorm solutions. I’m enjoying Season 3 a lot, but it’s very jarring to keep seeing these random people every episode, and then whenever any of them gets a line it’s so cringey and bad.
I can think of zero reasons not to just kill them all and distill the good parts of this series down instead. Focus, people. What this show needs is focus.
.
