NOS4A2 Review: The Dark Tunnels (Season 1 Episode 6)
Vic gets locked up in a mental ward and meets another strong creative on NOS4A2 Season 1 Episode 6, “The Dark Tunnels.”
On a conceptual level, having an episode where a character has to be admitted to a mental institution brings to mind Teen Wolf‘s “Echo House,” which is a great episode and one you’re not likely to outdo. Even with the five-year separation since that episode aired, it’s a comparison that does “The Dark Tunnels” no favors.
It sets a dreadfully high bar to clear. Does it accomplish that feat? No, not particularly. It does, however, still work overall, in spite of that.
The thing that “The Dark Tunnels” benefits the most from is having it be more contained and tight on a writing level than the show has been up to this point. This is an episode that is purely from Vic’s point of view, save for a flashback at the beginning. There’s no following extraneous characters on their journeys or individual arcs.
What we see throughout the episode is so perspective-driven, and it really flourishes in that way. You see characters like Charlie Manx or Maggie, but only insofar as it all relates to Vic and her progression. This isn’t one where we watch Charlie kidnap another kid or Bing Partridge do something equally horrific.
“The Dark Tunnels” emphasizes more of the inner machinations of Vic and also brings to the forefront some of the larger mythology of the series. In that regard, this is a fairly necessary episode, both in terms of character and plot development.
For Vic’s development as the show’s de facto hero, the episode has to justify why Vic would allow her father to hospitalize her when it’s made clear that this is a voluntary stay. Her relationship with her father has often been one of the flimsier parts of the series, but the sparse interactions between Vic and her psychiatrist allow the series to interrogate that a bit.
Is Vic a victim of parental abuse? It’s a question that’s subtly been running through the earlier episodes of the series. More than once it’s implied by other adults on the periphery that there might be a noticeable problem — but how far does that actually extend? Vic’s dad hits her mom sometimes; that’s a foregone conclusion.
It’s an interesting choice to state that her mom beats Vic as well. It’s an odd plotline overall, but for the episode, it’s fine. This is something that takes a toll on Vic and lends to her personal arc over the episode.
She wants to get out of her town, but her power means that may never happen. She may very well be stuck in Haverhill for the rest of her life if she wants to be a strong creative, and that means she’ll never be able to get away from influence over her or her parents’ abuse. She can’t be silently kind and decent to them and then saunter off to art school.
On a plot level, “The Dark Tunnels” cements a lot of our understanding of the power that strong creatives have and the knives they wield to harness them. We understand that Vic uses her bike to access the bridge in her mind to find lost things. In the same way, Jolene uses her skates to transport and affect inanimate objects on a material plane.
You need to understand the rules and what strong creatives are capable of to go forward with the story. The only thing really missing here in the fleshing out of those rules is the individual cost. We’ve seen Vic get a bloody eye and using The Wraith seems to drain Charlie Manx of his life force, but it’s not fully clear how it affects Jolene.
There’s an argument that she died as a result of using her knife again or that it made her seem sick for all these years and that’s why she was in the hospital. But that’s never made explicitly clear — it’s all just conjecture.
On another note, the sequence in which Vic and Jolene damage Charlie’s Wraith is the most frightening that the series has been able to conjure to this point. It has always been billed as a horror series, but it hasn’t been terribly scary or tense until now. The image of Charlie rapidly aging is one that will stay with many viewers for some time.
In all, “The Dark Tunnels” is the strongest episode the series has delivered thus far, and it’ll be interesting to see if the show is able to capitalize on this going forward.
What did you think of this episode of NOS4A2? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
NOS4A2 airs Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.