The Institute Season 1 Episode 4 Review: The Box

Who’s ready for some more child torture?!

If you’re back from watching The Institute Season 1 Episode 4, your hand had better be raised.

The adults at the Institute are off the rails insane, but all hope isn’t lost. Tim may be coming to the rescue.

If you haven’t watched Episode 4 yet, step away and return later. Spoilers await!

While watching “The Box,” it dawned on me how often Stephen King uses children’s pain as a story catalyst. 

I know he’s got family of his own, and from what I can tell, Joe turned out alright. He inherited his father’s gift for storytelling, too. 

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It’s just impossible not to watch this show and wonder what on earth the elder suffered as a child to make him repeatedly reach for young minds to corrupt.

I mean, how many of you read his books as a child?

These aren’t stories for children, yet so many of us gobbled them up like they were the tastiest candy within reach. We won’t even mention the VC Andrews of our childhood nightmares. 

Whatever it is that ails him, at least the kids in his stories are mostly heroic and manage to figure things out on their own. And there are usually at least a few adults they can claim as allies. They just aren’t usually nearby.

In the story so far, Luke has been painted as a bit of a prodigy, and despite his best efforts not to embrace the changes within himself, he appears to be proving them right.

Nicky and George have been at the Institute far longer than Luke, but they remain in the front half. Luke, on the other hand, is being groomed by Hendricks and Tony for bigger things.

He’s on the PC track, which I have yet to understand. The thing is, he’s probably surpassed it already, but damn, that kid has some stones.

Deprived of oxygen? Sure. No problem. You’re not getting the answers you seek, you bastards. Luke has impressive determination.

He’d be the final guy in any horror movie. He matches wits with the docs and connects with Maureen, calling her out on her passivity.

Personally, I don’t trust Maureen, but it’s good to know she had a son. Jake (Jacob is a grown-up name) might have passed at a young age. Something allows her to feel more than contempt for these kids.

But will it do them any good to turn her? She’s not exactly in a leadership role. As she said herself, she’s nothing but a glorified janitor.

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If I thought that there was hope for Sigsby after listening to her conversation with her dad during The Institute Season 1 Episode 3 and seeing her burn herself in the premiere, I have less faith in her turning out alright now.

But that’s also why I’m not eager to embrace Maureen. Hell, even Hendricks got teary-eyed watching Luke struggle to breathe. I dare say he believed the kid when he said he wasn’t TP.

Luke’s got about another week before he’s shuffled off to the back half. The good news? There IS a back half.

All pretense is gone there. The comforts of home have been stripped. They wear dingy, matching jumpsuits and sit amidst stark, cement walls, swilling alcohol and ashing in their oatmeal.

It’s ugly. But they do get movie night! Unfortunately, movie night seems to allow them to peer into the mundanity of their future subjects’ lives.

Kalisha made it sound like a boring game of The Sims, where you just follow along with people as they live. That has to be connected to the “important work” they do, like killing senators on planes.

We learned a bit more about the hum. It’s centralized in a room in the back half and to connect with it, the kids have to be TP “or else.” I can’t imagine “or else” is death because nobody seems overly concerned with that.

There were three new recruits to the front half. A set of pre-teen twin girls and a hulking fellow named Harry. 

Harry didn’t take the injections well, and although he viewed the twins like he did his cocker spaniels at home, his altered state left him to smash one of the twins in the head with a hand weight.

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You would have thought it was a setup to out Luke as a TP, but those adults in charge aren’t all that smart. Tony might have sussed out that Luke saw it in advance, which is why he was dragged into the box.

Everyone is taking a backseat to Luke and Avery. I did a little recon about the book online and was surprised how little was available.

A few now-defunct Reddit threads didn’t offer much, but they did clue me in on Avery’s fate, and all I have to say about that is I hope the show strays from the book.

The kid is delightful. Somehow, he’s managed to keep a relatively perky attitude throughout this really screwed up shit going down. Can an ice cream sandwich really provide so much comfort?

Part of it is reconnecting with Kalisha. Everyone wants to know what she’s experiencing, and discovering her alive was a relief.

But there is a lot more work to do before they can attempt to break free. 

Meanwhile, Tim isn’t ready to let Annie die in vain. Despite a rocky start, he’s got Wendy on his side now, and if they work together, maybe they’ll discover something that can help.

Overall, though, the townies don’t appear to be very inquisitive. They have no problem just letting someone die without any investigation.

Wendy pointed Tim in the direction of Annie’s tent, which was still standing. He found a lipstick-stained can alongside the alcohol bottle, which, if they were in a city, would prove to be valuable.

However, even if the chief would take Tim’s word for it and order a tox screen on Annie, it would take weeks to receive the results. What the hell would they do with the can and bottle? Not much.

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Wendy didn’t dismiss Tim when he told her about Annie’s own precog skills, and she allowed him to look at her high school yearbook, too. The kids who drowned at the rock all had “notre pain” under their senior year class photos. “Our bread.”

She said it was an inside joke among them, but what kind of joke is our bread? We know we can’t just chalk it up to kids being kids. Not in this town.

Tim is on a mission to find out as much as he can, and he’s following a map Annie left behind. While the vacationing family rolled up to the Institute and faced men with hulking weapons, it looked like Tim managed to find a back, unmanned entrance.

He was milling around out there at about the same time Avery saw inside Maureen’s noggin to what was behind the door with the hum.

That was a pretty good cliffhanger because it made me want to watch more. I refrained so I can play along with you lot, so don’t be strangers.

How do you feel about The Institute? Is it a little too dark? Do you wonder why King writes such awful adults and puts kids through so much terror?

Drop a comment below and let me know what you’re thinking!

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