Before – Season 1 Episode 4 Recap & Review

Symbols and Signs

Episode 4 of Before begins with Noah drawing once again. However, as he does, Eli notices a little action figure in the sandpit and it spooks him. He drops it on the side, as Noah’s spooky voice returns. He encourages Eli to draw… but the latter hurriedly leaves the room to compose himself.

Denise shows up and says hi, asking how her son is doing. Eli reveals that Noah is doing okay but he’s suffering side effects from the sand therapy. However, Eli is shocked when he finds that Noah has gone.

Eli rushes around the hospital, and eventually finds Noah inside a linen cupboard. Eli seems to be missing a pen and believes Noah has it and he refuses to hand over what he has behind his back. Noah can sense the fear emanating from Eli though and he eventually decides he doesn’t want to talk anymore.

Eli is not doing well and the curious part of this stems from the farmhouse. Why did Noah draw it? There’s nothing in his past that would suggest he’s visited somewhere like this, but there’s also the constant motif of this drowning girl he’s been drawing. Eli is interrupted though by a leak coming through the floor, which happens to be from the hall bathroom. When Eli checks it out, he finds it’s a leaky tap.

Despite seemingly fixing it, the plug starts bubbling, prompting the tub to fill up. It turns out there’s a big clump of hair caught in there. Eli sorts it out, and hurriedly throws the hair in the bin. However, Barb is definitely a bit suspicious when she heads back and sees him frazzled. The thing it’s “Grandpa Day”, which means Eli is hanging out with Sophie for a while.

The pair head to the church. where Eli brings work in with him. He wants to know more about Noah, but Sophie interjects and points out that Lynn is dead. When the priest tries talking compassionately to him, he bites back, throwing up that religion is BS.

Unfortunately, the whole day is a complete disaster, brought on thanks to Eli telling Sophie that Lynn’s spirit is not inside the lizard teddy she’s carrying around. Barbara though is also dealing with grief too, and she wants to sort the house out and declutter. Given how stressful everything is, Eli agrees to deal with this himself, but Sophie leaves her teddy behind.

Eli notices emails between Lynn and Jackson, and decides to come see him. It would appear she too has been drawing. Apparently it was a picture for a book she was writing about death. Eli and Lynn had different ways of dealing with her treatment, brought on by Eli’s steely determination to only look at things solely through the lens of science. Lynn though wanted to go on her own journey so she turned to Jackson for this.

The ending was seemingly coming to her in dreams, and later on, Jackson hands over those very drawings. This includes a boy and girl, hand in hand, out in the forest.

At the hospital, Noah is stalked by the kid who sleeps on the bed opposite him in the ward. He storms up to him after and demands Noah hand over the little figure from the sandpit he’s stashed under the bed. This is what he took from the room, not a pen as Eli believed. Noah continues to struggle, and he feels cold and as if he’s giving birth. Just then, Eli starts to have visions too, as the pictures on the table begin moving and Noah’s voice echoes through.

The Episode Review

So Before returns this week with more clues over what’s going on. It could well be that Lynn too is connected to all of this, given she seems to have seen images of Noah and this little girl. At this point it seems like this little girl could well be Dutch, and the cabin in the woods somewhere in the Netherlands, given the connections we’re seeing crop up.

The central theme here is obviously grief and the way that’s explored across the series is nicely woven through the characters. The spooky elements are basically playing second fiddle to this idea, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

However, in true Apple TV+ fashion, the pacing is the biggest Achille’s Heel that this faces and the show does feel like it’s in danger of becoming a bit of a stale and dragging out its story. Lets hope it doesn’t though as there’s definitely a lot to like here.