Review: The Boroughs is a smart, pitch-perfect creature feature

Edward’s mind might be crumbling, but he’s not wrong about something sinister lurking beneath the idyllic facade of The Boroughs. The pilot episode’s cold open showed Edward’s (now-deceased) wife, Grace (Dee Wallace), being attacked by a mysterious, spindly creature in the middle of the night. Someone (or something) has been stealing all things quartz in the community. Art witnesses a flock of crows suddenly dash themselves into the ground in the surrounding desert for no apparent reason. The retirement community setting lends itself naturally to delving into themes of grief, aging, and fear of death, with the monster serving as a central metaphor—although the characters find themselves grappling with who the real monsters might be. The series also holds a mirror up to how our society undervalues seniors. When Sam et al. uncover the truth about The Boroughs, they can’t just broadcast it to the authorities or the media, because nobody would believe them. People would just assume they were going senile or suffering from dementia, and they’d find themselves prisoners in The Manor—the community’s pastel-hued memory ward—courtesy of the machinations of CEO Blaine Shaw (Seth Numrich) and his wife Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg). Speaking of The Manor, viewers of a certain age might find it jarring to see the elderly residents of the memory ward enthusiastically belting out Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” on karaoke night. But it tracks: Born to Run was released in 1975, i.e, 51 years ago, and Springsteen himself turns 77 this year. The song is threaded throughout the season: Sam and his late wife were dancing to it when she collapsed from a sudden stroke, so it holds special emotional significance. The Boroughs works perfectly as a standalone one-off, but the finale does leave several nagging questions unanswered and hints at a possible second chapter for our plucky protagonists. The supernatural ongoings could be much bigger than this season’s classic creature feature. The Duffer brothers served solely as executive producers for the series, and it’s not clear if they would still be involved. But if co-creators/showrunners Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews can successfully flesh out the broader mythology and embed it in another compelling mystery, I’m definitely down for more.