This is a review. Thus, it is likely to contain spoilers. If you haven’t, as yet, found yourself at liberty to view this episode then consider yourself apprised of the potential jeopardy and proceed at your peril.
While I am aware that the show is based on a series of books by Blake Crouch, I have not read them and do not intend to until this show has ended. I will be reviewing the show solely on its own merits, not as an adaptation.
It is one thing, as an audience, to be in the dark about where a show is heading. The experience can be enthralling or annoying, and sometimes both simultaneously. It is a different thing entirely when you get the sense that the people making the show don’t know where the show is heading or, worse yet, know where to go but don’t know how to get there.
Given that its season only consists of 10 episodes, Wayward Pines seems to most likely fall into the latter category.
The second episode loses much of the energy and forward momentum that the pilot generated. If anything, it feels like a re-tread of the same ground, except with none of the fun riffs on other shows and, by definition, considerably fewer surprises.
The primary problem, I think, is that both the creative team and the characters seem completely ignorant of what kind of show they’re putting on. Tonally, the creative team seems content this week to play it mostly as straight drama. Stylistically, there is little to separate the show from any number of by-the-numbers prime time dramas. Having largely interchangeable episodes is the sort of thing I expect of the CSI and NCIS franchises, but it is bewildering for a show with a short season and a blank slate of a universe to play in. Last week’s episode ended by revealing that Agent Burke is trapped in some sort of cultivated sandbox without giving the audience any idea of who was behind it. Rather than dig deeper, episode two just showed us the sandbox again.
Burke is failing as a lead character so far. He got a pass on the first episode because it was more about world building and plot development than character building. But going back over the same ground a second time leaves us nothing to do except focus on the characters, and what is there isn’t encouraging. I put the bulk of the blame on the writing. Matt Dillon is emoting his ass off with the minuscule depth he is being given, but it is almost impossible to be convincing as the world’s dumbest Secret Service agent. He just refuses to behave as if he understands anything about his circumstances. Let’s recap: He has proven twice that all roads leading out of town lead back into town. He has discovered a wall encircling that town that could keep a T-Rex out (or in). The woman that he came to find is, for some reason, willfully leading a double life here. There appears to be some kind of temporal disturbance that causes time to pass differently for people in the town. The male agent that he was sent to find was murdered and left to rot in an abandoned house. None of his phone calls appear to reach the outside world. He finds out that all of the inhabitants appear to live by a bizarre and strict list of rules.
Yet, despite this overwhelming mountain of evidence that he is not anywhere that remotely resembles the “normal” world, he insists on acting as if nothing is amiss. He continually reminds people that he is a Federal agent despite the fact that it impresses no one. He walks in and out of buildings and businesses with impunity, despite multiple warnings not to and several attempts to hurt, kill, or incapacitate him. Then, out of the blue, we are suddenly expected to believe that he is going to engage in a high-risk escape plan with a woman he has just met, based on cryptic maps and messages written on scraps of paper.
It is nearly impossible to relate to a character that is so clearly no more than a plot device with legs and a square jaw.
The other characters fare no better. It is more of a role call than a fresh development. We revisit the same faces, they spout most of the same banal pleasantries and then we move on to the next locale. Actually, Nurse Pam has no pleasantries, but even Melissa Leo seems puzzled as to how she is supposed to wring any more effect out of the same threats.
We have had two episodes but only one note.
It isn’t too late for the show. If they are finally willing to embrace the strangeness and go full quirk, these early doldrums could end up adding layers of unanticipated complexity and depth, but if things continue on as they currently appear, it will be a long slog to the finish line. They seem to desperately want to be the first season of Lost or Twin Peaks, but at the moment it is looking more like the second season of Under the Dome.
The most foreboding sentiment I had about episode two was how much empathy I had for Terrence Howard’s Sheriff Pope. He seems most at peace with the odd town in which me maintains order, and it is curious (a sensation all but absent this week) that seen objectively, his behavior seems consistently rational. Every rebuttal that he presents to Burke is well reasoned and logical, no matter what world you find yourself in. Weirdly, my perception didn’t change at episode’s end as Pope became murderous and energetically bloodthirsty.
All I thought was, “Finally, a character that understands how completely mad his world is and who has decided to go mad right along with it.”
Some closing thoughts:
The “real world” scenes look better this week (or at least more in line with the rest of the show). Unfortunately, on a show where little is working, these scenes still bring the proceedings to a screeching halt. As little as we have to connect us emotionally to Burke and the other Pines denizens, we have even less of a tether to the rest of the Burke family. Their scenes are horribly underwritten with dialogue so clunky that the actors seem to have difficulty removing it from their mouths. Our only hope is that with the Burke road trip leading them to Idaho, the two storylines will merge and somehow jumpstart each other into something that works.
Jack McKinney is a professional camera salesman by day and a freelance filmmaker, Paste contributor, and amateur prestidigitator by night (and occasionally weekends). You can cyber-stalk him on Twitter.