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.
Watching this show is like watching your rhythm-challenged teenager learn to cha-cha. For every two steps forward, there are seven steps back, yet you can’t help but keep pulling for them to finally get it right.
Episode three isn’t a great episode, but it is miles better than the lukewarm pilot leftovers that constituted episode two. It also gets a bonus for a final ten minutes that are good enough to raise the overall episode score by about 20 percent. Unfortunately, it takes us a while to get there.
Burke continues to display an almost complete lack of tradecraft as he skulks around a town where he can be almost certain that everyone is looking for him. This brings me to what is perhaps my biggest issue with the show to this point: The omniscience of whomever is behind all the cameras and microphones seems to constantly shift in order to serve the plot. They are blind and deaf when the writers need them to be, but the audience is supposed to fear them as a constant threat the rest of the time. Sorry, but that isn’t how that works. Maybe the show’s last big pop culture reference will be to go all St. Elsewhere and we will find out that it is really an autistic boy pulling the strings from behind a curtain. That would almost make sense.
Anyway, while Burke’s attempt at stealth may be painful to watch, it does lead us to one of several major revelations for the audience. When the delivery truck that Burke hides out in reaches its final destination, we get our first peek at the underground machinations that make the town possible as well as some clues that Wayward Pines may not be the only town of its kind.
Both the truck and Burke end up in a garage/hangar/depot that seems to act as some kind of way station for everything that comes in or out of the town. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that not everyone is stuck in the town. At least a handful of folks are allowed to go home for the night to a house that doesn’t have rules tacked up inside the front door. It’s a pleasantly unexpected little twist that I have to admit I hadn’t completely considered. We had seen the doctor in both worlds, of course, but given his apparent level of seniority it was easy to assume that he was the exception, not the rule.
The other person with some authority who is obviously on a longer leash is Sheriff Pope, and this is largely his episode. We still primarily follow Burke, but Terrence Howard is given multiple large expanses of screen time this week in which to glower, threaten, and menace in the arrogant way that only he can. I have often wondered if, when casting began for this show, some executives at Fox had a conversation like this:
Exec 1: We’re really going to need someone with serious presence for this Pope guy. We need someone to be the human face of the looming, omniscient threat.
Exec 2: I agree, but where the hell are we going to find someone with that kind of enormously pretentious charisma? He has to be both charming and vicious. He has to be believable as someone smart and capable that the town would put their faith in, but equally believable as an insane tyrant that would happily slit the throats of all his followers if it meant keeping himself in power.
Exec 1: (laughing) Man, it’s a shame we can’t just go down the hall to the Empire set and see if we can borrow Terrence Howard for a couple of weeks.
Exec 2: (staring wide-eyed at Exec 1) Holy shit.
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