Wayward Pines (2015) s02e10 – Bedtime Story

There are a lot of stories you can only tell in sci-fi. For instance, only with time travel can you have young mom Kacey Rohl wake up after two thousand years of cryo-sleep and be paired off with her unknowing son, Tom Stevens, now grown up.

Yuck.

It’s unclear why you’d want to tell this story (something “Wayward Pines” only decided to do last episode as a final shocker since no one cares if Nimrat Kaur leaves Jason Patric for Josh Helman), but it’s also unclear why you’d do it just to be cruel to Rohl. Patric will ditch the Hippocratic oath this episode because it’s the finale, and things need resolving. However, he also ditches it to include taunting Rohl with the information he knows about her unintentional Oedipus subplot. Later on, Amitai Marmorstein will give Rohl a similarly knowing look.e

It craps out Rohl having a character arc, even with such a bunk storyline. It’s too bad because she was one of the season’s stronger performances overall. Unfortunately, the show didn’t know what to do with Stevens, and Patric went way too quickly from season protagonist to sturdy town doctor supporting cast, so Rohl was its last hope. Well, I guess maybe Kaur, but they took her arc away to give her to charisma and acting vacuum Helman.

Towards the end of the episode, Djimon Hounsou gets a moment where it’s obvious he should’ve been the protagonist, but of course, they wouldn’t. “Wayward Pines,” outside the casting this season, never made actual good decisions. And when it’s vaguely exploitative, it’s okay. But, when they embrace the exploitative, they can’t figure it out.

The episode’s stakes are simple—there aren’t enough pods, some of our favorite cast members might not be going because Stevens made a list, and he’s closing out the grudges. Plus the gay and Asian kids. They don’t get saved either.

Anyone not in a pod is going to get murdered by the creatures. Or, if Patric can come up with a way to fend them off, they’re going to starve to death. Or be killed by the left-behind shitty white guys. Stevens at least didn’t take the shitty white men (at least not the ones out of their teens).

It’s familiar, sympathetic cast members in danger, and mildly effective. Certainly more effective than the creatures’ preparing their assault, which is just queen Rochelle Okoye yelling at them while they amass in the same locations again and again. “Wayward Pines” clearly didn’t have the budget for a big action sequence, so someone decided to tread water for the entire final episode.

Not a great choice.

Script credit to Mark Friedman. It’s not good. Outside Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s part. She again is the butt of the joke, but her performance is, as usual, superb enough the writing doesn’t matter.

“Wayward Pines: Season One” started more embarrassing than it ended; season two started less embarrassing than it ends. Director Ti West has some lousy composition, which may be a nod to executive producer M. Night Shyamalan, but it’s also just indicative of the exhaustion. The show never explored its better plot threads, never actually developed its characters; it just sustained on usually minimal competency and a few good performances.

Jason Patric ought to be a TV lead. Djimon Hounsou is a great TV series sturdy wingman. It’d be interesting to see if Tom Stevens can do anything but Mirror Universe Wesley Crusher. Kacey Rohl’s got some range and skills. Hope Davis is a good creep (it’s too bad she didn’t find out Rohl was Stevens’s mom; that scene would’ve been something). It’s too bad they weren’t working together in a better project.

Instead, they were trapped in “Wayward Pines.”

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e09 – Walcott Prep

Wayward Pines, the town, is in dire straits. The creatures outside the wall have destroyed their food supply, and they’re out of MREs. They’ll only survive another thirty days (or, more precisely, two episodes). So teen dictator Tom Stevens decides everyone’s going back in cryo-sleep for fifty-seven years or whatever. Only Djimon Hounsou then discovers no one kept the cryo-pods charged since season one ended and the teenage Nazis took over. As a result, they can only take half the populace.

Jason Patric’s still hoping he can come up with some kind of medical solution and won’t help Stevens evaluate the breeding stock. Patric says they should do a lottery; Stevens says it’s got to be based on white bloodline or whatever. Like most scenes for Stevens, there’s potentially a good character thread, but then they immediately drop it. In this case, it’s in favor of a personal quandary—Stevens doesn’t want defects, love of his life Kacey Rohl can’t have babies and is, therefore, defective. Joss Whedon ghostwrote “Wayward Pines?”

Patric is also actively plotting against Stevens this episode, though we don’t get to see any of his plans other than when he checks in with Josh Helman to ensure Helman won’t support Stevens in a coup. It’s a pointless scene, only there for Helman to taunt Patric about how Nimrat Kaur’s preggers with Helman’s baby. Kaur’s around for useless scene with Stevens—encouraging more, different character development–because it turns out this episode’s all about a huge secret.

Toby Jones stars in a flashback story about how he got baby Tom Stevens for the town. First, he tried buying a pregnant blue blood’s unwanted baby, but then he had to resort to more traditional means (bribing a public hospital).

The secret is the identity of Stevens’s mother. Sadly, not an Emperor Palpatine clone. Instead, it’s someone whose identity is going to knock every character arc for Stevens out from under him. There’s also some retconning involved with Hope Davis and Melissa Leo’s characters in particular, though they’re long gone and out of the guest star budget, so who cares. As PG-13 exploitative as “Wayward Pines” got with this season, I really did not expect them to embrace it to this episode’s degree. Worse, it doesn’t do anything to inform characters’ behaviors in previous episodes. Mom’s secret identity doesn’t explain why Stevens is king little shit.

It all comes to a fateful conclusion, including the not ineffective shot of blood running through the streets of the Wayward Pines model in Jones’s office. They probably should’ve used that visual last season with Jones’s death and not here when they’re trying to make a contrived plotline have more of an oomph.

On the other hand, faced with an inevitably disappointing conclusion—season two switched over to building to the finish just as there was character development—a large-scale cop-out and shrug do kind of make sense. Why bother doing anything else?

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e08 – Pass Judgment

So, with “Wayward Pines” entering the season’s final act—there are only two more episodes after this one–it’s unclear where they’re going, but it’s clear they aren’t going to get there gracefully. This episode’s all about female creature Rochelle Okoye escaping and wreaking havoc around town, including leaping between the buildings on Main Street. There’s also lots of running through the woods, which are right behind the houses, and all of a sudden, it’s obvious what a lousy job the show’s done—in the eighteen episodes so far—at establishing the basic geography.

For example, Emma Tremblay and Michael Garza are back this episode (nothing said about her period or him maybe being gay or ace), and they walk downtown from school. Through a forest. Not an inherently terrible idea and certainly better than anything else town architect Nimrat Kaur “designed,” but also a little weird. All of a sudden, they’re in danger from forest-hunting Okoye, but there’s going to be an alley somewhere taking them to Kaur’s shop.

Kaur and Josh Helman are also back this episode—unfortunately—and now they’re both trying to beat the creatures. Kaur is trying to figure out how Okoye got into the town; Helman’s going to take his guns and form a citizen’s militia, which will lead to a trigger-happy Christian shooting the only Black guy in the episode. “Wayward Pines: Season Two” ’s big problem is none of the adults deserve to survive, and most of the teens also do not deserve to survive, and we don’t meet many kids because they need to be in puberty for the show (and town) to care about them.

But, basically, there’s militia versus military on the residential streets, and it’s bad. It’s not as silly as it could be, but it’s not well done. Jennifer Lynch directs the episode and does comparably better with the talking heads stuff than the action or suspense, but only in comparison. Unfortunately, this season hasn’t had many distinct or good directors (only one of the latter, I think) and is heading into the finale with, at best, tepid direction….

Bad sign.

Also, an ominous sign is a big reveal for Kaur and Helman, which manages to make his performance even worse in hindsight. Besides her busy work finding town blueprints, Kaur’s just around for Helman and Patric to glare at each other over. Even when Tremblay shows up and Kaur gets her to safety, they don’t have any real scenes together. Tremblay’s just an accessory for Kaur, who’s just an accessory for Helman or Patric.

Though Kaur does have a good “girl power” scene with Kacey Rohl, who found that she can’t have babies at the beginning of the episode, and now everyone is assuming boyfriend and teen führer Tom Stevens will have her killed for it. That development turns into an almost interesting plot point until the episode screws it up.

Seamus Kevin Fahey gets the writing credit. The most inventive stuff in the script are the details about Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s weird life. Fallon Hogan manages to be excellent despite being the butt of the show’s jokes.

And maybe if Patric’s complaint no one takes any responsibility in “Wayward Pines” is a meta-comment on the show itself, which is an accurate dig. The whole show is what happens when you compound cop-outs.

Anyway. Two left, and it’s not in very good shape.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e04 – Exit Strategy

It’s like “Wayward Pines” heard my complaints there weren’t enough bad performances on the regular and felt the need to deliver. This episode features the return of Tim Griffin from season one, who was an entirely personality-free white man and goes on to one-up him with Josh Helman, who’s got even less personality and might be the worst actor on the show ever. It seems like someone’s feeding it to Helman from off-frame every single line delivery.

Helman was billed in the season premiere’s opening titles but soon disappeared outside the wall and from the titles. He’s back now, with the episode finding him unconscious in a monster pit. He meets up with Griffin, who’s been living in the wild for at least a decade, and is basically just doing a Grizzly Adams riff. That riff is much better than anything Helman’s doing.

After some world-building involving the monsters’ behaviors, the two end up back in town, where Helman reopens his ice cream shop and Griffin checks himself out of the hospital to become a town drunk. Both leader Tom Stevens and return guest star Shannyn Sossamon want something from Griffin. Stevens and Djimon Hounsou are gung ho to explore the outer world (ignoring Hope Davis and Kacey Rohl’s objections); Stevens wants Griffin’s help knowing what’s out there.

Meanwhile, Sossamon wants to tell Griffin to drop dead for getting her entire family kidnapped 2,000 years into the future and subsequently killed by shitty white people.

However, Sossamon wants to get outside the wall—they call it a fence, which seems a choice entirely based on Game of Thrones having a wall—to find Charlie Tahan’s corpse, which might require Griffin’s help.

The subplot has Emma Tremblay indeed becoming a supporting regular; she gets her first period and doesn’t want to tell Davis about it because “Wayward Pines” rules say she’s got to start trying to get pregnant, eleven years old or not. Since Tremblay works for Nimrat Kaur, Kaur decides she’s going to stand up for Tremblay against Davis. It’s a nice subplot because Kaur’s a very active performer. When she and Davis face-off, there’s palpable energy coming off both the actors.

Of course, when the show establishes Kaur knows Helman, there’s zero energy between them because Helman’s terrible. Terrible for “Wayward Pines.”

Though, of course, second season acting’s much better than the first season. Sossamon, freed of her confounded mom constraints, is far more effective here than she ever was before. Though it helps she’s opposite Griffin, who’s letting his fake beard do all the acting for him.

Tremblay’s subplot also involves brother Michael Garza, who’s got his own secrets. Unfortunately, those secrets make him susceptible to bad influences, and the fallout will put him into the sort of surprisingly but not if you listen to Ian Malcolm cliffhanger.

Despite Helman—and Griffin, really—it’s a decent episode. Kaur’s got a good arc for most of it, and Davis is a profoundly upsetting villain. Also, despite not really doing anything and having a thin character, Hounsou classes the joint up.