Wayward Pines: Choices

I like Gugino, but this smile is outright creepy.

"You didn't think Wayward Pines ran itself, did you?"

Do you think this episode might have been about choices?

Let's start with the big one. David Pilcher couldn't get his contemporaries to accept his findings about the upcoming aberrations in human DNA, so he chose to kidnap a whole lot of people and subject them to cryo without their permission. Then he started waking them up and his first group, "group A", self-destructed in a great big way. This wasn't just a few suicides: this was a Wayward Pines apocalypse. Pilcher was right about the aberrations, but of course, it doesn't justify what he did.

Pilcher's decision to focus on the youth this time does make sense, though, since kids accept new ideas more easily than adults. And yet, it just doesn't ring true for me that adults can't handle the truth. The 200 volunteers that chose to follow Pilcher were able to handle it, and Ethan doesn't seem to be reaching for the cyanide, but of course, Ethan still has his family. Was it separating the involuntary recruits from their families that did it, possibly combined with the way "group A" was told? Couldn't they break it to the adults in "group B" slowly, in increments?

I actually felt a little bad for the maniacal Sheriff Pope. He was a lonely security guard who made a lot of poor choices, and then he was dumped into a position of power that went to his head. Ethan is a much better potential leader than Pope, and possibly a good choice on Pilcher's part. Except that again, it seems unlikely that Ethan is going to start executing people on demand. Especially a woman who used to be his lover.

There had to be a reason why they cast Carla Gugino other than to stand behind a counter in a toy store and have halted conversations with Ethan and Theresa, and voila. Kate and her husband Howard are part of an organized resistance movement that included Ted the delivery driver and late realtor Peter McCall, and they have a music box bomb with which they intend to blow the fence.

Was Kate trying to recruit Theresa? Actually, that would be a smart choice, especially since Theresa has already discovered that Peter McCall knew something. What did he leave behind in Plot 33? I hope it's a note that says, "Hey, don't blow up the fence, because that would be really, really bad."

So Pilcher's volunteers are hiding in the mountain stronghold, surveilling the townspeople, and experimenting on Abbies. I loved Pilcher's luxurious and weirdly decorated office that featured chunks of the surrounding rock. That was a deliberate decorating choice, of course. With all that money, Pilcher could have had an office that looked like it belonged in a high rise.

Nurse Pam, who turned out to be David Pilcher's sister and a former addict, actually seemed sane in this episode. She stitched up Ethan's arm and didn't once threaten him with surgery without anesthetic. (Points to Ethan for sitting there calmly while she was doing it.) She clearly believes in her brother, but he doesn't treat her all that well. Actually, if she were my sister, I'm not sure I'd trust her with any sort of authority, because she's nuts. She wasn't faking that, was she?

Bits and quotes:

— Ben, who did not tell his mother the truth he'd learned, talked about how his old poster of the Earth made him feel small. His role in the future of Wayward Pines might make Ben feel a little more important.

— How many people are still stored in cryo? I assume recruit number 1, the scientist, is important, so why hasn't Pilcher revived him from suspension before now?

— Pilcher's volunteers are working toward making Wayward Pines self-sufficient, food-wise. There must be a lot of food in storage.

— Kate's husband Howard longs to go back to his fiancee. I have bad news for you, Howard.

Ethan: "You really expect people to grow and thrive in a world ruled by fear?"
Yeah, seriously. It didn't work for the Nazis.

Pilcher: "They had emerged from Plato's cave into the light, and it had blinded them."

Another enjoyable, fast-paced episode. Three out of four exploding music boxes,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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