You could play spot the reference in Wayward Pines all day long. Many noted that the pilot opened like Lost, the title is redolent of Twin Peaks, and it is a town where very odd stuff happens very often, with everyone pretending to look the other way.
The absolute weirdest stuff in the first episode is Nurse Pam, who seems to run a hospital of one (or maybe two), but would you want to be treated by Melissa Leo and Toby Jones after you had been in a devastating car accident?
Burke flees the asylum of horrors, after having to get physical with the nurse (who weirdly more or less puts up with it; no orderlies to call apparently), but is too bruised and beaten to make much sense in the town. The Sheriff’s unhelpful office is pretty much a Fire Walk With Me riff, but the assured confidence of the secret agent is beyond Matt Dillon’s scope; he’s angry, and scared, and making all the film noir moves the story requires, in a town that is much more Invasion of the Body Snatchers than urban malaise.
Or, as it turns out in episode 2, maybe it’s The Lottery. One of his missing partners is now married and runs a toy store. She says she’s been there for twelve years. This is the one he shared an affair with that almost ruined his marriage, to a very resigned but focused Shannyn Sossamon. The other partner he finds dead in a shack, a scene of torture, murder and neglect that could have been staged for any number of serial killer movies. Flies are always buzzing around the weeks old corpse.
The woman who showed him the way to the body, Beverly, thinks she’s been there just a year … since the Clinton presidency. She saw the murder, and she’s worried that she’s next. Juliet Lewis can channel doomed characters in her sleep, and her fear and panic and fate are sealed more and more assuredly as the episode goes on.
But how does that work exactly? The town just accepts ritual executions, and cosigns on capturing the victims? For what purpose? And is Burke next, or will all be forgotten the following day?
The rules are spelled out very clearly on a chart in the toy store. Don’t talk about the past. Work hard and listen to authority (that means the Sherriff). Smile and be happy. The crickets are not what they seem. There are cameras everywhere. They are always watching and listening.
Two odd developments make everything we’re seeing even more of a wild card, red herring, or any other metaphor of your own choosing for lies. The nurse and doctor keep insisting that Burke is suffering from a massive brain bleed, and requires surgery. And outside of the gated community in the valley in Idaho where he’s trapped, the world does seem to be going on, as the doctor is in contact with the agent whom the wife is relying on to track Burke. Whether that means the TV show is going in a different direction than the source material I don’t yet know.
But I mean to find out.