Wayward Pines 1.03 “Our Town, Our Law”

Sometimes when you wake up in a strange town, after having suffered a horrific accident, and you find yourself bruised, battered, bloody and abandoned in the woods, you want things to just make sense, you know? You want the phones to dial the numbers you actually call. You want everyone to do more than stare at you and wait expectantly for the next stupid thing you might say. You want the agent you’re looking for not to be a serial-murdered corpse, and the former lover/agent you saw last month not to have remarried, forgotten you, keep telling you to shut up and to “explain” that she hasn’t seen you for twelve years.

Even more, you want your only real friend in this weird new place not to be ritually murdered in the town square. And when you finally do find your missing family, I’m pretty sure you want them to be safe and happy. What you do not want is for the Sherriff to sexually harass your wife, steal her ice cream, and threaten to kill your son.

Those seem like reasonable expectations, but they’re not ones Ethan Burke is getting met. And he’s cool with that, he really is, he’s the stoic badass sort that scoffs at psychotic nurses telling him he needs surgery (gleefully! Did it have to be so gleefully, Melissa Leo?) and rips out his own IVs before smashing her face against a cabinet.

He’s not playing by town rules (conveniently posted, strange as they are, in many local establishments), even after his family wakes up, injured but not yet afraid, in the house of his murdered friend. He’s onto something, he’s still working this like a case, and he manages to sneak inside some sort of warehouse/restocking facility that has a few more clues about what’s going on in this place he can’t leave, and why his presence seems so important to at least the few spokespeople who’ve hinted at a larger truth.

Of course, the last thing you want to find in this creepy garage is your wife’s damaged car, even if you’ve been searching for her for days. When they reunite she’s more concerned with his old paramour, whom he still seems to be meeting clandestinely. But he’s only trying to get information, and how long can everybody keep blenders and showers and coffee makers and broken fans running so they can have a private conversation or two in this wayward place?

The biggest reveal of all is when the family tries to flee, scared and angry at last, and the Sherriff (who probably abducted them into the town, for Ethan’s benefit?) takes a personal interest in their attempt to get out. He breaks character, or has already been broken, or can’t help himself from getting his revenge on the thorn in his side Burke has become, and it results in his death with his own gun as Burke really is the trained agent he says he is. Of course so was Kate, but she’s seen things even worse than public execution apparently.

And then it gets really weird, because the exit gate in the wall they had nearly reached somehow opens, and something horrible grabs the Sherriff’s body, leaving the living, disheveled family to flee. So it probably wasn’t an escape route after all.

Maybe there was something to that brief scene with Dr. Jenkins, where he hinted that Ethan’s family was admitted to placate him, and that they need a good guy in this town badly. Sure, while it’s being so Twilight Zone, Wayward Pines also might as well be a Western.