Ah, here’s the moral crux of the show, finally. It’s not “why is everyone lying?” It’s not “what is there to be afraid of?” It’s not even “let’s stop executing rebels.” It’s what Sherriff Pope said, before Ethan killed him: “It’s worse than anything you could imagine.”
Pope’s problem was that he got tired of playing the game, and he let the edges peel off the shiny silver wrapper coating everything in a façade of good will. Now we know why Wayward Pines is the way it is. We know what it’s for, and we know what it’s doing. If it all seems way too contrived and ramshackle to work, well, it probably is. In that case we may be watching not the establishment of a future utopia at all, but rather the last misguided gasps of a society long in ruins.
Pretty heady stuff, but I have to say Toby Jones and Matt Dillon sell it all with a nice contrast of messianic fervor and good old macho world-weariness. Burke’s helicopter ride wasn’t back to the compound after all, but to the staging area behind the scenes. He’s finally seeing the inner workings; the curtain has been pulled back. And tellingly, he stays on point despite the mounting bad news.
Which is what his son has already learned last episode. That it’s not 2014, it’s 4028. Wayward Pines isn’t a trap, it’s an oasis in a world of chaos and savagery. Human culture is being preserved under fragile, breakable glass (and barbed wire), all engineered by a mad scientist and his crazy sister. Pam Pilcher’s medical training does stitch up Ethan’s wounds from the abbies, but Dillon doesn’t let us forget their ongoing antagonism, even though she’s now in avid temple attendant mode.
Melissa Leo is the one to really watch in all of this, for sure. I mean, we all know she’s a very talented actress capable of mercurial shifts in tone and mood … but she doesn’t usually get to do it all in one role! Just this episode (which is flashback ridden, to be sure) she’s an ardent grad student, a mid-management administrator in a really bad wig, a survivalist field nurse and an avid devotee to her messianic brother. That the seams show are not her flaws, but probably more the uneven and spotty script requiring too much of her. However, the obvious glee with which she relishes each scene goes a long way to tie it all together. Can there be such a thing as glorious scenery chewing?
Certainly Hope Davis gets in on the same tip, revealing to us her character as overly avid fan of science geekdom (with plenty more cryptic comments about her hypno-therapy skills, “C’mon guys, it’s not like I’m actually psychic, but …..?!”) as she promises eternal loyalty at a book signing for the increasingly fearful and desperate Professor Pilcher.
I’m still not sure if we totally buy the answers, but Ethan at least seems to. When he finally witnesses the endless hall of cryo-tubes (not a bad visual, but it could have been way creepier, someone has forgotten their Michael Crichton), his judgment is simple: why did the doctor kidnap all these people. And the answer? Because not enough would believe him or sign up willingly to make his plan viable. He started abducting the ones he needed who couldn’t be persuaded. Moral relativism at its finest, and pretty perplexing, because can you hate your captor while admitting he’s the only reason you’re still alive?
Ethan can, and while he realizes his son knows all but his wife doesn’t, Teresa is on her own journey of exploration and probing at the tense confines of her new life. When Kate shows up for an impromptu visit, she doesn’t understand but we start to see that it’s about yet another secret plan. Kate (and her allies) haven’t stopped trying to escape at all, they’re just doing it with maximum stealth. This ties in to what Pilcher reveals to Ethan; an opening scene of him standing amidst a ruined Wayward Pines wasn’t set after whatever apocalypse actually happened at all. Instead, it a more recent insight into the first time he tried waking up a group of sleepers and told them where they were.