Genre-jumping may be the secret power of this show. No sooner do we have all revealed (we’re in a post-apocalyptic bubble of normality surrounded by monsters! Centuries have passed! Everything you knew is long gone!), than we immediately move into a sleeper-cell conspiracy theory. Nurse Pam is back to slippery evil-villainess mode, moving beyond her devoted acolyte phase to actually goading her brother to get his head on straight. Because he may not be completely sane?
She again tries to elicit Ethan’s sympathy (in the way most likely to push him further away, seemingly unbeknownst to her). People don’t like barely veiled threats, Pam.
The biggest switch-up is for Kate, who has gone from being the former agent who abandoned her training to conform to Wayward Pines to being the leader of the resistance cell, who don’t know what’s going on but have been planning an escape for a very long time. So she wasn’t worried Ethan would get her or her loved ones a Reckoning when he first arrived; she was worried he’d expose her own rebellion attempt. The most poignant scene selling this plot-flip is a basement meeting where each of the rebels speaks longingly of their old homes and families. It’s like a self-help encounter group, and it shows how unlikely the residents are to buy the readily imposed fictions of Wayward Pines.
This is also sent home to us in a required fertility counseling session between Pam and Kate and Harold Ballinger, who clearly haven’t been sleeping together and don’t plan to, despite their assignment upon waking up in the Wayward Pines hospital. You know Melissa Leo turns the creepiness up to twenty in this encounter, leaving Carla Gugino and Reed Diamond to squirm like frogs on an exam table.
While Kate’s independence emerges, Teresa’s never really left, as she continues her investigation into the mysteriously undeveloped Lot 33. Big Bill is in a surprisingly good mood and warns her rather than threatening her this time, but she is dogged in her pursuit of the truth, if unwilling to be directly confrontational. She tries to get into her son’s school, too, and is again rebuffed by Mrs. Fisher.
We soon find out why, as biology class has one goal: showing explicit pictures of sex acts to instruct the children in how to do them, ASAP. The book jackets are literally swimming in spermatozoa. Wayward Pines is apparently desperate for as many unwed mothers as possible. Or, like, wedded, who cares as long as there are babies?
One unlikely alliance emerges, as Teresa reaches out to Kate over Ethan’s inexplicable sudden acceptance of his role as Sheriff, with all the conformity that entails. Both women wonder if he’s been drugged or hypnotized, and continue along their own paths with the added agenda of helping him if possible. We know (don’t we?) that he’s not insane, and he shows it when he detects a pipe bomb in his car before blowing up the whole family. Who put it there, and are we really in the place already where no one can trust anyone else? Yes, we’ve always been there, since the whole town is a lie.
The plotting putting Ben and Amy in the path of danger is the major weakness in an episode that has too much going on with too few answers, meaning this is one of the lesser episodes of the season. I’m going to need you to fully delve into the crazy in the time you have left, okay?