Brendan Jesus
When I think back about the most prolific shows of my time (born in ’94), I can’t think of too many actually good horror shows. One show that had always stuck out to me, even if I didn’t watch it until college, was Lost. It looked like it had some fun elements of horror, along with suspense, action, romance; it ran the genre gambit. A lot of people really did not like the direction the show took, thinking they threw too many questions at us, only to answer very few of them. If you follow my writing here you will know I am a huge fan of ambiguity, and that’s one of the reasons Lost works for me. I like how there are still questions, where the HELL did that polar bear come from, and was it all just a dream? I think there is a reason Lost has the relevance it did, and still does. To me, Lost was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.
Wayward Pines was a show I was excited about when I first heard about it. For some reason or another I stopped watching after the first two episodes. It was an intriguing show, but I just forgot about it…I think. I had gone back about three or four times since its premier in 2015 to try and watch it but, again, would just stop watching after the first few episodes. Finally, bedridden from extreme gastrointestinal issues, I knew what I wanted to watch: Wayward Pines. I mean, I was basically confined to my bed for two months and really wanted to watch something new. I’m glad I finally watched it (the first season, that is). There were so many wonderful things about this series, but it all quickly started to give way to what feels like studio interference. While I have not read the novels by Blake Crouch, I don’t have a full understanding of how accurate the show is to the novels, so take what I say with that in mind. My big issue here is that Wayward Pines could have been Lost for a new generation, if they hadn’t made so many errors. Let’s take a spoiler-full look into where I think the show could have gone better.
Also, this is all a roundabout way of saying my real thesis here is two-fold: 1) Wayward Pines could have been the next Lost, and 2) a show like Lost could never succeed in a market like today on basic cable.
The Story
I think it is best to start by looking at the story as a whole, which I think really works. The basic story is that people wake up in a new and very idiosyncratic town. The people act different, the doctors act different, the police act different. Everything is just odd. Almost like an emulation of what an extraterrestrial would think humans act like. In Season 1, you have Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon) waking up in the hospital as he is told he was in an accident. In Season 2, you have Dr. Theo Yedlin (Jason Patric) waking up to the same thing. Both men are forced to acclimate to this life they cannot escape, no matter how hard they want to try.
The town of Wayward Pines is surrounded by a large and intimidating electrified fence. At first it seems like the fence is here to keep the townsfolk in, but we soon come to realize it’s used to keep something out. Herein lies my first big issue for the show. The story is really solid, there is intrigue, great character development, and tons of questions raised (just like Lost). Unlike Lost, they answer these questions way too quickly. We find out what is beyond the walls way too quickly, there really isn’t any build up. Shows nowadays seem like they’re cancelled just because a specific Nielsen number can’t be hit weekly, which is in part the reason for the pacing shows are forced to have now. Every episode of a show has to have a cliffhanger, and the next episode must wrap up that cliffhanger in some specific way.
(This subject will be wrapped up in the next topic.)
The Pacing
One of the things I like so much about Lost is how restrained it is in the pacing of its story. We are introduced to the Smoke Monster early on, but don’t really get an answer of where the Smoke Monster came from. Or we can look at the polar bear. If memory serves, the polar bear is introduced in Season 1 Episode 2 (or 3), and we don’t get an explanation of it until nearly Season 3! It’s ideas like that that build the mystery of the island and brings a level of terror to it, not knowing what the showrunners are going to throw at us next.
Wayward Pines, on the other hand, rushes to give us every single answer wrapped in an overly expository bow. The showrunners don’t give us time to try and form our own ideas, rather they raise a question and then they answer it. When we find Ethan Burke woke up nearly 2000 years in the future, it’s a shocking reveal, but it’s just told to us way too early in the season. If they would have used THAT as the stinger for Season 1, it would have been a much better introduction to this information.
It shows a lack of belief in their product, almost as if they were making each season so that if they got cancelled all of their ducks would be in a row. I don’t necessarily see anything too wrong with that idea as it acts as some sort of fan service. But when the show suffers because of how you handle the possibility that cancellation is in your future, then what is the point of even investing time in the story?
The whole storyline of Season 2, where we get to see more of the mountain lab, is a Season 4 or 5 storyline. Season 2 is a whole mess. It completely jumps the shark, is somehow way more rushed than Season 1, and completely beats the First Generation turned fascist for “the greater good” way over the head. Not to mention the First Generation is literally wearing Nazi uniforms. This is also an example of how the showrunners don’t have faith in the audience to put the pieces together themselves and would prefer to spoonfeed them all the information they need in service of getting every little bit of information explained for our primitive brains to understand.
The Abbies
Besides the human antagonists, the outside force that is the reason for the fence is the Aberrations, aka the Abbies. On the whole, the Abbies are a solid set of creatures. Their greyish, smooth skin and Nosferatu-like appearance makes them pretty scary. Add on top of that their speed, maneuverability, and super strength, and you have a fairly fleshed-out creature. My big issue here with the Abbies stems back to my previous gripe with the pacing. It’s pretty clear they were probably only able to lock down Matt Dillon for one season, but HE doesn’t need to find out what is really happening. I think the reveal of the Abbies in Season 1 was the right choice, but providing us with their complete backstory was not.
Having the Abbies creates a good amount of xenophobic external horror, but I don’t think we necessarily needed to be given the complete rundown of the creatures yet. It would have been more enjoyable if we learned their name right around the time Ethan Burke dies, though that’s all I think we should have learned. They could have taken Season 2 to flesh out the ideas of the Abbies like how they walk, act, forage, etc., and used that to, again, let the audience deduce what these creatures are. The show works well as a horrific and idyllic small town series, and I think the inclusion of the Abbies is something that should have been used sparingly.
What My Series Would Look Like
It goes without saying that I am not the be-all and end-all for what should and shouldn’t be included in a television series. I just wish there was more time and effort put into Wayward Pines, rather than the showrunners trying to put every piece together for an inevitable cancellation. If I were running the show, I would have spent more time building the lore of the town, letting Ethan Burke explore the town with the audience. That way, when we get to Season 2, we can do a slow roll-out of the Abbies and Dr. Filcher’s (Toby Jones) ideas. The show worked so well when it was mainly this Twin Peaks hellhole of a town, and I really wish we got more of that. By the time we get everything revealed to us, this whole small town horror vibe just goes right out the window.
Lost worked because it took its time. It wasn’t worried about giving us every single answer; hell, they barely gave us any answers. And that’s what is so great about Lost! I hate to keep going back to this idea, but it really just feels like the idea of cancellation was in the mind of the showrunners of Wayward Pines at all times. There needs to be more trust in audiences. We don’t need to be given everything beat for beat, we want to watch a show to be engaged and to unravel the story with our friends. Give me something to talk about at lunch with my other friends who have watched this show.
I don’t think a show like Lost could ever be made today, at least not on basic cable. There is little trust in visions of creators with grand ideas. If a show doesn’t hit that magic number, it’s canned. Which is a true shame. There are a handful of shows that don’t need to hit those magic numbers, but that’s because they have been grandfathered into the zeitgeist, like American Horror Story. Even though I thought Season 2 of Wayward Pines was a trainwreck, and did a worse job than Season 1, I would have 100% come back for a Season 3. Although maybe I’m part of the problem. I didn’t watch the show during its initial syndication, but I did watch American Horror Story: NYC.
Do I have a right to complain about a show that I actively stopped watching after two episodes? Where do I get off trying to tell these people what they SHOULD have done? I don’t have all the answers, but I do know one thing: take us on a ride. Give us the best damn product you can, and don’t worry if there will be a second or third season. It’s easier to gain a cult following than create a hit show. I think more people would be talking about Wayward Pines today if they slowed down the storytelling and worked harder on immersing the audience in the story of the town, the people who live there, and let the mystery of everything ride out just a bit longer.
