Notes for Episode 24: "Wayward Pines"

Hi everyone! Hannah here, back with another set of notes. If these ended up being late, I was gonna call them "wayward notes," but I ended up getting them in on time so that joke's ruined. The main thing you'll notice for this set, and it'll be true of all episodes in the coming arc, is that we have a new section! "Town Stuff," it's called. Stray observations about the mysterious small towns that aren't quite plot, aren't quite character, aren't quite aesthetic. See you next month, and until then... follow the rules! Or follow the clues, I guess. Or just pilch? Look, I'm not trying to be authoritarian here.

Plot / Structure Stuff:

• I think it’s funny that Ethan is a Secret Service agent who doesn’t seem to interface in any way with the President. Like he’s mostly on the forgery beat.

  • He’s crying in the hallway like “Five counterfeit hundreds today…..I can still see their faces….”

  • AND HE SPOTTED THE COUNTERFEIT MONEY!

• And there’s CREATURES ??

  • Abbies… short for aberrations. That’s the real shit. That’s perfect

• It’s so funny that they just don’t seem to mind him killing Sheriff Pope. Like they’re testing him but they were gonna do that already. So nothing changed

• I like that all 3 members of the family are dealing with their own expressions of the town’s weirdness

• They were not kidding with calling this episode “The Truth”

  • The BALLS on this show!!

  • Imagine if you had missed episode 5 and you were like “alright let’s just catch up using the Previously On…”

• I like that Ben’s reaction to learning the truth is to be thrown into an existential crisis re: his actions having much greater relative impact on the planet

• Ethan is SUCH A GOSSIPY BITCH he just tells EVERYONE like INSTANTLY

  • He gets told the truth and one second later is texting a groupchat called “Everyone I Know”

• The setup of the mystery that we know is happening (it’s 4028) vs the mystery the rebels think is happening (we’re being trapped but it’s still 2014) is so weird because like… the city fathers are still the villains, but if the rebels achieve their objectives that WILL kill everyone and they DO need to be stopped

• Here’s what I’ll say. I feel a lot of affection for this show but these back half episodes are not exactly “crackling” 

  • They wrote a lot of checks through the first five episodes that are just impossible to cash, fundamentally

  • Major character deaths, insane revelations, and then it’s like… okay we actually have to have a reasonably normal third act for a season

• The cold open in episode 9 is so funny. Television stripped down the bare essentials of violent thuggery

• Jason the Hitler Kid just killed EVERYONE

  • There’s TWO Hitler kids???? 

    • At least!

• It’s SO FUNNY how on the previously on covering Ethan’s big speech in episode 9, “his real name is David Pilcher” is played as the big revelatory line

• Out of all the shows we’ve covered this is the one that makes us MOST cry out “what the fuck is season two gonna be like”

  • And a pretty good setup for it!

Town Stuff:

• One great way this captures Twin Peaksian small town weirdness is just by having characters move a little weird compared to how they should. Like Kate picking up her damn phone

• Coffee shop called “The Excellent Bean” now that’s just charming

• I like that the locals call it “Wayward”

• I feel like they tell the extras to be a little more attention-grabbing than they should be, on this show. It contributes well to the vibe being fucked

• Oh the girls’ uniforms have kicky little hats, that’s terrific

• It’s genuinely buckets of fun how overtly evil everyone in the town is. They never hide it, not a single fucking time

• I love how this is all just Evil Busytown. Every job (realtor, etc.) operates like what a small child would think that job is

• It’s honestly a really fascinating development that all the adults are as enigmatic and sinister as they are when they presumably have no idea what the town actually is or why they can’t leave or talk about the past

  • This is a town full of people who do the Westworld “that doesn’t look like anything to me” bit to themselves, entirely voluntarily

Character / Performance Stuff:

• Pam the suspicious nurse is just terrific to see. Instant standout

• This is so odd for a “mysterious small town” story because the people he encounters are like ACTIVELY hostile and not just officious or offputting

• Dillon is really good bc his aggro irritated performance clashes perfectly with everyone’s really over the top enigmatic vibe

  • He looks like an evolved zombie in a zombie army RTS

• Oh the evil principal is GREAT. What a treat of a character

• It’s insane how much he looks like various monsters. Zombies, Frankensteins

  • Esther says his brow looks like a shelf

  • I was so convinced it would just be for the first ep or two while he’s injured and fucked at the hospital. But no

• Ben reminds me so much of the kid from The Guest. Same kind of nice boy / school shooter duality to him

• “I’m about this close to letting them cut your wife’s throat in the middle of Main Street.” – The Hero

  • Sheriff Ethan is a star in the canon of Lostalike violent thugs

• “If I wanna kill somebody, I’m gonna shoot ‘em.” – The Hero

• Kid at the school looks SHOCKINGLY like Hitler. Bad form

Technical / Aesthetic Stuff:

• Lost opening shot lol. With the opening eye

• Alright immediately this looks too good for network TV of its era

• This doesn’t quite have real-deal Lynch energy but it does have Remedy game energy and that’s pretty good

• The mountain in the background feels like a matte painting? Idk if it’s real or a greenscreen but it feels like a matte painting. Which I think is what it needs to feel like

• This show uses contrast in a way that a lot of network TV of its era was simply allergic to

• The reveal shot of the Facility is really quite good. The X-Files crew would not be shamed by any of this!

Notable Quotes:

• “There’s a man here to see you, says he’s a secret agent or something?”

• “You know everyone in this town?” “And everything about them!” “Do you know Kate Hewson?” “No, I’ve never heard of her… how can that be possible…”

• “Ever heard of Obama? 9/11?”

• “What an ice-cream-cone-eating BASTARD!”

• “My dad is a Secret Service agent, he’s been assigned here” “What if he just made it up?”

• “Bigfoot is always alone, is he not?”

Cute Things We Said

• What if Wayward Pines is Gay City and a local cult targets Agent Burke for refusing to twerk

  • Agent Twurke

• Burgers are so telegenic. When you see a character in something bite into a burger it’s like… wow. Wow. That’s the possibility of visual media

• Wayward Pines is this: https://i.redd.it/x5g8shnnkxw61.jpg

• I like the idea of the son being bullied like “Oh look at the freak who isn’t mysterious! What, no enigmatic traits?”

• The mayor is 100% not the big cheese here… he’s not Mayor McCheese, he’s Mayor McFraud!

• We met pigs at a place called the Wayward Ranch… were those Wayward Pigs?

  • H: “At some point, you gotta imagine the creatures are gonna get in”

  • E: “Yeah, and then everyone’s fucked”

  • H: “Some heads are gonna be wayward”

  • E: “Yeah… some HEADS are gonna be wayward!”

  • H: “That’s exactly what I said”

  • E: “I said it louder! :D”

• We need to talk about “Follow the rules? Follow the clues!”

• This is SO shameless about being The Twin Peaks Matrix

  • You might as well have these characters talk about New Vegas and spinny skirts, I mean fucking hell

• We are falling down on the job if we don’t do a multi-minute riff on “pilching”