KDeFlane

I think the mother was suitably in shock, gasping on her knees, but yeah, the rest of the family seemed numb. I'm on the fence for "Aftermath" depending on how much into the supernatural and religion they lean and whether or not the disasters ever end. At least it isn't zombies. (And I would follow a forum for the show.) I liked "The Good Place" more than I thought I would. My family laughed at most of MacGyver and not in a good way. I fell asleep before the end of "Designated Survivor" and thus will not bother. Glad to have S.H.I.E.L.D. back and I hope they don't go too comic book this season. Still watching all the NCIS flavors out of habit, and Hawaii-5-O only by fast-forwarding thru their silly B-plots. I've also dropped out of Vampire Diaries and OUaT, but I'm a Supernatural loyal fan until the bitter end. My indulgence is "Forged in Fire" on the History channel.

I liked it even better when he followed up with, "I'm a squat-mancer."

(I am also a parent of an only child.) It's hard to know whether *all* of the children rounded up at the detention facility had no siblings. We only know about our smaller circle of named children. However, we do know about the previous generation, specifically the guy who killed his brother when Drill possessed him. Maybe that incident is why Drill no longer wants children with siblings?-

Finally caught up with this episode. I was on the alert, looking for misdirection. In this scene, Claire only asks Henry about the pushing, and Henry is positive that it was Minx who pushed Cassandra. Don't get me wrong -- I am not defending the show or the writers. I was completely puzzled by the scenes where Minx seems to be accusing "Shaggy" of giving out too much information during interrogation, as if she has some knowledge of what was said. I was confused by all of the kids pointing fingers. Knowing it was all a contrived set-up for the sake of the audience does not help. I had been reading this thread before watching the episode, less worried about spoilers than being jerked around by the plot. For some reason, I was under the impression that Minx actually died by the end, and thus was disappointed. When the tech said he couldn't do it, and whats-his-name advisor (chief of staff?) said he could push the buttons, I expected him to throw a switch and see instantaneous zapping, not a magical countdown which could be conveniently stopped with 2 seconds to spare. Please. Anyway, finale is only days away. Yay!

I can't edit my earlier table post, but here is the L+7 data for the finale: Not bad. I still have all of the episodes on my DVR. I really should be a completionist and watch the finale a third time, just to look for more details, but my motivation has dropped. I do remember seeing at least one more example of that quirky barcode made of triangles, but I don't think we were ever meant to be able to decode it ourselves. I had my computer wallpaper background of the blue-tinted forest for the longest time. I've moved on. *sigh* Maybe we'll all meet again in the fall for something even better.

a nod to jhlipton for the 'grups' reference ;) I do wonder whether any of the FirstGen class cares about preserving all of the decades of [Western] civilization that Pilcher had stockpiled. Did any of them listen to Beethoven before their abductions? Did any of them care about the history of oil paintings? Ben learned to adapt to life without the Internet, and many of his classmates probably never heard of Twitter or Facebook. They were taught to forget their own past, and likely have already forgotten about the past of their ancestors. Could we look forward to watching them dismantle the rest of the cultural remnants of Wayward Pines? Naw, that would be TOO dystopian for network television.

If the early writers working on the show wanted to establish the feeling readers get from the book(s), then they may have been trying to set up the fact that Ethan was being "reset" a few times. Beverly is in one iteration but not another; the piano in the Biergarten is in one iteration but is replaced by a large wall mirror in another. Then the writing staff gets swapped out, and they drop that slow reveal entirely, and they don't feel the need to clean up the trail (or they were simply not aware of what was in the scripts of the earlier episodes).

I think people would prefer to keep the book discussion separate, even now. No need to spoil the books for those who are about to begin reading the series, when there is another thread for book talk. And forum policy is to keep the discussion threads on topic -- this topic is for content of episode 10 of the show.

I liked the ending. It made enough internal sense to work for me. Was it perfect? No, but I don't need to have everything explained or even plausible for the emotional impact to grab me. I liked the show. Was it perfect? No, but we had fun for many weeks, and it was not an entire waste of my time. And I'm speaking as someone who watched every episode three or more times. Thank you, FOX. (Just don't add a second season, please.)

I can't seem to return to my older post to update the ratings table i had started. Last week's episode was the lowest in overnight ratings for its season, but we won't have the full DVR numbers for another few days yet. I wish I could build a proper table here, but a list will do. Most episodes doubled in viewership as delayed viewing was added in. Episode -> [same night] -> [+3days] -> [+7days] = [(18-49Demo/Share), (Viewers in millions)] #1 -> [1.0/3, 3.76] -> [1.9, ----] -> [2.1/7, ----] #2 -> [1.2/4, 4.59] -> [1.8, 6.50] -> [2.3/8, 7.51] #3 -> [1.2/4, 3.97] -> [1.8, 6.04] -> [2.2/8, 7.02] #4 -> [1.1/4, 4.20] -> [2.1, 6.79] -> [2.4/8, 7.53] #5 -> [1.2/4, 4.24] -> [2.5, 6.43] -> [2.2/., 7.17] #6 -> [1.2/4, 3.45] -> [1.2, 6.27] -> [2.4/., 7.08] #7 -> [1.0/4, 3.38] -> [1.8, 5.85] -> [2.3/., 6.91] #8 -> [1.0/4, 3.37] -> [1.8, 5.85] -> [coming] #9 -> [0.9/3, 3.25] -> [2.0, 5.81] #10->[1.2/5, 3.98] (updated with July25 data, L+7 coming July 28)

I do believe they grew to love each other over many years spent together in a stressful environment. I don't know how many years someone can pine away for a distant love, without knowing if the other has already moved on. It was Kate who mentions Harold's finance (in episode 6) and says *if* they find his fiance, they will deal with that together. I think that hints at some very real feelings between them. I don't remember Harold ever mentioning his fiance after that flashback to when they were first meeting in secret, when Kate still had her short haircut. If they had Facebook, their status would be "complicated".

My take on that scene is that he didn't keep the bottle. We see him pick up stuff from a side table and look at it, then a quick cut to another angle shows him holding his gun. I think the editor shaved a few seconds out which would have shown him dropping the bottle and reaching for his gun. Maybe he dropped the bottle and it made too much noise, so they did a quick cut. It really was just a random bottle of pills in a generic clinic setting, as far as I could see. It would really surprise me at this point for it to have had any meaning.

With the final episode less than a week away, we have run out of steam on plausible theories. How about some wild-ass spec instead? People taken and frozen in the 21st century must have left behind some immediate family members. Some of those relatives survived the downfall of civilization, only to give birth to the mutations which eventually become the abbies. Somewhere in the distant future, a Wayward Pines resident begins the study of the new genome and discovers his own distant relative is being held for observation in the lab. Moral quandry? Or a hilarious spin-off sitcom? (i really should proofread *before* hitting the green button.)

I'm beyond caring *how* any of this is possible. They're telling me a story, and I'm still enjoying it. While the Freakiship Gathering was weird for the sake of being weird, I *liked* how jolting it was. It was meant to feel creepy and it worked for me. It's that kind of atmosphere that drew me into the show, and I'm glad they haven't run out of steam since the twist. (And I've seen more examples of their triangular bar codes, but I haven't captured them to see if they really work as data.)

When padded-room Kate called WP a Potemkin village, I had to take a detour. At first, it sounds like a good label, but the more I think about it, it feels like a writer trying to be intellectual and getting it wrong. While the reference to it being a fake town is correct, the façade is meant for the outside world. It's not supposed to be a functioning village at all, and certainly not for imprisoning residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village From the beginning of the series, we've compared WP to The Village in that old TV show "The Prisoner" and that would have been a perfect parallel for Kate to have made at that point. She's trapped, she's been told it's being run by some government agency, and they are trying to break her mind. Maybe she's never seen the show or even knows it as a cultural reference? Fine, whatever. How about the original "Mission: Impossible" with its elaborate schemes to mess with the mind of someone to extract information from him, usually by creating a false reality around him? I guess not. By contrast, on this week's "Under The Dome" the writers allowed the teenagers to refer to their time spent in a virtual reality (don't ask) as being in The Matrix. The dialog felt natural, and for them to be aware of the reference made the scene more realistic to me. Good job, writers!

Yes, at least one that we know of. In the first episode, Ethan steals a car from the street out in front of a house where a lady was giving piano lessons to a boy (as i recall).

I can't believe I didn't remember the stream on that map, thanks for the nudge. I still wonder whether there are fish that can pass under the wall, or whether the stream has a grate to prevent things from coming in or going out of town via the stream. A new question crossed my mind: What kinds of religious life are being supported by the town? Did Pilcher build any churches at all? Did he choose people without any religious affiliations for his project? Calling the festival a "Fellowship Gathering" comes rather close to reminding people of their past lives, whether they were part of a church or not.

Music, music, music! And they get the piano stylings of Hector Gaiter (Gaither?) piped over the P.A. system in the forest for your late-night strolling enjoyment. (And Beverly did have the radio in the Biergarten. We did briefly discuss music in the "extraordinary town" thread several weeks back.) Now that Ben's "broken" arm has healed -- how much time has passed? -- he can serenade his lady on that new guitar. I'm rather curious about what tunes the kids play for their Battle of the Bands.

Someone needs to add WP to the "gas leak excuses" list on TVTropes. Sometimes its a cover-up for an actual explosion from other causes; sometimes it's used to get people to evacuate an area; sometimes it's a way to convince people that they were hallucinating. Maybe we're all under the influence of noxious gases. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GasLeakCoverup

For no good reason, the set designers changed the marquee on The Pines Theater again. Now the WPTC presents "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" -- please tell me this is not an important Easter Egg. I could take this to the speculation thread, but it's not so much a theory as some conflicting feelings I have. I don't want to overthink how any proper theater troupe could mount a new production of a play every week -- in fact, my college had a summer rep season with six plays in six weeks, put on by overlapping casts. I can't believe that Pines marquee is important in ANY way to the reveal of plot points. And yet... someone on the staff of this show made the decision to change that display, and there must be more than random chance behind the selection of titles. Right? There MUST be a logic to all of this, I demand it!

Ratings on first night "live" are good, better than average. By the time they factor in DVR delayed viewers, "Live+3" and "Live+7 days", the ratings have doubled. Consistently. For example: (from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/07/10/live-3-broadcast-ratings-wayward-pines-tops-adults-18-49-increases-total-viewership-gains-for-the-week-ending-july-5-2015/429181/for last week's episode) (The ever-popular "Cancellation Bear" on zap2it's tvbythenumbers is on summer hibernation break. Otherwise I would point you to their analysis.)

If you don't mind my double-posting, I wanted to talk about the scene in which Kate and Harold take a moment to reconsider their commitment, both to the plan and each other. I remember in the early days of the series thinking Harold was Kate's monitor, not to be trusted, but now I see he was just being a protective husband. And after that first Reckoning, when Kate offers to make him a cup of tea and touches his shoulder, we see that they've been through tough times together. When Kate talks to him about getting back to the outside world and finding Harold's fiance, well, it touches me. You can tell they really are a couple now, bonded by their years in captivity. It's sweet. It's a well-written scene, with real people and real emotions buried in all of the wild fiction and plot distractions.

We might have mentioned it in that episode's thread at the time. The notes I could read were all lists of names of people in town and their status to Bill. Examples: Arlene - Sheriff's secretary, ONE OF THEM? Hecter ... NOT Responsive Megan Fisher - NOT Responsive, TEACHER Kate Hewson Ballinger, NOT Responsive, LOST CAUSE Beverly Brown - Responsive YES etc. To add to the off-topic comment, Neal (born Baelfire) never actually married Emma Swan (daughter of Snow White), so I wouldn't even call Rumple and the Charmings in-laws, legally, but emotionally they are related as grandparents-in-law to Henry, son of Emma and Neal.

I finally caught up to the seventh entry in this web series. (It gave plenty of screen time to the branded software and hardware, thank you sponsors.) I'm glad to see Sarah is still alive, assuming that tube they were holding her in wasn't prepping her for hibernation. It does make me wonder, assuming science ever advances that far, how they can maintain both a mother and her unborn child in the same hibernation safely.