Theories: What Is Going On?

[jhlipton]

it's likely that a husband and wife pair (or even whole families) might volunteer together and in that way at least they'd have each other, unlike most of the Waywardians.

 

Which is why it was just dumb to snatch individuals and not families.  The abductees in WP 1.0 might not have gone so crazy -- None of that "family" that killed themselves was related to each other! -- and the ones of 2.0 so anxious to escape if they had their loved ones with them.  If family members have the "Abbie Gene", just snip them so they can't multiply.

 

===================================================

 

ETA:  I just realized another bit of bad writing.  When Ethan visits Kate the first time, she tells him they can't talk.  But the workshop in back is completely unmonitored!  So she and hubby could have taken him back and at least explained the basics.  She obviously trusted him some, or she wouldn't have said anything!  D'oh!

Edited July 11, 2015 by jhlipton

[Tabasco Cat]

This show is such a mess. It's kind of like one person wrote the first five episode then left the show, and someone else stepped in and wrote the next five episodes without bothering to watch the first five, maybe just skimming the cliff notes.

 

In the end there will be no brilliant revelations, great dramatic denouement or creative genius on display. The way the story will end is pathetically predictable. Not that we know exactly what will happen, but more like the Plinko chips on the Price is Right. There's only so many slots for them to fall into.

 

I'm not sorry I watched Wayward Pines, but I definitely won't be rushing out to read the books when it's over. It's a slow summer for TV and, "Well, it was better than nothing" will be how I remember this one. I hope that's damning it with faint praise because it's really not deserving of any praise at all. So much potential gives way to utter dreck. By next summer I hope I don't remember anything about it at all.

[KDeFlane]

* Does anyone know the ratings on this show?

 

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:

 

Wayward Pines was the week's top Live + 3 ratings gainer among adults 18-49 adding 0.8 adults 18-49 ratings points.

Wayward Pines topped percentage gainers for the week ending June 21, adding 85 percent to its Live +SD adults 18-49 rating.

Wayward Pines also led total viewership increases, adding 2.476 million viewers to its Live + Same Day viewers.

(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.)

[Free]

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.)

 

They don't do Summer shows predictions because it tends to be more unpredictable and there are usually other factors at play.

[dr pepper]

speaking of ratings, i watch on a streaming site that's not hulu or netflix. does that get counted at all?

Edited July 11, 2015 by dr pepper

[sportsgirl]

This episode is making me champion the "this is all Ethan's coma-dream" theory, mainly because of the explanation of the Easter bombings/confession to Theresa.

The bombing/aftermath is obviously the thing that Ethan has struggled with the most both professionally and personally, that's damaged his relationship with his family and partner, and in his mind, he's been struggling to make it right ever since. Wayward Pines gives him an opportunity to both gain forgiveness with Theresa and play the role of hero who saves the world by not following orders, like he did with the bombing. The actual conversation with Theresa unfolded in a way that made no logical sense, unless it was Ethan's mind playing out the best-possible-outcome scenario, a solution which he "earned" by going through all the WP hoops. Megan's manipulation of his son, presumably, will give his brain a chance to eventually earn Ben's forgiveness. And being sheriff and working both for/against Pilcher will help him make up for his professional role in the bombings.

I'd be happy with this ending because the 800 million plot holes, inconsistencies, and annoying details about this show would disappear immediately if we could blame them entirely on Ethan's subconscious making it up as he went along. Hey, he came of age during the Cold War and went to work for the government; chances are, he held the Western view of the USSR (perfect society planned, but first step, totalitarianism and harsh punishment), so it is believable that his mind would duplicate that model for Wayward Pines.

But The Midsummer Nights Dream marquee may make me amend that. Kate & Ethan's boss as Oberon, Pilcher as Puck, the townspeople the Athenians, and they are all part of the big experiment Kate keeps referring to? Maybe we're in everyone's heads and Pilcher is controlling their realities, and we're watching their collective dreams play out on the screen? (Actually, I'd kind of hate that for POV reasons -- in whose reality do the abbies eat the rebel dump truck drivers?)

[Milburn Stone]

This episode is making me champion the "this is all Ethan's coma-dream" theory, mainly because of the explanation of the Easter bombings/confession to Theresa.

 

For all the reasons you say, the same was occurring was me.

 

It began to be apparent from his monologue that Ethan's Wayward Pines experience (on an emotional level) has too many parallels to his 21st century failure to be coincidence. The WP experience begins to take shape for Ethan as his "chance to get it right this time." The therapeutic value of this is too big to be ignored. Maybe we're seeing an induced coma, part of a Secret Service experimental psychotherapy program designed to cure Ethan in 2014--run by a shrink named David Pilcher!

Edited July 12, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[slothgirl]

This show is a textbook example of why thrillers shouldn't tip their mysteries too early.

That isn't why the show doesn't work.

 

It doesn't work because it's just BAD.

 

I was fine with the early reveal.  But the problem is poor writing, poor continuity (anyone remember that line "I always believed you"?), poorly developed characters that it's hard to care about or understand, etc, etc, etc...

 

It's just BAD.

[Free]

That isn't why the show doesn't work.

 

It doesn't work because it's just BAD.

 

I was fine with the early reveal.  But the problem is poor writing, poor continuity (anyone remember that line "I always believed you"?), poorly developed characters that it's hard to care about or understand, etc, etc, etc...

 

It's just BAD.

 

The mystery was what this show had going for it because it could hide behind the build up to the twist.  Once that was gone, it's just as you said, the problems became more pronounced than before once it lost that mysterious vibe it was going for and now we're just waiting for things to happen that we already know about a while ago.

[starri]

That isn't why the show doesn't work.

 

It doesn't work because it's just BAD.

 

I was fine with the early reveal.  But the problem is poor writing, poor continuity (anyone remember that line "I always believed you"?), poorly developed characters that it's hard to care about or understand, etc, etc, etc...

 

It's just BAD.

I don't know if I can say it's just full-on bad, although given its pedigree, I can see how one would go there.  But if I'm honest, the first run of episodes were compelling enough to get me to stick around, and I'm just going to grit my teeth and see it through to the end.

 

I think it hit its apex at "One of Our Senior Realtors Has Chosen to Retire."  The reveal and everything else has been downhill.

[Free]

 

But if I'm honest, the first run of episodes were compelling enough to get me to stick around, and I'm just going to grit my teeth and see it through to the end.

 

There's 2 more episodes so it'll be easier to get through and possibly drop after the season ends.

 

 

I think it hit its apex at "One of Our Senior Realtors Has Chosen to Retire."  The reveal and everything else has been downhill.

 

Definitely, the big mystery of WP was what kept this series going,

[fishcakes]

 But how do you explain Reggie?  Where does he fit into the coma idea?  No matter what theory we come up with, there are major problems.

 

Reggie is a testament to how unengaged I am in this show because when I read your post I thought, "Reggie? Who's Reggie? Is Reggie that dog that keeps walking past the vacant lot?" So I Googled, "Reggie Wandering Pines," and then thought, "oh, right, Wayward Pines."

 

For me, this is the main problem with the show; I don't care about any of the remaining characters at all. The single most interesting thing to me in the whole series was the flashback to Pope as a security guard sitting in a car and talking to Pilcher. Explaining Pope's past and how he ended up working in a shitty little gatehouse with nothing more to look forward to than going home at night and eating ice cream in front the TV was the closest thing they've given us as to why anyone would volunteer to go along with Pilcher's incredibly unappealing plan instead of just living a normal life and dying in 2060 or whenever. And I think that's where the more interesting story is, with the volunteers. With the prisoners, we know why they're there (abducted) and what they want now (to stop being prisoners). And if the story we've been given is to be taken at face value, they can either be prisoners or they can be dead, so ... story over, basically. But with the volunteers, why are they there? Did they really want to save humanity, or did they just like the idea of being overlords? And now that they're actually there, how's that living in an underground bunker and watching the townfolk go to the bathroom on closed circuit monitors treating them? Everything they dreamed of? Really, even Reggie the non-dog is more interesting to me than someone like Theresa because he's a character who did things instead of having things done to him, or at least that was true until they freeze-dried him.

Edited July 12, 2015 by fishcakes

[riverheightsnancy]

This is why I hate "outside of show" publicity given by a show's creators--and why I hate the sharing of it on message boards. We have no business knowing anything other than what's contained in the episodes. (And often, a show's creators get it wrong, in terms of what they think an episode communicates, and what an episode actually communicates. See Matthew Weiner.)

 Or Lost and Carlton Cuse!  They swore up and down that it was not certain things and when the viewers figured out the numbers and aspects so quickly they realized that they had no where to go with the show. Especially, when they denied it was purgatory and then it was purgatory. (still loved the show, even if the end was basically guessed very early in the run). 

[KaveDweller]

 Or Lost and Carlton Cuse!  They swore up and down that it was not certain things and when the viewers figured out the numbers and aspects so quickly they realized that they had no where to go with the show. Especially, when they denied it was purgatory and then it was purgatory. (still loved the show, even if the end was basically guessed very early in the run). 

But the island wasn't purgatory, unless you watched a completely different finale than I did. The flash sideways in the last season was purgatory, but the Lost show runners never denied that.  That is not to say show runners won't lie, because they do very often. The networks and actors will lie too.  I don't think that's the case with Wayward Pines though.  There are some continuity errors, but nothing that makes the 4028 reveal impossible/unbelievable.

 

There are definite sci-fi aspects to it, so you have to accept t it's not playing by real world rules.  It would have been better if they threw in some lines about how they preserved so much stuff, but if I believe it's possible to freeze people, I can buy they came up with a way to preserve other stuff.

Edited July 13, 2015 by KaveDweller

[SlackerInc]

I don't know if I can say it's just full-on bad, although given its pedigree, I can see how one would go there.  But if I'm honest, the first run of episodes were compelling enough to get me to stick around, and I'm just going to grit my teeth and see it through to the end.

 

I think it hit its apex at "One of Our Senior Realtors Has Chosen to Retire."  The reveal and everything else has been downhill.

 

I disagree, but then I hate shows that endlessly jerk you around. I completely respect that they didn't take that easy path (hi, LOST). I lament that there are so many red herrings from the early episodes that weren't paid off and probably won't be, but I lay the blame in the opposite direction: on those early episodes rather than on the subsequent ones. I consider the storyline they are doing now very good, as long as I ignore some of the early stuff that turned out to mean nothing. I'd rather have a straightforward sci-fi/action story than a bunch of misdirection and "mystery" for its own sake, which disappears up its own enigmatic arsehole.

 

There are some continuity errors, but nothing that makes the 4028 reveal impossible/unbelievable.

 

There are definite sci-fi aspects to it, so you have to accept t it's not playing by real world rules.  It would have been better if they threw in some lines about how they preserved so much stuff, but if I believe it's possible to freeze people, I can buy they came up with a way to preserve other stuff.

Right, I agree. Well said.

[riverheightsnancy]

But the island wasn't purgatory, unless you watched a completely different finale than I did. The flash sideways in the last season was purgatory, but the Lost show runners never denied that.  That is not to say show runners won't lie, because they do very often. The networks and actors will lie too.  I don't think that's the case with Wayward Pines though.  There are some continuity errors, but nothing that makes the 4028 reveal impossible/unbelievable.

In Lost they were all dead at the end right? So maybe it wasn't purgatory (like I remembered) but they were dead and I am pretty sure that was a theory bandied about very early on and dismissed by Cuse early on (from memory again). I think that the point is, sometimes the viewers guess the ending and the creators may feel compelled to deny it in an attempt to not have their show spoiled by smart viewers. MMV

[janie jones]

This episode is making me champion the "this is all Ethan's coma-dream" theory, mainly because of the explanation of the Easter bombings/confession to Theresa.

I'm not saying that I think this is the case, but it occurs to me that it could be some Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge situation.

Edited July 13, 2015 by janie jones

[KaveDweller]

In Lost they were all dead at the end right? So maybe it wasn't purgatory (like I remembered) but they were dead and I am pretty sure that was a theory bandied about very early on and dismissed by Cuse early on (from memory again). I think that the point is, sometimes the viewers guess the ending and the creators may feel compelled to deny it in an attempt to not have their show spoiled by smart viewers. MMV

They were only all dead in the alternate universe scenes, which were sort of in the futuee. Everything that happened on the island happened when they were alive, so the producers weren't lying when the denied that the island was purgatory.

I understand it though. If people do guess the end, what are they supposed to say without spoiling the end? Especially when what they say will be repeated all over the internet. I actually think that is a disadvantage of modern and times. No surprises.

Edited July 13, 2015 by KaveDweller

[KDeFlane]

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.)

Edited July 19, 2015 by KDeFlane

[ottoDbusdriver]

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 vote for hilarious sitcom.  They could be roommates.

 

Kind of like Futurama where Frye comes out of suspension and ends up working for his very distantly related great nephew.

[starri]

I understand that any show with a labyrinthine plot is going to--because it's made by humans and humans are fallible creatures--have some holes.  But something with a clearly-defined plot (instead of something more open-ended, like Lost) shouldn't be requiring us to fanwank just about every aspect of the premise.

 

God help us if they order another season of this mess.

Edited July 19, 2015 by starri

[jhlipton]

I vote for hilarious sitcom.  They could be roommates.

 

Not quite: My Girlfriend is an Abby! "[PANICKED] No, no, you misheard. I said her name was Abby! Isn't that right, dear?"  "RRRRRRRAWRRR!!!"

[ottoDbusdriver]

Theories for the season finale:

• Abbies swarm over the fence -- and all pile into the Excellent Bean because they have never had a decent cup of coffee.  Ever.  That's why they always seem to be pissed off
• Pilcher grabs a bowl of popcorn and watches the security cams as the Abbies kill everyone in WP and cackles evilly
• The 1st generation gather together in the middle of town and using their collective mental powers wish away all the Abbies in the entire world into the corn field -- and everyone lives happily ever after.
• All the abbies encircle Mrs. Fisher, tear her to pieces and completely consume her, then turn to Ethan and say "We're full. Thanks for the grub. Smell ya later" and climb back over the fence.
• With all the lights off, a giant disco ball descends over Main Street and disco lighting turns on followed the by the sounds of C+C Music Factory's "Everybody Dance Now" kicks in -- and as all the Abbies swarming through WP break into dance, while the WPers hang back and easily kill them all.

 

 

[jhlipton]

• Abbies swarm over the fence -- and all pile into the Excellent Bean because they have never had a decent cup of coffee.  Ever.  That's why they always seem to be pissed off

 

So, so, close!  They actually order tea because we know they're All About The Chai!

[Ddrevis]

After seeing last nights episode it hit me.

I mean for awhile something was nagging at the back of my mind but it clicked.

What about a simulation game? Like Sims. Without giving anything away..

Perfect town

perfect but suspecting residents.

You move in to ready house.

Things are supplied according to your personal preferences. I mean if they are secluded how do they get specialized items. No warehouse stores everything.

Scene where their watching on a monitor, scene is paused as user is taken away

Just my thoughts