S01.E06: Choices

[LittleIggy]

How did Truman Capote, um, Pilcher know that none of the kidnappees had the aberration gene?

[janie jones]

I don't think the average person could pick out more than one or two constellations let alone know where they're supposed to appear in the sky at any given time of year. 

 

I can accept that there are things that in our reality don't make sense, but this is fiction and sci-fi fiction at that, so I am less concerned about them explaining how the power stayed on for 2000 years and more with the story, which is good so far. I mean, does anyone really believe there is a Time Lord that flies around space and time in a time machine disguised as a phone box?

In my opinion, these two aren't the same thing.  Dr. Who takes place in a world where time lords exist.  As far as I can tell, Wayward Pines takes place in our world, not one where, for example, the passing of centuries has absolutely no effect on electrical equipment.  If they mean for this to be a world different from ours where some of these issues people have been complaining about are actually non-issues, it hasn't been established well enough, or I think people would be able to accept it a lot more easily.

 

And if Pilcher woke him so he could be the new "leader" of this town, why didn't they just tell him what was going on from the start? What was the point of purposely antagonizing him by letting him roam around this strange town and seeing for himself how screwy it all was? Were they really going to operate on his brain? Why? If not, why make him think that?

I wonder if they thought he'd be more willing/able to be a leader if he found some things out on his own, and they dropped him off in the woods and antagonized him to encourage him to start digging.

[Tara Ariano]

ICYMI, here's Alex's post on the episode:

 

It Takes A Village To Run A Village

Wayward Pines takes us backstage to convince us that there's a method to Dr. Pilcher's madness -- and mostly succeeds.

[Iguana]

Forgive me for not being current on the teenybopper slang (I was too busybshaking my cane and yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn already), but what is ICMYI?

[ottoDbusdriver]

Forgive me for not being current on the teenybopper slang (I was too busybshaking my cane and yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn already), but what is ICMYI?

 

ICYMI = In Case You Missed It

[AndySmith]

I really think picking apart/nitpicking about how we got to Wayward Pines is kind of pointless, since it isn't the point of the show. You just need to shut off your brain and accept that things happened the way they did, and we got to where we are now.

[ljp]

This whole thing is nonsensical. So if the premise is that we destroyed ourselves by environmental causes due to the way humans lived, why oh why, after waiting 2000 years for the earth to reboot, would you set up a totally fake town built to replicate the exact same way of life that caused the destruction?

It seems fairly clear to me that you wake up the volunteers and slowly (key word here, slowly) build something super environmentally friendly, growing super slowly so that it's all sustainable with sustainability being the primary and clearly stated goal. You don't replicate useless crap we have and do now. Then you wake up non volunteers slowly, integrating them into a functioning group that is stable and knows the truth. If they had done that to start with they would have had 12 years of building a sustainable new way of life and have plenty of people woken up by now and reproducing. Even if they started that way with group B. Why do they use plastics? Why do they eat all that meat instead of focusing on more plant based sustainable nutrition. All the houses we've seen look like standard 2015 new construction, I see no obvious eco friendly construction. There aren't even solar panels or water reclaiming stuff.

This nonsense with basically 2 separate functioning societies, one of which provides all supplies for, controls and spies on the second unknowing society is beyond stupid. So they don't get envious of the ppl with lawns and barbecues and fake jobs? They are cool living in underground bunkers? Forever? Dating only each other and not the entire other population of people?

And to make it all just that much more stupid, between the spying and the providing supplies, where do they have the time and man power to actually be working on sustainability, and where is that taking place? If the volunteers are a large enough group to control and supply the whole town, how was it not a large enough group to form the basis of the new civilization?

The mayflower had 102 passengers. It's not like small groups can't build small functioning societies that grow slowly over time as new people show up.

[izabella]

I really think picking apart/nitpicking about how we got to Wayward Pines is kind of pointless, since it isn't the point of the show. You just need to shut off your brain and accept that things happened the way they did, and we got to where we are now.

 

That's part of the problem.  If I shut off my brain and handwave everything, where are we now? I'm not all that invested in WP surviving.  I feel for the kidnapped residents, but what is a "win" for them?  In the best of all outcomes, they're still stuck in WP surrounded by predators, in the future, without anything to look forward to.

[jhlipton]

It really didn't look like they came close to finding anything out. The biggest problem I have with ol' Sheriff Pope cutting the brake line in 2014 is there was no way to guarantee that Theresa and Ben wouldn't have been killed in the resulting wreck. Would they have then been written off as collateral damage? "Oops! Sorry, Ethan, we tried to make it a survivable accident, really we did!"

 

Ethan survived a big-ass truck mowing down his car -- if we believe that his accident was real.

[SlackerInc]

I'm not particularly worried about the plausibility of the premise. I think it's a central conceit of appreciating almost any type of fictional narrative, but particularly sci-fi, to accept the conditions of the premise and that the events of the story exist within that frame of logic.

Just to give a non Sci fi example, the premise of the show "The Americans" is that the KGB trained a bunch of their Russian agents to mimic perfect American accents during the height of the Cold War. This is not a particularly realistic scenario... if you attempt to train 1000 people from non English speaking nations who learned English after puberty to speak English in perfect American accents, you'd be lucky to get a couple of successful ones. So you can either accept or not accept the intrigue that would occur in the alternative reality where it could happen.

 

Exactly.  Or another example that occurred to me: James Bond.  Almost none of the high tech gadgets Q makes him are actually feasible (especially in the era in question--some of the stuff he had in the '60s might be close to possible now), but you just have to accept it as part of the premise.

 

 

So actually I think many people here, rather than ignorant of how fiction works, are extremely aware of typical fictional conventions, and that's actually what's causing the issues. In a good, well thought out sci-fi novel, something like the helicopter still running after two thousand years is going to be a clue to a greater mystery. We will have to see if this show's writers are good, or just lazy.

 

By the standards you are setting, the answer is definitely "lazy".  I say this, BTW, as someone who has not read the books or read spoilers about the books.  The only thing I know about them is that Dan Fienberg said (on the Firewall and Iceberg podcast where he and Alan Sepinwall reviewed this show) that he had read them, that they were "pretty much total trash", and that the series had actually taken this potboilery story and elevated it to a somewhat higher or more refined level.  Oh, and that the teenaged son was actually much more annoying in the novels, LOL.

 

I can accept that there are things that in our reality don't make sense, but this is fiction and sci-fi fiction at that, so I am less concerned about them explaining how the power stayed on for 2000 years and more with the story, which is good so far. I mean, does anyone really believe there is a Time Lord that flies around space and time in a time machine disguised as a phone box?

 

Right, another good example.  Or anything involving superheroes set in the present day, for that matter.

 

Why did Ethan wake up by the side of a road? If these people are being defrosted in the complex, then moved to the hospital and told they were in an accident, how did Ethan get outside near the forest??

 

And if Pilcher woke him so he could be the new "leader" of this town, why didn't they just tell him what was going on from the start? What was the point of purposely antagonizing him by letting him roam around this strange town and seeing for himself how screwy it all was? Were they really going to operate on his brain? Why? If not, why make him think that?

 

 

Now these are good questions.  I have the sense that a lot of what went on in the first couple episodes doesn't really fit with what we've now learned.  I will reserve judgement on that however until we've seen the whole series play out.

 

Pilcher tells Ethan, "We left the old world behind in 2014 and went to sleep for 2,000 years". Back then Pilcher had his long-ish unkempt hippie hair. When we see him and Pam and HypnoTeach come out of their cryo pods in 4014, Pilcher's hair is still long. You can see it when he's bending over trying to catch his breath, and you see it again through the blinds when they crack open the window for their first view of 41st Century Wayward Pines.

 

Still waiting for an explanation for why Pilcher's hair is short and he's wearing his 41st Century eyeglasses when he meets Adam, Ethan's supervisor at the Seattle Secret Service office, carrying an umbrella in the rain.... in 2014. That's more than just an oversight. I sincerely hope they didn't put that scene in there to deceive the audience on purpose. I'm starting to think that's exactly why they put it in.

 

Another good point, that is of a piece with the stuff about operating on Ethan's brain, pretending Beverly didn't work in the bar, etc.  Some of that does seem to be in the category of "just messing with the TV audience", and that (unlike the stuff about helicopter fuel, etc.) does bother me.

 

wasn't that the premise of the Syfy mini about the giant generation starship launched in the 60's and it just turned out to be an underground super shelter to guarantee the survival of America in any war or extinction event. Everyone on the ship believed it was real. Cool but as soon as you saw the twist it was kinda enh.

 

That sounds kind of cool.  Remember what it was called?

 

In my opinion, these two aren't the same thing.  Dr. Who takes place in a world where time lords exist.  As far as I can tell, Wayward Pines takes place in our world, not one where, for example, the passing of centuries has absolutely no effect on electrical equipment.

 

I don't think your distinction holds up.  When we see the way people are living life in, say, Doctor Who's 2014 London, it looks pretty much like the real thing: the same kinds of vehicles, phones, etc.  So I think Wayward Pines is set in a world that is like ours, but in which a scientist/industrialist secretly has been able to develop working cryotech.  This is really the same kind of suspension of disbelief required, again, for so much of superhero fiction: think of Reed Richards or Tony Stark, who live in a world that has consumer tech at the same level as ours, but who are nonetheless able to invent tech that goes way beyond what we have in our nonfictional world.

 

Now, one more example of questions/complaints/nitpicks that I do think are quite valid is below.  (I seem to have maneuvered myself in such a way that I can't get my cursor to go below the quoted text.)

 

This whole thing is nonsensical. So if the premise is that we destroyed ourselves by environmental causes due to the way humans lived, why oh why, after waiting 2000 years for the earth to reboot, would you set up a totally fake town built to replicate the exact same way of life that caused the destruction?

It seems fairly clear to me that you wake up the volunteers and slowly (key word here, slowly) build something super environmentally friendly, growing super slowly so that it's all sustainable with sustainability being the primary and clearly stated goal. You don't replicate useless crap we have and do now. Then you wake up non volunteers slowly, integrating them into a functioning group that is stable and knows the truth. If they had done that to start with they would have had 12 years of building a sustainable new way of life and have plenty of people woken up by now and reproducing. Even if they started that way with group B. Why do they use plastics? Why do they eat all that meat instead of focusing on more plant based sustainable nutrition. All the houses we've seen look like standard 2015 new construction, I see no obvious eco friendly construction. There aren't even solar panels or water reclaiming stuff.

This nonsense with basically 2 separate functioning societies, one of which provides all supplies for, controls and spies on the second unknowing society is beyond stupid. So they don't get envious of the ppl with lawns and barbecues and fake jobs? They are cool living in underground bunkers? Forever? Dating only each other and not the entire other population of people?

And to make it all just that much more stupid, between the spying and the providing supplies, where do they have the time and man power to actually be working on sustainability, and where is that taking place? If the volunteers are a large enough group to control and supply the whole town, how was it not a large enough group to form the basis of the new civilization?

Edited June 27, 2015 by SlackerInc

[SlackerInc]

I suppose after mulling the above (the seeming illogic of having a whole separate group of volunteers who make up a society that lives in the bunker and doesn't get the nice houses and so on), it can be handwaved away as a temporary state of affairs just to bring up the "first generation".  Once they are completely ready, the fakeness and the multiple tiers of reality can be phased out.

[photo fox]

Okay, everyone, here's the deal. We've had to hide multiple posts in this thread for reasons of nasty tone and violations of the spoiler policy. Let's get back on track.

To wit...

No policing the threads or telling other people what to post. This includes, but is not limited to:

- telling people to stop watching if they don't like it

- chastising people for their opinions or theories

Familiarize yourself with the spoiler policy, spelled out here http://forums.previously.tv/topic/27699-mod-notes-book-talk-etc/:

- all posts about the books belong in the book vs. show topic.

- the only thing that should be discussed in an episode topic is what happened in that episode.

I don't want to have to start handing out warnings. Please read and adhere to this note so that I don't have to warn.

[jhlipton]

Yeah, the "sustainability" angle seems like so much BS considering that we've seen WP from the air and there is ZERO farmland, and not even a bunch of greenhouses.  So we have a facility which brings food (from where? and why is it separate from the factory-fortress?)

 

This show could have worked up until about the 80s, when audiences didn't question where, how or why, but today a showrunner needs to ask these questions or they will get bombarded.

[Free]

That's part of the problem.  If I shut off my brain and handwave everything, where are we now? I'm not all that invested in WP surviving.  I feel for the kidnapped residents, but what is a "win" for them?  In the best of all outcomes, they're still stuck in WP surrounded by predators, in the future, without anything to look forward to.

 

Exactly, what else is there?  One one hand you have the WP side with Pilcher's crazy plans and on the other, you have the residents who seem to be in a no win situation.

[theatremouse]

Yeah, the "sustainability" angle seems like so much BS considering that we've seen WP from the air and there is ZERO farmland, and not even a bunch of greenhouses.  So we have a facility which brings food (from where? and why is it separate from the factory-fortress?)

I assume they keep the two separate so just in case one is compromised, they still have at least one super-secret facility of something. Although even with just the two, they're still in an awfully precarious position, but the whole premise needed a lot of things to go right for a really long time, so I'm not sure if I mind that they may never really explain why any more about the facilities. Since I could think of one semi-decent reason for the two, given the rest of the stuff they did explain that I didn't think needed explaining, and the things not yet explained that I hope will be, for me there's other stuff I'd rather they present their own logic for (and then judge it based on that).

[Mrs OldManBalls]

It would be super shitty to wake up after 2000 years and be stuck in a little town with your husband's former mistress. 

[Milburn Stone]

So if the premise is that we destroyed ourselves by environmental causes due to the way humans lived, why oh why, after waiting 2000 years for the earth to reboot, would you set up a totally fake town built to replicate the exact same way of life that caused the destruction?

It seems fairly clear to me that you wake up the volunteers and slowly (key word here, slowly) build something super environmentally friendly, growing super slowly so that it's all sustainable with sustainability being the primary and clearly stated goal.

 

This is a good question, but an answer that works for me is that the need for green-friendliness is exactly what the "first generation" at Wayward Pines High is being taught, with the reasons being completely explained to them in a manner the adults would be resistant (or too freaked out) to learn.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I assume they keep the two separate so just in case one is compromised, they still have at least one super-secret facility of something. Although even with just the two, they're still in an awfully precarious position, but the whole premise needed a lot of things to go right for a really long time, so I'm not sure if I mind that they may never really explain why any more about the facilities.

 

Considering the long hibernation period involved, I'm surprised that Pilcher doesn't have mutliple redundant instances of both the control bunker and the food bunker in the mountains around WP.  Otherwise, those are two massive single points of failure in his plan.

[racked]

Pilcher tells Ethan, "We left the old world behind in 2014 and went to sleep for 2,000 years". Back then Pilcher had his long-ish unkempt hippie hair. When we see him and Pam and HypnoTeach come out of their cryo pods in 4014, Pilcher's hair is still long. You can see it when he's bending over trying to catch his breath, and you see it again through the blinds when they crack open the window for their first view of 41st Century Wayward Pines.

 

Still waiting for an explanation for why Pilcher's hair is short and he's wearing his 41st Century eyeglasses when he meets Adam, Ethan's supervisor at the Seattle Secret Service office, carrying an umbrella in the rain.... in 2014. That's more than just an oversight. I sincerely hope they didn't put that scene in there to deceive the audience on purpose. I'm starting to think that's exactly why they put it in.

Didn't Juliette Lewis's character also think it was 1999? If he didn't start freezing people until 2014 that does my really add up. And how tragic for her character, she was kidnapped away from her daughter and died soon after being unfrozen. So pointless and cruel.

[AndySmith]

where are we now? I'm not all that invested in WP surviving.  I feel for the kidnapped residents, but what is a "win" for them?  In the best of all outcomes, they're still stuck in WP surrounded by predators, in the future, without anything to look forward to.

 

I guess the appeal is to see where things go from here. Then again, I've been spoiled by the books, and am curious to see how it will follow/deviate from the books.

[ottoDbusdriver]

Didn't Juliette Lewis's character also think it was 1999? If he didn't start freezing people until 2014 that does my really add up. And how tragic for her character, she was kidnapped away from her daughter and died soon after being unfrozen. So pointless and cruel.

 

From Pilcher's backstory, we don't know exactly when he started freezing people (i.e. when that former doctor that Pope abducted was frozen in cryostasis capsule 000001), but we do know that basically everything was locked down in 2014 (no new cryostasis additions -- Pilcher was probably frozen last -- and all the stores/resources were ready to go for the long duration).

 

Beverly was abducted in 1999 and I believe she said she had been in WP for a year before Ethan arrived.

 

ETA:  Found it -- was looking for a date to confirm when they froze Dr. Charles Keen (ID # 000001).  March 26, 1999 is on the display on the front of the capsule.  So Beverly must have been one of the first group of non-volunteers frozen, but wasn't defrosted until Group B.  In the first episode, Beverly told Ethan that she was hit by a motorcycle on Oct. 21, 1999, so she was probably frozen six months after Charles Keen.

 

Only to make things more confusing -- the backwards date on Arlene's file folder from a couple of episodes ago would indicate that she was abducted in 1993.  But, if they didn't start freezing people until 1999, what were they doing with Arlene the former school bus driver's body for 6 years until they started freezing people ?

Edited June 27, 2015 by ottoDbusdriver

[micat]

With regards to the comments about whether or not this situation is worse psychologically for people than being in a Khmer Rouge camp or any other awful situation that has been going in our recent past: It makes me think about stories modeled on the short story "A Torture By Hope." In that story, a prisoner of the Inquisition is tortured in all sorts of ways and will not break, but finally is allowed to believe he is escaping. At the last second, he is caught and realizes that the whole escape was a final torture - a torture by allowing him to have hope. This pops up in all sorts of stories now, Game of Thrones being the most recent example I am aware of. What I'm saying is, I am thinking that the situation on the show is more awful for the people who were frozen because there is no hope. If you were caught in an awful situation in the present time, there is always hope that it might end, you might be rescued, you could go on with your normal life. For the Group A/Group B people, there is no hope for any such thing! Now, if Pilcher had gone and frozen present-day people who are living in hellish situations and frozen them, maybe they would wake up and conclude they were better off. But he didn't - he froze Americans living okay lives.

 

However, I still don't buy that everyone in Group A would go crazy. Many, maybe even most, but not everyone. Perhaps those who have speculated that those who did go crazy breached the wall and so the rest were killed by Abbies have it right. But, if I decide to trust the writers, I would think that the wholesale destruction of Group A indicates that there is a larger secret - i.e. Group A found out something *worse* than the "truth" being fed to Ethan and that is why they went crazy.

Edited June 27, 2015 by micat

[SimoneS]

It would be. Polaris is located at the end of the Little Dipper (the last star in the Dipper's handle), and the two stars that form the end of the bowl of the Big Dipper (the end away from the handle) point directly to it. That's why it's so easy to locate both it and North; Polaris is only about one degree away from the celestial North Pole, and it is therefore always in the same position throughout the night.

But by 4028, Polaris will no longer be anywhere near the celestial North Pole. That will have shifted 30-45 degrees away from Polaris to Gamma Cephei, in an entirely different constellation that is currently easiest to see only in Fall and Winter. The constellations themselves won't have changed much; that's a different process that takes hundreds of thousands of years. However, their positions in the sky will have shifted just enough that anyone who knows where the Big and Little Dipper were in 2014 will immediately notice that they're not where they were then. To me, that would be a dead giveaway (and proof positive) that I'm not in 2014 anymore.

As for needing to observe it for an extended period of time, you'd only need an hour or two at the most. The earth still rotates in 4028, which means that any star that isn't the North Star would be moving. You'd definitely notice that Polaris had moved after an hour or two.

Finally, you'd notice that the constellations in the Zodiac were in the "wrong" positions because the moon and the planets would not be in the constellations you'd expect them to be in based upon the time of year. It's why, for example, Astrology speaks of Venus and Jupiter currently being in Leo although the constellation Leo has shifted at least 30 degrees to the southeast of where it was when Astrology was invented, so looking at the night sky now (June 2015), you'd actually see Venus and Jupiter in the eastern part of Cancer, not the eastern part of Leo. But by June 4028, Cancer will have shifted another 30 degrees eastward, so Venus, at least, will be in Gemini at that time of the year. Again, that would be a dead giveaway that the year really is 4028.

I am a scientist so I would totally accept astronomical changes as evidence that we were in 4028, but look at how many people in this country are anti-science and it does not look like Pilcher carefully screened the inhabitants of Wayward Pines. Because of my background, the top of my list would have been volunteers who were talented physical and social science researchers, engineers, physicians/health care professionals, psychologists/therapists, and public health officials. Real estate agents, security guards, and secret service agents would have been afterthoughts at most.

Edited June 27, 2015 by SimoneS

[ottoDbusdriver]

Real estate agents, security guards, and secret service agents would have been afterthoughts at most.

 

Yet somehow Arlene the school bus driver (and now sheriff's office receptionist) made the cut.

[LittleIggy]

Yet somehow Arlene the school bus driver (and now sheriff's office receptionist) made the cut.

So did the traffic cone guy.

[jhlipton]

However, I still don't buy that everyone in Group A would go crazy. 

 

From the look of it, nearly every single member of Group A went nuts on exactly the same day, at pretty much the same time.  One woman dove into a pole, but we don't know if  it was on purpose or not It looked more like an accident -- but they know how to fix victims of auto accidents, don't they?

 

I hadn't thought about Beverly's time-line, but you're right -- she was Reckoned not too long after being snatched from her daughter.  She ended up the same as if she had been in Group A.  Good going, doc!

[memememe76]

Comparatively, these people have good homes, good food and don't have to work very hard. Now if they were starving and fighting off mutants every night, then I could see the panic

 

I think that's the point of the show. No matter how idyllic the setting, you can't control people's yearning for freedom.

 

If told the truth, I don't think I would try to continue the charade of running a toy store, at the very least. I can certainly understand the feeling of wanting to combat those Abbies.

 

And I if were surrounded by a bunch of Preppers 3000 years from now, I would probably want to kill myself too.

 

I'm really enjoying the show.

[SonofaBiscuit]

It was pretty easy for me to figure out where this story was going based on

book readers repeatedly arguing against our theories

, telling us that

we were WRONG

.  It would be fun for the show to throw one last twist in there to fuck with everyone, but sadly, I don't think there's time for that, so I doubt that's gonna happen.

 

And all of the really great questions that people are posing (i.e. Where is the fuel coming from?  Where exactly is food coming from?  How are the vehicles in such pristine condition after 2000 years, etc.)...well I don't think that the show is ever going to answer those questions.  I am grateful that I didn't waste six years of my life waiting for answers only to get nuthin' (oh hi, Lost).  

 

I have to think that there was surely a better way of getting people to cooperate than having them wake up in a hospital bed where they are greeted by a crazy ass nurse, telling them that they can't talk about their old life, telling them they must always answer their phone when it rings,  making them view violent public executions, etc.  The truth didn't work, so this was the best revised plan that Pilcher could come up with?  These people are doomed and it'll be a miracle if they all don't end up as Abbie food!

 

ETA:  Eh, I'm not sure that my spoiler is really a spoiler since it's something I deduced from reading the episode threads, but I'll leave that covered up just in case.

Edited June 28, 2015 by SonofaBiscuit

[Tabasco Cat]

So they don't get envious of the ppl with lawns and barbecues and fake jobs? They are cool living in underground bunkers? Forever? Dating only each other and not the entire other population of people?

 

When Pilcher is leading Ethan on a tour of the bunker they walk down a hallway and there's a bright sign on one wall that says, "Don't Let On That You Know". From that I'd assume that some of the bunker workers do get to go into town now and then. Maybe to just make deliveries and repairs and such, but maybe also to mingle a bit with the townfolk. Probably not allowed to date them, though. But who knows, really, I don't think the WP Writer's Bible had that much thought go into it.

 

However, I still don't buy that everyone in Group A would go crazy. Many, maybe even most, but not everyone. Perhaps those who have speculated that those who did go crazy breached the wall and so the rest were killed by Abbies have it right. But, if I decide to trust the writers, I would think that the wholesale destruction of Group A indicates that there is a larger secret - i.e. Group A found out something *worse* than the "truth" being fed to Ethan and that is why they went crazy.

 

Or maybe there are unanticipated side effects when humans are frozen in cryostasis for a couple hundred decades and then thawed out. Maybe going crazy is a fate that will eventually befall all of them, it's just happening a bit more slowly this time around with Group B. Or maybe it was the crickets.

[Tabasco Cat]

It was pretty easy for me to figure out where this story was going based on book readers repeatedly xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx, telling us xxxx xx xxxx XXXXX.  It would be fun for the show to throw one last twist in there to fuck with everyone, but sadly, I don't think there's time for that, so I doubt that's gonna happen.

 

I hear that. That was some pretty passive-aggressive spoiling going on. I'll leave it at that. One more huge twist would be freaking awesome. The ending can't be any worse than that NBC summer filler show from a few years ago, Siberia. Never got any answers there, either. I think WP will give us answers. I hope they're good ones.

[KaleyFirefly]

OK, just...no. I have been following this show from the beginning (have not read the books) and I was hoping that "The Truth" from last week's episode would finally be better explained. But I call BS on a lot of the stuff in this episode. Too much does not make sense!

 

1. Why kidnap random people? Why take a kid but not the parents? A parent but not their kid?  Why kidnap people past childbearing years? Why kidnap people with no useful skills? Are you really going to rebuild society with a bus driver, a toymaker and a super lazy real estate agent? 

 

Pilcher mentions that "sustainability" is a future goal. So why no farmers, engineers, scientists, carpenters, medical personnel, even people like forest rangers or hunters who know survival skills? The adults we've seen don't have those skills (except maybe the few volunteers running the place) and they are not teaching the kids anything like that either.

 

Are there giant farms somewhere that we haven't seen? How is he getting all the fuel for the electricity, trucks and helicopter?

 

3. I don't buy the idea that people, after learning the truth, would commit suicide en masse, and even kill their kids and then themselves (that family with plastic bags on their heads, my God). Sure, many would not be happy but it's a big jump to go from "people will be upset" to "People will suicide with their kids."

 

After "Group A" did not work out, why did Pilcher come up with this ridiculous plan involving 24-hour surveillance and secrecy? Where did he get the surveillance equipment? Why not do a Group B with counseling to help them handle the transition? If humanity is so scarce now, how can he afford to kill off so many people with executions?

 

4. If they haven't reached sustainability yet, how can they afford to waste their limited resources on a whole town full of people who are not making any contributions to those resources?

 

5. The show is asking me to believe that hundreds of volunteers, out of the goodness of their hearts, are willing to work all day in a windowless bunker to support a population of people who live in nice houses and mostly just sit around eating ice cream?

 

I wanted to like this show, because I'm a big sci-fi fan, but it just seems like it was not well thought out at all.

[Tabasco Cat]

Yeah, pretty much all that. This part is good...

 

Pilcher mentions that "sustainability" is a future goal. So why no farmers, engineers, scientists, carpenters, medical personnel, even people like forest rangers or hunters who know survival skills? The adults we've seen don't have those skills (except maybe the few volunteers running the place) and they are not teaching the kids anything like that either.

 

Just what are they teaching those kids? You can initiate them into the First Generation club if you want and make sure they keep all the secrets, but what are you teaching them, exactly? How to grow food? How to harvest timber? How to purify water? How to be astronomers and mathematicians and scientists and engineers and doctors? Or just how to be good little throat-slitting reckoners who don't question authority? It's all just a little too bizarre and now seems more like fantasy than science fiction. As near as I can tell if the original story was really good they would have made it into a movie already. I do plan to read at least the first book once the season is over.

[SlackerInc]

The ending can't be any worse than that NBC summer filler show from a few years ago, Siberia. Never got any answers there, either.

 

OMG, Siberia was infuriating.  ("You're not supposed to be here!")  I think this show is much different, though.  This episode alone packed in far more answers than Siberia ever gave us.

 

1. Why kidnap random people? Why take a kid but not the parents? A parent but not their kid?  Why kidnap people past childbearing years? Why kidnap people with no useful skills? Are you really going to rebuild society with a bus driver, a toymaker and a super lazy real estate agent? 

[snip]

4. If they haven't reached sustainability yet, how can they afford to waste their limited resources on a whole town full of people who are not making any contributions to those resources?

[snip]

5. The show is asking me to believe that hundreds of volunteers, out of the goodness of their hearts, are willing to work all day in a windowless bunker to support a population of people who live in nice houses and mostly just sit around eating ice cream?

 

I wanted to like this show, because I'm a big sci-fi fan, but it just seems like it was not well thought out at all.

 

These definitely strike me as fair questions.  My fan-wank responses:

 

1. Maybe Group A had more useful people in it, and Group B are people who were basically targets of opportunity taken as basically backups, and now they have to make do with what they have?  

 

4. It really appears as though it's the "First Generation" that is going to be key to the future.  So while they are growing up (and, hopefully, indeed learning a variety of key skills), the toymaking, the horseshoe tournaments, etc., are there just to give the caretaker adults something to do and kind of fill in a Norman Rockwell backdrop while the 1st G. gets up to speed.  It's true that not all those adults are parents, but (a) maybe their presence helps keep the ones who are parents (and the young people not qualified to join the secret cabal) not feeling as thrown off by the composition of their society; (b) again, maybe in Group A it was more consistently parents or at least adults of childbearing age.

 

5. This is a pretty good point which also made me chuckle.  :)  But OTOH it's no more implausible than The Truman Show when you think about it.  They may have a nice dormitory to live in (we didn't see their quarters), and they may enjoy the feeling of power behind knowing The Truth and controlling everything, not having to live by the limitations of the town.  Plus, of course, these were Pilcher's "true believers" after all.

[ottoDbusdriver]

OMG, Siberia was infuriating.  ("You're not supposed to be here!")  I think this show is much different, though.  This episode alone packed in far more answers than Siberia ever gave us.

 

Well, the Abbies do seem similar to the Valley Men -- so there's that.  </snark>

[JenE4]

So Pilcher's people carved out an entire mountainside for their secret future bunker? I guess that explains how everything survived 2,000 years of elements and Abbie thrashing--even if the logistics don't make sense. Was that electronic door opener out there for 2,000 years? And how did he know that crickets would become extinct to go to the trouble of recording their chirping? I was yelling at my TV when Pilcher said "You already know where the food comes from." No he doesn't. He's seen the food delivery hub, but we still don't know where the actual FOOD comes from as we've seen no evidence of farmland or even animals of any kind other than the deer--and venison was not on the beirgarten's menu. But, ok, at least we got answers about where the rest of the supplies are coming from...sorta. I mean, we see people sewing clothes, but aren't they going to eventually run out of cloth/thread/needles? And all of these volunteers are just happy living in this mountain bunker and creating supplies for the "real" civilization? Why can't these people be the actual civilization? Why don't they "count"? I think WP is more about a meglomaniac's control over civilization rather than Pilcher legitimately wanting to repopulate the earth with humans. What happens when the population does expand larger than the WP wall and the mountain bunker can house?

[raven]

 

OMG, Siberia was infuriating.  ("You're not supposed to be here!")

Aw, I liked Siberia.  Scary creatures!  I actully cared about those characters.  I think it was cancelled before we got any real answers.  I don't find myself caring too much about the people of WP, though I'm curious to see how the rest of the adaptation plays out.

 

I've read the books, just stopped in to say that :)

 

Wayward Pines timeline from the Exec Producer - no spoilers for those up to Episode 6

Edited June 28, 2015 by raven

[janie jones]

Are you really going to rebuild society with a bus driver, a toymaker and a super lazy real estate agent?

 

Pilcher mentions that "sustainability" is a future goal. So why no farmers, engineers, scientists, carpenters, medical personnel, even people like forest rangers or hunters who know survival skills?

Well, we already know that the person who was a bus driver is now a receptionist, and a computer programmer became a bartender, so for all we know there are farmers, engineers, scientists, etc., but they are, for some reason, working at jobs that they didn't have before they came to Wayward Pines.  I mean, how would Kate's husband know how to build a bomb if he's been a toymaker his whole life?  It's not like he googled it.

 

5. This is a pretty good point which also made me chuckle.  :)  But OTOH it's no more implausible than The Truman Show when you think about it.  They may have a nice dormitory to live in (we didn't see their quarters), and they may enjoy the feeling of power behind knowing The Truth and controlling everything, not having to live by the limitations of the town.  Plus, of course, these were Pilcher's "true believers" after all.

I was going to say that some of these jobs could be taken from the bunker and moved into Wayward Pines.  Like, there's no reason you couldn't have a clothing shop where they make their own clothes, just like in the toy shop. 

 

But...for all we know some of the people in the bunker might actually live in Wayward Pines, not the bunker.  As  someone pointed out, there's a sign that says "Don't Let On That You Know."  Wayward Pines's residents know that some people come and go (like the delivery people), so as far as they know, some people are allowed to work outside of town as well.  In real life that would probably cause problems, but I don't think this show has a concept of what would cause problems in real life.

[ottoDbusdriver]

Well, we already know that the person who was a bus driver is now a receptionist, and a computer programmer became a bartender, so for all we know there are farmers, engineers, scientists, etc., but they are, for some reason, working at jobs that they didn't have before they came to Wayward Pines.  I mean, how would Kate's husband know how to build a bomb if he's been a toymaker his whole life?  It's not like he googled it.

 

It's like that Family Guy episode when the Y2K bug destroys the world, and Peter founds a new town around a Twinkie factory -- and any survivor that comes to town has to pick a job out of hat.

 

But...for all we know some of the people in the bunker might actually live in Wayward Pines, not the bunker.  As  someone pointed out, there's a sign that says "Don't Let On That You Know."

 

Mrs. Fisher is one of the bunker people that lives in WP -- she was one of the volunteers that was first defrosted. The curious question -- does her husband, the Mayor, know the truth since he used to be a VP of a telecom firm, but he was the one that warned Ethan about WPA shaping minds and to watch Ben.

[janie jones]

I forgot about her!  Pam has got to live in Wayward Pines, too.

[riverheightsnancy]

Yeah, pretty much all that. This part is good...

 

 

Just what are they teaching those kids? You can initiate them into the First Generation club if you want and make sure they keep all the secrets, but what are you teaching them, exactly? How to grow food? How to harvest timber? How to purify water? How to be astronomers and mathematicians and scientists and engineers and doctors? Or just how to be good little throat-slitting reckoners who don't question authority? It's all just a little too bizarre and now seems more like fantasy than science fiction. As near as I can tell if the original story was really good they would have made it into a movie already. I do plan to read at least the first book once the season is over.

What they are being taught and what is valued is the ability to keep a secret. Follow rules. Be a sheeple and you will survive. The whole 1st generation thing is like a bloody cult. Think for yourself and lights out.  If the show came out at the end with a much more lofty and sinister reason like this, then perhaps, I would be ok with all the inconsistencies, because the inconsistencies are part of the TEST. Ethan was not a sheeple UNTIL he thought he was on the inside. NOW he is all in. Interesting concept, but I doubt that the show is going to have any kind of cool ending. There have been so many interesting thoughts and ideas posited by posters and like most of us burned by other shows, it will likely be a plot filled with holes and disappointment soon to be forgotten after the show ends. 

[jhlipton]

Sure, many would not be happy but it's a big jump to go from "people will be upset" to "People will suicide with their kids."

 

On one of the last episodes of The Shield, one of the major characters poisons his wife and his kids, and it's a tense sad moment. Here a mother and father kill their kids and themselves (all with appropriately-sized bags!) and it's presented as "Whatcha gonna do, huh?" No time to9 reflect on that scene, we've got exposition to dump!

 

 

I do plan to read at least the first book once the season is over.

 

I'll read the "Book vs Show" thread first, but I am interested to see how the books are written.

 

 

 

OMG, Siberia was infuriating.  ("You're not supposed to be here!")  I think this show is much different, though.  This episode alone packed in far more answers than Siberia ever gave us.

 

Aw, I liked Siberia.  Scary creatures!  I actully cared about those characters.  I think it was cancelled before we got any real answers.

I liked Siberia , too. I think that they had planned to answer questions (and had already answered a few) , but had to wrap up in one or two episodes instead of 5 or 6.

 

 

5. This is a pretty good point which also made me chuckle.  :)  But OTOH it's no more implausible than The Truman Show when you think about it.  They may have a nice dormitory to live in (we didn't see their quarters), and they may enjoy the feeling of power behind knowing The Truth and controlling everything, not having to live by the limitations of the town.  Plus, of course, these were Pilcher's "true believers" after all.

 

The production staff for the Truman Show were paid (probably fairly well) and got to leave at the end of their shift. The folks who "lived" in Trumanville were also paid volunteers. Both groups had huge incentives to "play the game" and keep quiet. 

 

I was going to say that some of these jobs could be taken from the bunker and moved into Wayward Pines.  Like, there's no reason you couldn't have a clothing shop where they make their own clothes, just like in the toy shop.

 

Then why have the clothes shop in the bunker? Any assembly type of job could be moved from the bunker to the town, especially if you are going to allow movement from the bunker to the town (nothing can go wrong with that plan!).

Edited June 29, 2015 by jhlipton

[cleo]

Yeah I'm out. It's a shame bc I like the actors & I enjoyed it up until the twist, but too much is nonsensical- specifically not telling anyone, the random killings, the nurse acting like the hospital was a torture chamber in the first couple eps (seriously what was the point of that?) let alone the impossible mechanics of what Pilcher did.

 

I don't normally watch summer series but this one looked like it might be half decent. It was- half.

 

Anyway I hope those still watching enjoy it.

 

ETA: And why not just recreate humanity in the bunker? Makes zero sense. Even if Pilcher is crazy, what about all the others? Did no one else think of that?

Edited June 29, 2015 by cleo

[SlackerInc]

Aw, I liked Siberia.  Scary creatures!  I actully cared about those characters.  I think it was cancelled before we got any real answers. 

 

I liked it too--I was just frustrated by the way it ended, which (like LOST, BSG, etc.) made me question if the people behind it really had any idea what was really going on.  It's easy to reel people in with mysteries wrapped in enigmas; the real test of quality is whether you can tie it all up in a satisfying and logical way.  Unfortunately, while a movie script has to do this pretty well or risk terrible word of mouth, a TV show can go on a good while and generate lots of revenue before we finally learn that the man behind the curtain was a fraud all along.  So far, I give this show more credit than those others, because it does try to explain its mysteries, even if the explanations are far from airtight.

 

The production staff for the Truman Show were paid (probably fairly well) and got to leave at the end of their shift. The folks who "lived" in Trumanville were also paid volunteers. Both groups had huge incentives to "play the game" and keep quiet. 

 

How about surviving?  Looks to me like the bunker, while it might not have accommodations as nice as the town, is a lot nicer place to live than the rest of the planet.  And I still think for a lot of people, having power is its own reward (a decent proportion of Dungeons and Dragons players must feel this way, or no one would want to be the DM and the game would collapse).

 

But there are certainly a fair number of loose ends in this show, no question.  One of them that was mentioned on a podcast (that is generally fairly uncritical of the show, bordering on adoring) was Pilcher using a fake name ("Dr. Jenkins", was it?).  I can't think of any reason why this would be necessary, as opposed to completely pointless.  Anyone else got anything on that one?  All I can think of is that he just gets off on it.  (And that still wouldn't explain why Ethan didn't ask the simple question "why the pretense around your name?".)

Edited June 29, 2015 by SlackerInc

[KaveDweller]

How about surviving?  Looks to me like the bunker, while it might not have accommodations as nice as the town, is a lot nicer place to live than the rest of the planet.  And I still think for a lot of people, having power is its own reward (a decent proportion of Dungeons and Dragons players must feel this way, or no one would want to be the DM and the game would collapse).

 

The thing is, all the people who volunteered, would have lived perfectly fine lived back in 2014. Civilization was still fine up until 2095, so none of them would have gotten eaten by abbies.  Maybe they didn't know  when it would happen, or they were worried about kids, but it's not like they were in imminent danger back in their old lives.

 

I do think there are people who would volunteer though.  There's lots of crazy people out there.

[slothgirl]

 the nurse acting like the hospital was a torture chamber in the first couple eps (seriously what was the point of that?

I've also been wondering what the point of Pam being so OBVIOUSLY wacko in the hospital scenes was. Threatening to operate on Ethan with only a paralytic and no anesthesia was bound to make him realize that this was no normal hospital and that he shouldn't trust her. None of that was how you would go about getting someone to consent to surgery when they are being resistant.

 

It seemed when the reveal came and we saw her in the helicopter, they made a point of showing her to be relatively normal. Otherwise I would have just thought that she IS psycho and enjoys her little power role. They certainly tried to reinforce that when she sat in the sheriff's chair after Ethan became the sheriff.

 

So there seems to be 2 totally different things they are showing us about who Pam is:

 

A) As Pilcher's sister she has a lot of power down in the town and views it as HER domain to rule. That makes her frustrated that she hasn't been given ACTUAL authority and has to keep up this pretense of just being a nurse. She's sadistic and power-hungry.

 

or

 

B) She isn't any of those things and that side of her is all pretense in service of whatever the larger goal is. I forget, was she one of the people they showed looking distressed and disgusted during whassername's execution? My memory tells me she was.

 

I also have a memory of the scene with the helicopter appearing to rescue Ethan from the Abbies that either Pam or Pilcher said to him: "You got further than anyone else" in a way that made me think they wanted all along for him to leave the walled area and head out on his own. By driving him to it, they were deliberately testing to see how resourceful and successful he would be outside the safe zone.

 

If they did in fact, WANT him to try to leave so they could find out just how much mettle he has, then all the scenes of Pam being nutso at the hospital, as well as some of the other stuff all makes sense. They badly need a leader. Not just an enforcer, but a true LEADER. Someone who is not only daring, but capable, and able to organize and motivate the sheeple.. uh, I mean townspeople...  They can't remain in this town bubble forever. They will outgrow it. They need to be able to survive beyond just this pretense. And instilling resistance and rebellion in him got the answers they needed about him.

 

Of course, that doens't fit with the narrative of Pilcher being a narcissistic meglomaniac with a God complex and they've given us lots of indications that he is. He certainly has the "I had to do horrible things in service of a greater good. I was doing something IMPORTANT and the ends justified the means" attitude that is such a trope for various scientific/doctor-ey type criminals on tv. He even said something along those lines in this episode, firmly cementing him in Narcissist territory. But maybe Pam is influencing him and sees hope in Ethan for a better way forward.

 

Nor does it fit with the Children of the WP Corn storyline of the 1st generation leading the way. Maybe they need a good adult leader for those kids?

 

I'm afraid that none of these interesting possibilities will play out and it's all just sloppy writing with a hodgepodge script made up of cliches to suck us in week after week. It would be fun though if they detour widely from the books (even though I haven't read them) just so that they haven't reached the end of the reveals.

Edited June 29, 2015 by slothgirl

[janie jones]

I've also been wondering what the point of Pam being so OBVIOUSLY wacko in the hospital scenes was. Threatening to operate on Ethan with only a paralytic and no anesthesia was bound to make him realize that this was no normal hospital and that he shouldn't trust her. None of that was how you would go about getting someone to consent to surgery when they are being resistant.

Can I just say that for me the creepiest thing she did in the hospital was make that completely-out-of-left-field comment about Ethan humping his wife.

[Tabasco Cat]

Of course, that doens't fit with the narrative of Pilcher being a narcissistic meglomaniac with a God complex and they've given us lots of indications that he is. He certainly has the "I had to do horrible things in service of a greater good. I was doing something IMPORTANT and the ends justified the means" attitude that is such a trope for various scientific/doctor-ey type criminals on tv.

 

I said a week or two ago that I had seen this movie before. Here's an excerpt of the script where I first remember seeing it. Sounds like the justification for a reckoning to me:

 

... survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered.

 

A quick internet search will tell you what it's from (I'll bet some of you don't even need to look it up), and I have seen the same type of central character over and over and over again in the years since. Just as slothgirl described, someone who thinks the end jusifies the means. Yeah, that hasn't been overdone or anything. That's maybe the biggest reason I'm finding WP so un-satisfying. Those characters NEVER come to a good end. It's simply a matter of who gets to him first; Ethan, the abbies, maybe the children turn on him, or Pam, or Kate and her hubby. TV trope, indeed :) and it's boring because it's been done to death and WP doesn't bring enough pizzazz to the table to make it worth going over yet again.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Tabasco Cat

[JenE4]

I've also been wondering what the point of Pam being so OBVIOUSLY wacko ... I forget, was she one of the people they showed looking distressed and disgusted during whassername's execution? My memory tells me she was.

Good post, Slothgirl! To answer this question, no, Pam was all into Beverly's execution. When Sheriff Pope was giving his big speech, Pam was mouthing the words along with such a smile on her face it was like she was in church. But that does lend credence to your theory of her being all in on the greater good, as she and her brother see it.

[beeble]

I am usually not a big sci-fi fan, particularly where explanations of entire processes are given, but I respect that (probably) most sci-fi fans want and expect that. They will most likely be disappointed by this show, I imagine. But I have had some similar questions to ones posed here, such as how was the power supplied (and paid for) for so long, and why did so many capable people dedicate their lives to Pilcher's widely unaccepted beliefs about the future of humanity? Why hasn't anyone noticed the absence of any pets?

 

Here is how I accept the premise:

1. Pilcher's freezer, et al was powered by sun, garbage, and angry political discourse.

2. He invested his company's profits in Big Oil & Big Pharma knowing that while they were exploiting the planet's resources, they were making a killing. Then he set up a monthly automatic pay-plan just before stepping into the freezer.

3. The people who know the truth and work for him angst-free were either cult-followers (the rare ones who find Pilcher charming), or people who lost everything in the 2008 housing bubble, or people with such massive student loans that they would have been prisoners in another way in the 1990-2014 timeline.

 

Personally, I would miss my dog too much to ever volunteer. 

 

I'm sure there are many things I am overlooking. There are 4 episodes left, so I'm not going to get worked up about this. Frankly I much prefer Matt Dillon over Matthew Fox in the head conflicted dude role and therefore I'm going to enjoy whatever time I can get with him.

[ottoDbusdriver]

Why hasn't anyone noticed the absence of any pets?

 

Personally, I would miss my dog too much to ever volunteer.

 

When Theresa went to see Lot 33, a person walking a dog passed by in the background -- so they do have pets.  Which would mean that Pilcher would have had to freeze animals as well, because the descendants of any dogs would have turned feral in the intervening 2000 years.