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S01.E08: The Friendliest Place On Earth


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Tune in next Thursday for The Continuing Adventures of Reggie Noncanae! LOL

 

For that matter, why would someone leave a probably decent life to be a sweatshop worker at Pilcher's Apparel?

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...driving out in a stolen dump truck.

 

In a town will minimal streets that go nowhere, and a complete lack of garages large enough to hold a gigantorandus dump truck, how did they manage to hide it?

 

Leading from that, I thought the coolest thing that could have happened after the escape was that a couple of Abbies would jump in the cab, and, after a suitable amount of gear grinding and basic driver's ed, go tooling around WP at high speed, yelling and screaming, playing the radio at top volume, ransacking the local liquor store, and generally evolving back into teenagers.

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Leading from that, I thought the coolest thing that could have happened after the escape was that a couple of Abbies would jump in the cab, and, after a suitable amount of gear grinding and basic driver's ed, go tooling around WP at high speed, yelling and screaming, playing the radio at top volume, ransacking the local liquor store, and generally evolving back into teenagers.

 

Now THAT would be an entertaining summer show!

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Again, I really th k if that guy knew there was no San francisco to run to he would not. Be running.

 

Did Kate ever share with her co-conspirators, or her husband, what Ethan told her about them being in the future and there being abbies out there and there is no Boise?  I know she says she doesn't believe Ethan, but I would have expected her to tell her friends who are trying to escape what he said so they can decide for themselves.  She should have at least mentioned it to her husband, no?

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Can someone please answer this question? If this group of people really “froze” themselves and then woke up 2,000 years in the future and then “built” this town....then were did things like cars, computers, furniture, and all of that stuff come from?? Did they freeze that stuff too?? They are either NOT really in the future, or this is the most ridiculous plot hole in history.

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Can someone please answer this question? If this group of people really “froze” themselves and then woke up 2,000 years in the future and then “built” this town....then were did things like cars, computers, furniture, and all of that stuff come from?? Did they freeze that stuff too?? They are either NOT really in the future, or this is the most ridiculous plot hole in history.

 

Your needle is stuck, and the answer to your question is "Yes, they preserved all those things for 2,000 years."

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Can someone please answer this question? If this group of people really “froze” themselves and then woke up 2,000 years in the future and then “built” this town....then were did things like cars, computers, furniture, and all of that stuff come from?? Did they freeze that stuff too?? They are either NOT really in the future, or this is the most ridiculous plot hole in history.

 

 

KaveDweller addressed this in another thread:

 

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.

 

 

I would expand on this by adding that it is many orders of magnitude harder to freeze people and wake them up centuries later than it is to preserve durable electronic goods.  So I don't understand why it is the easier one that is getting all the scrutiny.

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I would expand on this by adding that it is many orders of magnitude harder to freeze people and wake them up centuries later than it is to preserve durable electronic goods. So I don't understand why it is the easier one that is getting all the scrutiny.

I think because "sci-fi" covers whatever is going on in that cryogenic chamber, but no attempt at an explanation has been given for how the stuff has survived 2,000 years other than maybe it was protected from the elements inside the mountain. Personally, I'm more willing to hand wave that as "sci-fi," too, but it is KILLING me how there's SUCH a big emphasis on food in this show but no idea of where it comes from other than "delivery truck" and "shipping hub." (Even toddlers quickly learn that food comes from farms and factories--not just the supermarket.) Where is the goddamned farmland? Who's making the corn flakes that Ben had for breakfast or the new flavors of ice cream? I know that we don't want the book readers to tell us anything about the books, but I'm really dying for a high-level answer on whether the books give any more detail on the source of the food. Is there any hope of knowing where the damn buffalo (for the burgers) are grazing?!

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Personally, I'm more willing to hand wave that as "sci-fi," too, but it is KILLING me how there's SUCH a big emphasis on food in this show but no idea of where it comes from other than "delivery truck" and "shipping hub." (Even toddlers quickly learn that food comes from farms and factories--not just the supermarket.) Where is the goddamned farmland? Who's making the corn flakes that Ben had for breakfast or the new flavors of ice cream?

 

It's a fair question (or series of questions).  But I think this too is intended to be handwaved (and probably wasn't even considered by the writers, being just thought of in the category of "miscellaneous supplies" or whatever).  Chalk it up there with "why do blue collar or unemployed people on TV have NYC apartments that would cost $5,000 or more a month?" and "how come people talking on the phone don't give the other party enough time to reply?"

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It's a fair question (or series of questions). But I think this too is intended to be handwaved (and probably wasn't even considered by the writers, being just thought of in the category of "miscellaneous supplies" or whatever). Chalk it up there with "why do blue collar or unemployed people on TV have NYC apartments that would cost $5,000 or more a month?" and "how come people talking on the phone don't give the other party enough time to reply?"

Fair enough, but also on most TV shows we don't see characters eating unless there's a "dinner table scene." But this show has had a 10-minute debate on which dish is the best at the Beirgarten, several monologues about ice cream flavors, a few scenes examining the contents of the refrigerator and/or an open refrigerator in the background (granted, perhaps foreshadowing/metaphor for the cryogenesis), in addition to your basic breakfast scenes, etc. We've also had focus on the trucks/delivery hub with one of the Pilchers (Pam I think) saying to Ethan "You already know where the food comes from" referencing the delivery hub. That's like if I said "Food comes from Shop Rite" or saw a produce truck on the road and said "Yep, that's how Shop Rite gets its food!" I'd be more than willing to accept that they get the food hand wavingly "somehow" if the SHOW ITSELF didn't spend so much focus on the food, leading me to believe that the entire key to the mystery of the show lies in the Beirgaeten buffalo burger and/or an ice cream cone. Ooh. Maybe that's it. Sherrif Pope always had the trout at the Beirgarten, but if someone orders the secret combination dish of the Buffalo burger WITH the ice cream cone for dessert, bells will ring, confetti and balloons will fall from the ceiling, and an Abbie will come out with one of those giant Publisher's Clearinghouse-type checks for a million dollars. Lol. Point is, I wouldn't be so focused on the food if the SHOW wasn't so focused on the food, which makes me think it all means something critical to central mystery.

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KaveDweller addressed this in another thread:

 

 

I would expand on this by adding that it is many orders of magnitude harder to freeze people and wake them up centuries later than it is to preserve durable electronic goods.  So I don't understand why it is the easier one that is getting all the scrutiny.

 

Probably because of the sheer volume of stuff that they would need. Were talking about cars, construction equipment, food, clothing, appliances, water and sewage systems, household goods..., basically just about everything. Take a look at what the military needs to bring in an invasion and multiply that by several orders of magnitude.

 

The logistics of it alone is staggering. That's all assuming you can find away to prevent degradation of materials. Some things will naturally degrade, even in a vacuum. In fact a vacuum will ruin stuff like wood because of dessication. Different materials would need to be stored separately, because things like differing metal parts can fuse together over time. 

 

But yeah, freezing a human would be the greatest scientific accomplishment in history alone. Not to mention creating a power supply that will last 2000 years.

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(edited)

I want to know where are the giant freezers full of bison burgers.  Imagine the freezer burn after 2000 years!  Meat frozen that long wouldn't be edible, much less "delicious" and the most popular thing on the menu.  And BS on juice, and fresh fruits and vegetables unless they've got orange groves hidden inside that mountain, as well as gardens.  And dairy?  Yes, you can indeed freeze cheese and milk, but 2000 years of frozen does not = delicious or edible when unfrozen.  You cannot freeze fresh eggs.  Where are the cows and chickens?!

 

And beer?  Who is brewing beer in that mountain?  It sure isn't frozen or bottled and shelved for 2000 years!

 

I can't handwave this stuff, though I can handwave cryogenics.

Edited by izabella
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They should have had everyone eating freeze-dried astronaut/camping food, and nervously pretending it was delicious, as I agree: the ice cream and fridge stocked with greens and so on is a bit much.  (The writers would presumably say there are hydroponic beds in the mountain, maybe even high-tech barns with animals to slaughter.)

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I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that they saved seeds and were able to set up greenhouses.  Did they say how many people work backstage?  And wouldn't it be more dramatically interesting if the backstage people also lived in the town?

 

The idea of livestock is harder to explain.

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(edited)

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!

Edited by KDeFlane
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(edited)

Did they say how many people work backstage?

 

There are enough for everything from buffalo burgers and ice cream to department stores full of clothes to toy duck blanks to dump trucks and the garage they live in...

 

Probably at least 50,000 volunteers for the 5,000 abductees.  Because that makes sense...

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.

Probably a bit too obscure for the average viewer. Although having Ethan as the new #2, and questioning whether Pilcher really is #1, would be more interesting.  Abbies are a lot less benign than the Rovers, although they did kill a chap or two as I recall. Number 6 was far more resourceful than Ethan on his best day.

Edited by jhlipton
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Did Kate ever share with her co-conspirators, or her husband, what Ethan told her about them being in th friends who are trying to escape what he said so they can decide for themselves.  She should have at least mentioned it to her husband, no?

 

You'd think she'd at least say, "you won't believe the bullshit story they've brainwashed Ethan into believing." That just seems natural.  Especially when she seemed to think it was so crazy. But we don't see the majority of her communication with others so maybe she did.  

 

I want to know where are the giant freezers full of bison burgers.  Imagine the freezer burn after 2000 years!  Meat frozen that long wouldn't be edible, much less "delicious" and the most popular thing on the menu.  And BS on juice, and fresh fruits and vegetables unless they've got orange groves hidden inside that mountain, as well as gardens.  And dairy?  Yes, you can indeed freeze cheese and milk, but 2000 years of frozen does not = delicious or edible when unfrozen.  You cannot freeze fresh eggs.  Where are the cows and chickens?!

 

And beer?  Who is brewing beer in that mountain?  It sure isn't frozen or bottled and shelved for 2000 years!

 

I can't handwave this stuff, though I can handwave cryogenics.

 

Maybe all the meat is abbies?

 

Or it is some really advanced kind of dried food that can be undried to look real?

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Maybe all the meat is abbies?

 

 

And the clothes are made from their fur, their bones are crushed  and pulped to make the furniture...  

 

The Abbies we've seen (about 12 total) are all that remains from 100s of proud tribes decimated by Pilcher and Pope in  a never-ending quest for raw materials...

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One thing we can be thankful for is the Men Behind The Curtain chose not to transfer to the future any '73 Pintos, or Gremlins or Yugos

 

Did you hear about the new show based on the '73 Pinto?  It's called Halt and Catch Fire!  LOL

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I am still figuring out where the tires on the dump truck and all the other vehicles came from. Tires dry rot with age..you couldn't use a 2000 year old tire. So, they have a manufacturing facility making tires? I know..ignoring where the food comes from, everything else...unless there is some big revelation in the last two episodes, this whole plot was just full of gigantic holes.

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Yes, RUBBER. Where are they getting rubber from?

 

The whole "science fiction handwave" doesn't work for me. It's worldbuilding. There should be some kind of answers. Hell, even Star Trek Original had "dilithium crystals" to answer all kinds of things.

 

Here, we got nothing.

 

And again: why did the bartender and everyone pretend there was no Beverly? Will that ever be explained?

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I grew up being an avid science fiction reader back in the late 60s to early 70s. One rule/constant was that the writer at least tried to explain all these things away...where do they get food, where do they get everything! We are supposed to just ignore these questions I guess.....

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I am still figuring out where the tires on the dump truck and all the other vehicles came from. Tires dry rot with age..you couldn't use a 2000 year old tire. So, they have a manufacturing facility making tires? I know..ignoring where the food comes from, everything else...unless there is some big revelation in the last two episodes, this whole plot was just full of gigantic holes.

 

I'm going to handwave it as him having some kind of advanced 3-D printer...a replicator, essentially.

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I am still figuring out where the tires on the dump truck and all the other vehicles came from. Tires dry rot with age..you couldn't use a 2000 year old tire. 

 

For that matter, don't any of the residents notice that they're being filmed?

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For that matter, don't any of the residents notice that they're being filmed?

 

When convenient to the PLOT!!!, they'll point out the camera(s).  When not, they'll forget they're there...

 

In 10 days, we're going to have to find something else to complain about!

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(edited)

Actually, I was making a lame joke about suspension of disbelief. Who cares about a 2000 year old truck when there's a Fox camera crew in your face all day long, capturing your angst for a TV show? And wait, how did the Fox camera crew get to Wayward Pines? Were they frozen too? And how did they ship the footage back to 2014 so we could see it?

 

If we can forget about the existence of the camera crew, we should be able to go with the flow regarding the truck.

 

Everybody draws the go-with-the-flow line in a different place, obviously.

Edited by Milburn Stone
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Actually, I was making a lame joke about suspension of disbelief. Who cares about a 2000 year old truck when there's a Fox camera crew in your face all day long, capturing your angst for a TV show? 

 

D'oh!  You're talking about the people who are following the denizens of WP around, filming their every move (as if WP were a reality show), right?  I thought you were talking about the security cameras...

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And again: why did the bartender and everyone pretend there was no Beverly? Will that ever be explained?

 

That I wouid really like an answer to.  It was one of the most intriging moments in the first episode (or was it second), and I can't think of any explanation that fits. Unless the goal was just to freak out Ethan.

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A lot of the stuff that happened to him early on can only be explained as "trying to disorient Ethan".  But that doesn't fit with the whole idea of trying to safeguard fragile psyches against the fate of Group A.

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A lot of the stuff that happened to him early on can only be explained as "trying to disorient Ethan".  But that doesn't fit with the whole idea of trying to safeguard fragile psyches against the fate of Group A.

It wouldn't explain why Beverly said " I've always believed you". SHE didn't want to disorient Ethan... she wanted him to "see the truth".

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And the bartender was so good at the lie.

Almost as if he were an actor. Which anybody who is an actor knows is not something you find from people not used to it, if he were just a bartender wouldn't he start laughing? I know i would.

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The balloons. That's where my line is drawn. Even if I can handwave that they preserved all the necessities of life, why on earth would they preserve balloons and duck blanks and crepe paper, etc.? I guess there must be a Party City in that mountain too.

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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.)

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Two things make me love a show…characters that are interesting and a story line that is interesting.  This show started off with both and deftly dropped all of this in episode 5.  Someone said, in another thread, everything that happened since episode 5 makes more sense than the first 4 episodes, and I agree.  I feel like those episodes were meant to make us ask questions and try to guess what was happening, but there has been no payoff.  Pity!  I guess I will never know why Pope likes ice cream or why Beverly seems so attached to Ethan Burke.

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She doesn't find any, but they do find out that one was being too lax with residents asking questions, so Pilcher has him... buried alive?  I wasn't sure what they were doing with him.

 

Me, either. I thought maybe he was being refrozen...you know, since Pilcher muttered something about "no more violence" (if only he'd broken out in the Mary J. Blige "No More Drama" song, too)...to be re-thawed when they developed technology to turn him completely into a robot. Or something?

 

Also, I'm not up on my cryo processes, but why is dirt even necessary for those chambers?

 

There were creatures in the Star Wars cantina band that were far scarier than these abbies...I'm not expecting Avatar-level graphics here, but come on, a little imagination and makeup can actually go a long way.

 

Like father, like son - both have the emotional expression and nuances of the average string bean. I have no idea what their motivations are and that's really kind of annoying with two characters I'm really supposed to root for. Amy is as creepy as her teacher; is she supposed to be?

 

 

 

 

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Amy is as creepy as her teacher; is she supposed to be?

 

Dunno, she has no character, the very definition of a pointless love interest, just there for Ben to whine and angst about temporarily.

 

Like father, like son - both have the emotional expression and nuances of the average string bean. I have no idea what their motivations are and that's really kind of annoying with two characters I'm really supposed to root for.

 

It's why I can't invest in any of the character or care about any of them, they're all completely bland and just there to service the plot.

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