S01.E09: A Reckoning

[Julie23]

So, only one more episode and "who will survive?" is what everyone is thinking about. Or isi t, thank you series TV Gods for only making this a 10-episode series. Under The Dome writers take note: if you had made your series only a one season mini-series, you would not have to worry about ratings, and could just throw everything you've got in your imagination at the script all at once. Instead of the increasingly unbelievable crap you've got going right now. No need to script continuity if you only have 10 episodes! No reason to NOT kill off everyone (RIP Harold). No need to care how total contrived and ridiculous it was that a security person spilled coffee AT THE EXACT SAME TIME Theresa was batting down a camera. No need to make ANYONE likable anymore (except the sherriff secretary and maybe Kate, Theresa and Kate)  Looking forward to the final blood bath next week! Go Abbies,, kill the next generation asshats! 

[Julie23]

sorry for the double post, I tried to edit my post and got two unedited one's instead. :-(

Crap! Just made it worse. I give up!

Crap! Just made it worse. I give up!

[ottoDbusdriver]

Go Abbies,, kill the next generation asshats!

 

Agreed.  Screw you 1st Generation -- if you are the future, just let humanity die out already.

 

Having an Abbie dine on them while they are still alive will wipe that smug sense of superiority off their faces.  At least Jason got what was coming to him for killing Harold and the other rebels.

[lucindabelle]

Reruns of Ethan don't make sense to me because why wouldn't he remember anything?

Nah we're never going to find out what Beverly meant by I always believed you and why bartender pretended she didn't exist.

But at least Pilchwr turning off the power makes more sense for wp one. I never bought the mass panic story.

[Milburn Stone]

How was Ethan going to and from mission control so quickly and easily?  I thought you had to take a helicopter.

 

There may be a logical explanation, or you and I may have been laboring under a misconception, but it's certainly been my impression that mission control is in a very remote location. (Whether you need a helicopter or not.) Like you, I found myself surprised that Ethan could go back and forth so quickly. FWIW.

[plurie]

Maybe because they are afraid he'd allow the abbies to get into the mountain?

 

Or they are so far into the Kool-Aid punch bowl that they agree with Pilcher that they are ungrateful and deserve the town-wide Reckoning. What do they care, they are safe?

But he has to come out of his room eventually, and they outnumber him. I don't get the sense that they agree with him, or that they were happy about the failure of the first batch of Waywardians. From a purely self-interested viewpoint, if the Abbies rampage through the town THEY'LL be the ones who have to rebuild it AGAIN. These people were volunteers who wanted to save humanity. Killing off successive batches of people doesn't seem like a winning strategy to achieve this. And, presumably, they thawed out the most promising people first, so the chances of success with a new batch keeps decreasing.

[Accidental Martyr]

I guess they can't rewind the video to see what happened to the camera at Plot 33 when the coffee-spiller looked away for a second? I guess they also didn't bother to send anyone to check on the camera and see what was going on there? No one was concerned that someone might go inside and find that computer that just happened to be sitting there with all the info that they have supposedly gone to great lengths to keep anyone from finding out? OK, sure.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I guess they can't rewind the video to see what happened to the camera at Plot 33 when the coffee-spiller looked away for a second? I guess they also didn't bother to send anyone to check on the camera and see what was going on there? No one was concerned that someone might go inside and find that computer that just happened to be sitting there with all the info that they have supposedly gone to great lengths to keep anyone from finding out? OK, sure.

 

The biggest failure in security was Theresa using that security card on the door on the tunnel -- that didn't set off any alarms at the monitoring desks.  A secure door goes unused for a long time and all of a sudden during a time of turmoil that door gets opened.  These security guys are just terrible.

[Shermie]

Too bad the Emmy noms are out and this show came out too late to make the cut. Well, maybe next year /sarcasm

So Ethan tells the townies the truth - "The world you knew is gone" - and they all just stare in acceptance. No one asks what happened or what do you mean? No one is concerned about their non-WP loved ones? They never ask enough questions!

And why wouldn't Ethan just shoot the Abbie under the truck instead of all four tires? Waste of bullets, waste of tires, considering they have limited resources. But oh, so dramatic!

I'm hoping that the show ends next week with maybe Ethan and Kate left alive, sweaty and covered in blood from their epic battle, panting and looking at each other with a "we made it!" look. Then the outer walls fall back to reveal a soundstage, a studio audience and a smarmy host surrounded by flashing lights spelling out VICTORS! congratulating them on being the winners of the first ever Apocalypse Survival Games.

Seriously, it's not that far-fetched.

[SoothingDave]

Reruns of Ethan don't make sense to me because why wouldn't he remember anything?

 

Why does everybody think they were in a car crash before they got to WP?  I think they implant memories and can erase them as well.  

 

And why wouldn't Ethan just shoot the Abbie under the truck instead of all four tires? Waste of bullets, waste of tires, considering they have limited resources. But oh, so dramatic!

 

 

This actually makes sense, since lowering the truck sealed off the breach.  

[dr pepper]

When you run the ultimate bunker, you develop the ultimate bunker mentality.

 

 

That being said, thos of us who find the setting less than credible have been berated for noot just accepting what were told. You know, like the candle cult. fact is, no matter how neatly rhey wrap this up, the implausibilities remain, starting with the survival of 2000 year old machinery. it is not enough to say well it's a scifi show, they did something scifi-ish. this show is presented to us as something that could be done, here in our world with our current technology, plus a little advancement in cryonics. that's not good enough. but it's clear they're not going to address these issues. and they could have, that's the most disappointing part.

[iMonrey]

I don't understand how the Abbies are reproducing. They seem too savage to rear offspring. I'm trying to picture a female Abbie nursing a baby Abbie and I'm not seeing it. But then maybe that's why the ones we've seen are all males; maybe the female Abbies are tamer and all stay-at-home moms. I dunno, I got nuthin.

 

 

Ethan continues to be a moron when it comes to convincing anyone of what he's trying to tell them. "Something bad ate your buddies... here's a photo of what's left. No, actually I DON"T have a picture of what ate them, even though there were several dead ones for me to take pictures of...."

 

I know right? This has been driving me crazy ever since he found out the truth. Better still - why not drag one of those dead Abbie bodies back to town and show everyone if he wants to prove it's real? And where the heck did he get the camera (and printer) from?? Why not take pics of the inside of Central Control and display them all over town? And why does he keep saying "Everything you knew is gone?" Like that's an explanation? How about "It's the year 4028, we've been frozen for 2,000 years and civilization as we know it has ended?" Isn't that more to the point and less vague? For someone who's supposed to be a government official he stinks at explaining things.

 

No explanations for how the video feeds were collected/transmitted.  Or why the videos are all on a computer in a tunnel under a shed in an abandoned lot in the perfect little town.  Couldn't the tunnel entrance be in someone's garage?

 

I don't get this either. How did all these videos wind up in this forgotten, secret bunker? Why aren't they stored somewhere in Central Control? Oh, I know, it's so someone can break in and "discover" them without alerting Pilcher & Co. OK then - why not bring the videos topside and show them to everyone at once? Why drag everyone down into the tunnels? {headsmack}

 

The only really gratifying part of this episode was Theresa smacking the hell out of Megan. Only I needed that smack to be a lot harder.

 

And once again I'm supposed to overlook the fact that no way in hell any part of the Golden Gate bridge would still be left 2,000 years in the future. I know the director is going for a visual punch like the ending of Planet of the Apes, but apparently they assume nobody ever watched the Life After People series.

[fishcakes]

That guy in the surveillance room is cracking me up with his fake typing that consists of wiggling each finger up and down in rapid succession--left and right hands simultaneously--and not moving his fingers off of the same 8 keys.

 

He went to the Steven Snell School of Typing.

 

[Dowel Jones]

I'm still trying to figure out how Ethan's truck was repaired repaired so quickly after hitting that dumpster the previous night -- how exactly ?)

 

I noticed that right after impact the camera showed not a bit of damage to his truck.  So that question is answered.  However, at the expense of another question...

 

I can't say I felt too sorry for Harold and the other rebels.  You kneel down before your killer, you get what you got coming.  At least he made an attempt to disarm Junior Nazi, but it was ineffectual at best.  The three of them should have gone at him together.  What's the worst that could happen?

 

The producers of Lost should have trademarked the use of a hatch in any sci-fi drama.  Anymore, a character can't even open the trash can without a camera reveal and some menacing music.

 

My favorite line:  In the hospital scene with Amy circling the toilet, the PA system blares out "Any available neurologist, report to ICU".  Any available neurologist?  Nice staffing, WPH, but apparently there's only one nurse. 

[slothgirl]

sorry for the double post, I tried to edit my post and got two unedited one's instead. :-(

Crap! Just made it worse. I give up!

Crap! Just made it worse. I give up!

Sorry... I had to LOL at this!

[janie jones]

Thanks for explaining the video diaries.  But if these people were on exploratory missions, then why weren't they given vehicles?  And still, that dude really walked through abbie infested territory from Idaho to San Francisco?

 

I think Beverly is a special case.  She knew Ethan was a rerun.  She had some special role to play in getting Ethan to investigate and come to want to be sheriff.  Her role is not well explained.

 

The rest of WP, including Kate, that is *this version* of WP hasn't seen Ethan before.  Remember, Pilcher or events wiped out previous incarnations of WP.  It's not Ethan's first time, but he doesn't know that.  And for everyone else there (except Beverly) it's their first time.

That doesn't work, though, because Kate has been in Wayward Pines for 12 years, but Beverly only 1 or so.  It would have to be the other way around.  Beverly could have been lying, but we know Kate isn't because she's aged and married.  So the only way the above scenario works is if Beverly and Ethan were defrosted in Wayward Pines 1 and Ethan was refrozen and not unfrozen until >12 years later. 

 

Pope was to be sheriff, but Pilcher obviously had a reason to want Ethan around "just in case" things got out of hand.

But then what would Pope have been doing all those other times Ethan was sheriff?  He got demoted every time?

[JenE4]

He went to the Steven Snell School of Typing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Oad0TKews

That's exactly how he was typing! Lol!

[Jodithgrace]

This show! Such a goofy mess. It had better be only one season,because I'm certainly not coming back for season 2.

 

Loved the Pilcher Youth doing their fist pounding salute! Did they learn to do that in school while they were learning fake science and drinking Kool-Aid?

 

Loved Pilcher deciding to take his electricity and go home! No power for you, you ungrateful Wayward Pinians! So what if you are the only people left on earth? Who needs ya?!

 

Loved reading all of your questions of logic, none of which occurred to the writers, apparently. 

 

I decided to watch  this show when i heard an interview on EW Radio about how in the 5th episode, everything was going to change,including the genre. (From mystery to Science fiction, i presume) But what the interview failed to mention was the personality transplant that all of the characters, especially Pam, would undergo, with no explanation. 

 

Oh well, only one more week of this nonsense.

[Tabasco Cat]

From mystery to fantasy is more like it.

[izabella]

I don't get this either. How did all these videos wind up in this forgotten, secret bunker? Why aren't they stored somewhere in Central Control? Oh, I know, it's so someone can break in and "discover" them without alerting Pilcher & Co. OK then - why not bring the videos topside and show them to everyone at once? Why drag everyone down into the tunnels? {headsmack}

 

Right?  Why would that bunker be out there, why does it only have those specific videos, and why does it seem empty and abandoned though still running perfectly?  That's one of those questions that we'll likely never get any sort of answer to, much less a logical answer.

 

The only really gratifying part of this episode was Theresa smacking the hell out of Megan. Only I needed that smack to be a lot harder.

 

 

That was super satisfying.  And Theresa was the perfect person to deliver that slap.

Edited July 18, 2015 by izabella

[slothgirl]

From mystery to fantasy is more like it.

From mystery to Drek.

 

Is that a genre? It should be; so many things fall into it.

[FishyJoe]

Why does everybody think they were in a car crash before they got to WP?  I think they implant memories and can erase them as well.  

 

 

This actually makes sense, since lowering the truck sealed off the breach.  

 

Then why the heck did they show Pope cutting the brake lines to the car if it was an implanted memory?

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

Will Anyone Make It Out Of Wayward Pines Alive? / With one week left until the finale, and the destruction of titular town at hand, Alex Zeidel weighs everyone's chances of survival.

[legaleagle53]

That was super satisfying.  And Theresa was the perfect person to deliver that slap.

 

Indeed.  Let's hear it for the Bitchslap Heard Round the World -- a "Hell, Yeah!" moment if ever there was one!

Edited July 18, 2015 by legaleagle53

[Tabasco Cat]

That was super satisfying.  And Theresa was the perfect person to deliver that slap.

 

I thought it was really unsatisfying. A slap like that is what her son Ben needs. For indoctrinating children, for turning Ben against his father, for blind devotion to Pilcher, for denying parents a look inside the school, for creepy candle ceremonies, for encouraging (really young) teenage sex and for being a sad excuse for a teacher, Megan Fisher deserves so much more than that little slap.

 

HypnoTeach needs to be knocked down off her high horse and that slap was nowhere near humiliating enough. Anyone in the crowd more than 10 feet away probably didn't even see it.

[legaleagle53]

I thought it was really unsatisfying. A slap like that is what her son Ben needs. For indoctrinating children, for turning Ben against his father, for blind devotion to Pilcher, for denying parents a look inside the school, for creepy candle ceremonies, for encouraging (really young) teenage sex and for being a sad excuse for a teacher, Megan Fisher deserves so much more than that little slap.

 

HypnoTeach needs to be knocked down off her high horse and that slap was nowhere near humiliating enough. Anyone in the crowd more than 10 feet away probably didn't even see it.

 

When the Abbies make their way into town, I hope she is the first item on their menu.  Pilcher should be saved for dessert.

Edited July 19, 2015 by legaleagle53

[Actionmage]

Sadly, for a couple of minutes, I was thinking the show was juxtaposing the bloodthirstiness of the Waywardians with the more advanced(?)/ devolved  abbies' bloodlust. Maybe a point about how the violence and un-fellow feelings are just a part of us that we need to continually face and manage.  Not entirely different from Pam, our supposed recovering drug addict ( so Pilcher makes sure she is head nurse in a hospital in The New New Frontier.)

 

Then Megan started yakking, Pilcher took his electricity back and I remembered this was not the show we were hoping to enjoy. It was enjoyable, just not for what we thought it was going to be.

[starri]

 

Her role is not well explained.

Tagline of the series right there.

 

If Pilcher really wanted to make an ark to preserve humanity, why did he fill it with an angry mob from The Simpsons?

 

Even if the timeline is fluid, the Children of the Corn looked a bit long in the tooth to still be in high school

 

This show is so stupid.

[Wulfsige]

I don't understand...well, okay, anything...but...concerning the abbies - they don't look that bright. They haven't figured out clothing or anything more complicated for dinner than see raw meat, eat raw meat. How do they survive in the winters? Large portions of earth are inhospitable without down-filled parkas. Wouldn't it have been easier for surviving humans to move their civilization, trucks and rubber tires and annoying teenagers and all to northern Greenland or Antarctica and build bases stocked with modern high-tech weapons, with which they could attack the abbies, than it was to freeze-dry thousands of people and the trucks and rubber tires for 2000 years in the hopes that one day a brighter future would come? Anyway - my point is, earth can be a hostile place if you're not dressed for the weather and haven't any survival skills or tools.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I don't understand...well, okay, anything...but...concerning the abbies - they don't look that bright. They haven't figured out clothing or anything more complicated for dinner than see raw meat, eat raw meat. How do they survive in the winters? Large portions of earth are inhospitable without down-filled parkas. Wouldn't it have been easier for surviving humans to move their civilization, trucks and rubber tires and annoying teenagers and all to northern Greenland or Antarctica and build bases stocked with modern high-tech weapons, with which they could attack the abbies, than it was to freeze-dry thousands of people and the trucks and rubber tires for 2000 years in the hopes that one day a brighter future would come? Anyway - my point is, earth can be a hostile place if you're not dressed for the weather and haven't any survival skills or tools.

 

Exactly, find a decent sized island (to have a physical barrier against the abbies, because I doubt they learned how to swim) making it easy to defend with a moderate climate where you can grow food and raise animals. Any island in the Caribbean would do nicely -- Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico  -- and would allow a decent size population to grow from where to build a force to start eradicating the abbies on the mainland.  Or islands like Madagascar, Ireland/UK, Sicily, Cyprus, Crete.

 

Some gov't would have had to think of a possible plan along those lines as options in the intervening 80 years between when Pilcher closed up the mountain and that mint in Denver stopped making coins.  It's not like a couple of million abbies just suddenly appeared overnight and started killing everyone.  Unless something else took down civilization and the abbies evolved in isolated pockets and eventually reproduced in vast numbers.

 

You would think that Piilcher would have setup a trust fund in order to pay people who stayed behind in WP of 2014 (and their descendants) to try and record as much history and information as possible up to the point civilization fell to pass on that accumulated knowledge to Pilcher's people once they awoke in the mountain.  Writings on clay tablets (that have been found in Hittite archaeological digs and they are over 3700 years old, stone carvings, or something like the solid gold record on both Voyager probes.

 

ETA: to change Voyager to Voyager probes, since both Voyager 1 and 2 had the gold phonograph record.

Edited July 18, 2015 by ottoDbusdriver

[Dowel Jones]

When the Abbies make into town, I hope she is the first item on their menu.  Pilcher should be saved for dessert

 

As they're gathered up at the Bier Gardin, the Abbies begin to loudly debate whether Pale Ale or Porter is a better pairing....

 

...no way in hell any part of the Golden Gate bridge would still be left 2,000 years in the future.

 

Hey, it's the Golden Gate Bridge, for pete's sake.  They were probably still painting it when the Abbies showed up.  On the bright side, San Francisco was probably a last holdout because they raised the toll to $25 and none of the Abbies could get across.

[SlackerInc]

There may be a logical explanation, or you and I may have been laboring under a misconception, but it's certainly been my impression that mission control is in a very remote location. (Whether you need a helicopter or not.) Like you, I found myself surprised that Ethan could go back and forth so quickly. FWIW.

 

Huh, that was not my impression.  I assumed there was a spot right in town (or nearby) where you could go access it through a hidden (or at least sealed) door.

 

But he has to come out of his room eventually, and they outnumber him. I don't get the sense that they agree with him, or that they were happy about the failure of the first batch of Waywardians. From a purely self-interested viewpoint, if the Abbies rampage through the town THEY'LL be the ones who have to rebuild it AGAIN. These people were volunteers who wanted to save humanity. Killing off successive batches of people doesn't seem like a winning strategy to achieve this. And, presumably, they thawed out the most promising people first, so the chances of success with a new batch keeps decreasing.

 

Absolutely.  But he's having a childish fit, consequences be damned.  I don't find it that hard to believe: Hitler for instance went against all sane military strategy in insisting his troops stubbornly hold positions and never retreat.

 

And why wouldn't Ethan just shoot the Abbie under the truck instead of all four tires? Waste of bullets, waste of tires, considering they have limited resources. But oh, so dramatic!

 

I agree with Dave: it both killed the abbies crawling under right at that moment, and sealed off entry for any others.

 

That being said, thos of us who find the setting less than credible have been berated for noot just accepting what were told. You know, like the candle cult. fact is, no matter how neatly rhey wrap this up, the implausibilities remain, starting with the survival of 2000 year old machinery. it is not enough to say well it's a scifi show, they did something scifi-ish. this show is presented to us as something that could be done, here in our world with our current technology, plus a little advancement in cryonics. that's not good enough.

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but I was never telling anyone the arguments about various implausibilities didn't have merit.  All I was saying is that I was 99.99% certain that these implausibilities were not a sign that there was another twist coming down the pike, but simply a sign of loose, sloppy, even arguably shoddy writing/plotting.  It seemed clear to me that they were intending it to be a fact, within the show's universe, that it was the 41st century--despite whatever problems there are with that scenario.  That's all.  Really, my position was not a blind defense of the show but actually a more pessimistic assessment in a way, if you think about it.  Basically, "it is what it is, take it or leave it" rather than "I have faith that they are going to reveal a second twist that will explain away all the plot holes".

 

I don't get this either. How did all these videos wind up in this forgotten, secret bunker? Why aren't they stored somewhere in Central Control? Oh, I know, it's so someone can break in and "discover" them without alerting Pilcher & Co. OK then - why not bring the videos topside and show them to everyone at once? Why drag everyone down into the tunnels? {headsmack}

[snip]

And once again I'm supposed to overlook the fact that no way in hell any part of the Golden Gate bridge would still be left 2,000 years in the future. I know the director is going for a visual punch like the ending of Planet of the Apes, but apparently they assume nobody ever watched the Life After People series.

 

It's a good point about that terminal being in such an oddball location.  But given that it is in fact there, I don't see how they could have brought the videos topside.  I assume they were stored on some central server, not in that physical terminal.  And there would be no way to connect to that terminal in town.

 

I find it difficult to believe the Roman Coliseum has survived two millennia, but no trace of the Golden Gate Bridge would.

 

I can't say I felt too sorry for Harold and the other rebels.  You kneel down before your killer, you get what you got coming.  At least he made an attempt to disarm Junior Nazi, but it was ineffectual at best.  The three of them should have gone at him together.  What's the worst that could happen?

[snip]

My favorite line:  In the hospital scene with Amy circling the toilet, the PA system blares out "Any available neurologist, report to ICU".  Any available neurologist?  Nice staffing, WPH, but apparently there's only one nurse. 

 

I can't go as far as you are in not feeling sorry for Harold et al or saying "they had it coming".  It's still wrong to be executed in cold blood like that, even if you could have fought back better.  By this logic, most of the Jews the Nazis killed had it coming too(?!?).  But I do agree that it's constantly frustrating how people who are obviously going to be executed don't take a "what have we got to lose" attitude and bumrush their captors en masse.  It might be realistic though.  In this case in particular, there did seem to be some hope (until the last moment) that these guys might take pity on them and leave things as a warning or "point made" as the other kid was saying.  When everyone but one guy is wavering, there might seem more hope if you don't give him a reason to shoot.

 

Thanks for explaining the video diaries.  But if these people were on exploratory missions, then why weren't they given vehicles?  And still, that dude really walked through abbie infested territory from Idaho to San Francisco?

 

I don't think he walked.  The video wasn't clear, but I think they probably had vehicles but maybe by that point were on foot for some reason?  It definitely wasn't thought out that well, including the issue of how they transmitted their video feed (I suppose it's possible that communications satellites might still be up there?).  Like a lot else in this show, I think it's meant to convey information without being examined too closely.  For some reason I find myself pretty charitable and willing to go with it on the technological end, because the episodes are well filmed and decently acted, the dialogue is reasonably well written, etc.  (As I keep saying, what bothers me most is when that's not so much true, like Nurse Pam's 180, Theresa's repeated complaints about the vacant lot to her boss, or the pointless and inexplicable gaslighting of Ethan in the early episodes.)

 

ETA: Otto, I like your ideas.  If you write a postapocalytpic tale, please PM me and I will definitely read it!  But to be fair, pretty much every zombie story ever made (except the World War Z movie, to its credit) fails in the same way, giving modern technological civilization too little credit for being able to find fortified, defensible positions and hold them against mindless attackers.

Edited July 18, 2015 by SlackerInc

[ottoDbusdriver]

I find it difficult to believe the Roman Coliseum has survived two millennia, but no trace of the Golden Gate Bridge would.

 

The big difference is stone vs. steel --  stone has lasted for millenia in the mountains before it was carved out and used to build the Coliseum, but steel used to build the Golden Gate bridge, especially in a damp environment like SF, would corrode really quickly by comparison and maybe last a couple of hundred years especially if it wasn't continuously maintained.

 

ETA: 

 

But to be fair, pretty much every zombie story ever made (except the World War Z movie, to its credit) fails in the same way, giving modern technological civilization too little credit for being able to find fortified, defensible positions and hold them against mindless attackers.

 

But that's the one difference between this scenario and most post-apocalyptic novels/movies/tv shows involve a very sudden change that spreads incredibly fast through the population and becomes overwhelming.  For example, either a viral outbreak that kills nearly everyone (Outbreak, Carriers), or creates the living dead that nearly kills everyone (World War Z, The Walking Dead) or creates the infected living that nearly kills everyone (28 Weeks Later).  But in the case of the abbies, it would have taken a long time for the first aberrations to appear and then for them to get together and reproduce to make more aberrations.  Something that would have been easily noticed in a vastly interconnected world and gov'ts would have been able to prepare for decades if they couldn't control it.  Unless something else intervened that killed off the rest of the human population and allowed the abbies to prosper.

 

Otto, I like your ideas.  If you write a postapocalytpic tale, please PM me and I will definitely read it!

 

Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll get around to it.

Edited July 18, 2015 by ottoDbusdriver

[KaveDweller]

Exactly, find a decent sized island (to have a physical barrier against the abbies, because I doubt they learned how to swim) making it easy to defend with a moderate climate where you can grow food and raise animals. Any island in the Caribbean would do nicely -- Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico -- and would allow a decent size population to grow from where to build a force to start eradicating the abbies on the mainland. Or islands like Madagascar, Ireland/UK, Sicily, Cyprus, Crete.

Maybe they did? Theresa said there were videos from all over the country......I doubt they covered the entire earth.

But it is weird that the Abbie's seem so primitive. If this is evolution, why are they losing the ability to do things like talk and have communities. I can but the hunting abilities and claws and all, but the rest of it seems to defy evolution.

[Dowel Jones]

I can't go as far as you are in not feeling sorry for Harold et al or saying "they had it coming".

 

I certainly didn't mean to imply that they deserved their fate, only that,  when you give up, you lose.  The rebels seem to have had a visceral hatred of the Pilcher regime, even if they didn't know who was in charge, and I would think that would translate into a do-or-die attitude on their part.  They would expect no less than death if they failed, anyway.

[izabella]

I don't think he walked.  The video wasn't clear, but I think they probably had vehicles but maybe by that point were on foot for some reason?  It definitely wasn't thought out that well, including the issue of how they transmitted their video feed (I suppose it's possible that communications satellites might still be up there?).  Like a lot else in this show, I think it's meant to convey information without being examined too closely.

 

I'm sure they don't want us to consider anything about this show too closely.  They could have had vehicles, but unless they traveled with truckloads full of gas, their vehicles wouldn't be able to get too far.  Same for helicopters - great to get to whatever range they can fly, but where do they refuel?  Satellites don't last forever, and when they run out of fuel, they drift off course and out of reach of any sat phone signals.  They're only supposed to last about 10 years, I think.  Cell phones won't work without towers and cell provider who maintain that infrastructure..

[ottoDbusdriver]

They could have had vehicles, but unless they traveled with truckloads full of gas, their vehicles wouldn't be able to get too far.

 

Especially traveling over rough heavily forested terrain (nearly 2000 years worth of growth) with no roads -- at least initially, since it appears there's nothing but trees until Ethan got to the outskirts of Boise.  It's the lack of roads that would kill long-distance vehicle travel.

[janie jones]

Like a lot else in this show, I think it's meant to convey information without being examined too closely.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that anything put onscreen should hold up to scrutiny.  (Setting aside goofy shows that aren't meant to be realistic.  But I believe this show is meant to be realistic, even though some of what is shown is the equivalent of when a cartoon character reaches into their pocket and pulls out a tuba.)

[izabella]

Especially traveling over rough heavily forested terrain (nearly 2000 years worth of growth) with no roads -- at least initially, since it appears there's nothing but trees until Ethan got to the outskirts of Boise.  It's the lack of roads that would kill long-distance vehicle travel.

 

Yes, roads and bridges.  They aren't going to get across anything but the smallest stream without bridges.

[jhlipton]

..And I have no idea who to root for ...  (but definitely not the Nazi schoolkids) 

 

5) The Abbie-normals for me.  Abbies eat everyone in town except Ethan, who's left to thaw Group C!

[slothgirl]

I certainly didn't mean to imply that they deserved their fate, only that,  when you give up, you lose.  The rebels seem to have had a visceral hatred of the Pilcher regime, even if they didn't know who was in charge, and I would think that would translate into a do-or-die attitude on their part.  They would expect no less than death if they failed, anyway.

Yeah, except their plan was always to escape it seemed, not to revolt or fight. Even their "bomb" was meant only to blow a hole in the fence and it was pitiful besides. Some of them took exception to the car bomb planted in Ethan's vehicle.

 

Did Harold even know if his buddies got eaten? Didn't Ethan come back with that news only AFTER everyone got shot?

5) The Abbie-normals for me.  Abbies eat everyone in town except Ethan, who's left to thaw Group C!

I'd rather see Pam and Theresa rebuild society. Ethan is too communication -impaired.

[Tabasco Cat]

I'd rather see Pam and Theresa rebuild society. Ethan is too communication -impaired.

 

That's the understatement of the year. The townsfolk all want to know, finally, "WHY?" and all Ethan can muster up is, "Because David Pilcher is a control freak!" Duh.

 

That, plus the bad acting by the kid playing Ben, plus the namby-pamby slap Theresa gave Megan... what a fustercluck. This show will be tossed on the huge pile of what's come before it in the category of Good Concept, Bad Execution. If I was the author of the books I'd be pissed. This show hasn't done him any favors.

[SlackerInc]

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that anything put onscreen should hold up to scrutiny.  (Setting aside goofy shows that aren't meant to be realistic.  But I believe this show is meant to be realistic, even though some of what is shown is the equivalent of when a cartoon character reaches into their pocket and pulls out a tuba.)

 

I think in terms of technological plausibility, this is supposed to land somewhere between something like Gilligan's Island (with the Professor's inventions like a lie detector made from gourds and whatnot) and truly realistic sci-fi.  (Though it's notable that in the latter category, I had trouble coming up with a good example, as nearly all SF has some implausible elements.)  That middle zone can be troublesome, as people will bring different expectations to it since it's not immediately outlandish enough to make it clear from the beginning not to expect it to be grounded in reality.  

 

But I'm okay with just kind of going with it, which may be rooted in my having been a huge fan of comic books growing up: even "gritty" superheroes like Batman or Daredevil are completely ridiculous if you really hold them up to scrutiny.  And when you move on to the Fantastic Four or even Spider-Man, it goes completely around the bend yet somehow it's still fun.

[JenE4]

That's the understatement of the year. The townsfolk all want to know, finally, "WHY?" and all Ethan can muster up is, "Because David Pilcher is a control freak!" Duh.

Exactly! Even with all of the townsfolk gathered, he STILL didn't tell them that they were frozen for 2,000 years and there are ravenous monsters out there. Just Pilcher has you all under control and there's nothing left, and a few people chimed in "me too" that they saw there's nothing left. Like, ok, what happened? As far as they all know, they were just in a car accident between few days or a decade and a half ago. So saying there's nothing out there makes no sense. Same thing when he showed Harold the remains of his buddies, it was like, "I would shoot them, I wouldn't eat them!" Well, okay, are there some wild animals out there or something? What ate them?

But another thing, as soon as the lights went off on the fence, an Abbie started climbing up. They understand how electricity works and knew it wouldn't zap them now? I really don't think people would devolve back into animals. I'm thinking first human evolutionary change will be fingers will bend sideways for ease of swiping phones and tablets.

[Clanstarling]

Did Harold even know if his buddies got eaten? Didn't Ethan come back with that news only AFTER everyone got shot?

I believe Ethan was showing the pictures of chewed up bits of rebels to Harold and that's how he got the names of the other guys. Who were prepared to fight at the reckoning, but were okay with "Pilcher's a control freak."

 

It is frustrating to have a decent concept mucked up by completely avoidable inconsistencies and strange behavior that isn't at some point woven into the fabric of the show in a logical way.  I don't really demand a lot of reality from light summer entertainment, but I do want it to be consistent with its own mythology and rules.

 

This show needed a continuity person for the scripts - someone who didn't know where the show was going to go and could ask questions as they went forward.

[SoothingDave]

 

That doesn't work, though, because Kate has been in Wayward Pines for 12 years, but Beverly only 1 or so.  It would have to be the other way around.  Beverly could have been lying, but we know Kate isn't because she's aged and married.  So the only way the above scenario works is if Beverly and Ethan were defrosted in Wayward Pines 1 and Ethan was refrozen and not unfrozen until >12 years later. 

 

 

 

But then what would Pope have been doing all those other times Ethan was sheriff?  He got demoted every time?

 

 

Yes, my theory is that both Ethan and Beverly were in a previous version of WP.  Of course, this is all based on that one line from Beverly.  Who knows?  I imagine we never will.

 

Yes, I imagine Pope got moved out of the way when Ethan's time came.  When he didn't get killed, that is.  Remember Pope was a volunteer, not an abductee.  

 

Then why the heck did they show Pope cutting the brake lines to the car if it was an implanted memory?

 

This isn't clear either.  But I can't imagine that they actually risked killing all their abductees by having them be involved in accidents.  It's all conflicted.  Remember there was no record, even DNA, that Ethan was in the car crash at the beginning of the season.  

 

More things that I don't imagine will be explained next week.  

[ottoDbusdriver]

This show needed a continuity person for the scripts - someone who didn't know where the show was going to go and could ask questions as they went forward.

 

It badly needed this.  And the disappointing thing is that EP M. Night Shyamalan pulled off one of the better feats of movie continuity with 'The Sixth Sense'.

[jhlipton]

I'd rather see Pam and Theresa rebuild society. Ethan is too communication -impaired.

 

Exactly why it would fun to have him be the only one left. He wouldn't make the same mistakes as Pilcher's, but he would make some doozies!

 

It badly needed this.  And the disappointing thing is that EP M. Night Shyamalan pulled off one of the better feats of movie continuity with 'The Sixth Sense'.

 

I'm beginning to think that Sixth Sense, and to a lesser extent Unbreakable, were flukes and that they set unrealistically high expectations for him that he just couldn't deliver. 

[Free]

I'm beginning to think that Sixth Sense, and to a lesser extent Unbreakable, were flukes and that they set unrealistically high expectations for him that he just couldn't deliver. 

 

I've thought about that too a long time ago, it was like a totally different filmmaker, looking back on things.

[KaveDweller]

Especially traveling over rough heavily forested terrain (nearly 2000 years worth of growth) with no roads -- at least initially, since it appears there's nothing but trees until Ethan got to the outskirts of Boise.  It's the lack of roads that would kill long-distance vehicle travel.

 

Unless they have planes.  And there are planes that can fly from New York to Hawaii without stopping, so it should be possible to have enough fuel to get from Boise to San Francisco and back.  I know where they stored the planes would be an issue, but they obviously have plenty of storage space where things/people were frozen. So saying there were a couple planes in there isn't much of a reach.  

 

The only question I have is about how they got the footage back in Wayward Pines.  Someone would have had to return with it, but the video made it look like there were no survivors.  I guess it's possible there were more people than just Hassler on the expedition though.