Wayward Pines (TV Series) The Truth (2015) User Reviews

The first and last of us

[quincytheodore · 8/10 · 11 June 2015]

While Ethan is on the hazardous trek across the mountains, the show shifts into Ben and Teresa as they are settling into their new daily activities. In a great parallel storyline, both of them eventually discover different secrets behind Wayward Pines. The show introduces more characters and drama aspect from a couple last episodes, so the development feels amicably astonishing with the focus leaning towards the mystery.

Ben starts off his day as usual, he's slowly adapting to his new environment and beginning to see it as the norm. Today is different as he's exposed to the orientation. It looks eerily futuristic with all white presentation for ostensible indoctrination purpose. As the truth is revealed to him, it also serendipitously gives more weight to his character. The illustration takes its time just right, displaying the revelations without rushing. Narrative would continuously swap between this indoctrination to his parents' respective discovery to offer wider perspective.

After the unfortunate death from previous episode, Teresa finds herself with a new occupation. This may sound mundane, but her day turns out to be engaging. Anxiety from the first day at job seems trivial compared to the lingering mysteries. Shannyn Sossamon delivers a fine performance as her character tries to piece the hints together. Interactions with her client and boss are far from normal, she looks very perplexed but is also showing equal amount of curiosity. I find myself invested on her role more than just as a supporting wife.

Ethan has a bit of spotlight between Ben's and Teresa's bits. It's designed so the audience could see the entirety of what the family experiences. As it goes, the show might have more in store. This episode marks a balanced development for the mystery thriller and ascertains each of the Burkes as core character on their own right.

Things that seem to be obvious to me, but not for characters/people watching

[spartavezer · 9/10 · 19 August 2017]

So I just browsed through the user reviews and "critics" (they basically just summarize the part...) on IMDb and with this comment I would like to remind you to two things.

1. In the 1st or 2nd part, we see Ethan's boss and dr. Jenkins talking, so all people wondering 'wow is this true???' should be 100% sure it isn't.

2. How could the 'evils' rely on Theresa's and Ben's memory? I mean they remember they left the garage next to Wayward Pines, but they don't remember meeting the sheriff - which would be proof that this nonsense is not true? How could the man in control know that they won't remember to the sheriff, especially because they met way earlier than their accident?

The show may answers the second one at some point, I have only watched it exactly to this point yet.

Exposition, exposition, and more exposition (Spoilers!)

[dsuh03 · 6/10 · 21 June 2015]

Wayward Pines started off promising. Although I had initial doubts about M. Night being involved as an executive producer and a director for the first episode, I thought I'd give it a shot because at least he didn't write the episodes. The first episode was easily one of the better directing efforts for Shyamalan in the past few years, which isn't saying much. I like the town with secrets premise and the whole conspiracy angle to how the secret service was handling Ethan's disappearance. However, I found some of the elements of wayward pines very arbitrary to the plot. For example, those security cameras and microphones have to be the worst of their kinds as music box, tab water, washer, etc could simply mask secret conversations from prying ears. Initially, I gave the show benefit of doubt since they employed these conveniences so openly that I thought they were using them to let the audience know the arbitrary nature of the town. Anyway, it turns out these are just minor flaws in light of what's revealed in this episode.

First of all, this episode was nothing but exposition. The Burke family are split up - Ethan trying to escape (which I had a problem with but more on this later), Theresa at her new realtor job, and Ben at school - just so that they can all provide answers to the audience. The entire episode was exposition as these characters found out about the secrets behind wayward pines. I'd forgive the show if the answers given were actually interesting and logical, but the answers were so dumb that I felt that I wasted time watching the show for the past 5 episodes.

Which leads to my second complaint on this episode and the show - none of this makes sense. I will give them a break on the "Abbies" because they needed some type of threat/monster to motivate the story. But their logic of cultivating the minds of the young and not trusting the adults is stupid. Why don't they simply tell each new arrival the truth and let them go from there? Why such secrecy and guise? The leaders in the town do not tell the truth to the adults because they are afraid they might kill themselves. Then people try to escape and get killed because they are misinformed. Why don't they give each new arrival a grand tour of the post-apocalyptic world like Ethan is getting? Speaking of Ethan, there was no reason why he should have tried to escape by himself while his wife and son were still in town. Once they found out Ethan escaped, what would've happened to them? The only reason he tried to escape is because the writers wanted him to be at the mountaintop so that the audience can get information download through Ethan. Lazy and stupid writing...

And the orientation...sigh. They literally flipped through slides to explain the answers.

In all, I feel like this show is living up to Shyamalan's reputation. His movies are all about plot contrivances and no character development and logic. The first four episodes gave me hope that Shyamalan might do better with other people's writing. But this episode brought the bad Shyamalan taste back real quick.