M. Night Shyamalan’s fall from grace has always been equal parts hilarious and sad. Remember that he wasn’t always the punchline that he is now; after The Sixth Sense, he was being described as the next Spielberg, and I still maintain that Unbreakable is one of the best superhero films ever made. Then The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth happened. Fox has been heavily touting Wayward Pines as a Shyamalan venture, which is a little misleading (he’s an executive producer but not the show runner, although he did direct this premiere). It also means that a lot of critics, myself included, approached the show’s premiere, “Where Paradise Is Home,” with knives drawn. This is unfair, because Wayward Pines is actually not bad.
A big part of the show’s success is its cast, which quite frankly is stellar. Matt Dillon heads up the ensemble as Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, and it’s a role that requires him to be in nearly every scene. Ethan wakes up after a car crash and staggers into Wayward Pines, Idaho (I’ve been to Idaho, and the show nailed the look), where everything is just a little bit…off. His stay at the hospital, under the care of Melissa Leo’s Nurse Pam, is closer to captivity. The hotel concierge turns hostile and condescending on a dime, as do many citizens. The only normal person that Ethan meets is Beverly (Juliette Lewis), who directs him to an abandoned house, where he finds the decaying body of one of the agents he was sent to Idaho to locate. The local sheriff, Arnold Pope (a pleasantly menacing Terence Howard) doesn’t seem too concerned, and when Ethan returns to the bar, he finds that not only does Beverly not work there, but someone with a walkie-talkie is referring to him by a code number, 101628.
Here’s the thing about Wayward Pines – it’s not the first, or even the thousandth, time that a plot like this has been used (for my money, the “weird town” story was done best by Stephen King, in “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”). So the effectiveness of a show like this is in its execution, and Shyamalan, to be fair, is a capable director, one who just shouldn’t be allowed near a typewriter. There’s a sequence where Beverly helps Ethan escape from the hospital; Ethan is fighting to stave off the effects of a sedative, and the whole thing takes on a surreal, dangerous air. It’s well-done, and the show looks great. The sun looks as good as the rain, which is good, because it seems like Wayward Pines will be using both pretty equally.
The stumbling block of “Where Paradise Is Home” is in its pacing. The first half is a nice slow burn, and the second half is very heavy on exposition. Revelations come flying fast and hard at the viewer – Dr. Jenkins (Toby Jones) actually works for the Secret Service, Wayward Pines is caged in by an electrified fence, and, most promisingly, time passes at whatever speed it wishes (Beverly has been there since 1999 and says she’s about to reach one year in Wayward Pines; another resident, Kate, has been there for twelve years, despite Ethan seeing her only weeks previous). These are all valid twists, but I worry that Wayward Pines is showing its hand too quickly (also, the “town as government installation” reveal came off a little too Shutter Island-y for me). It’s too quick to judge the show, because the premiere definitely showed promise. I just hope that this wasn’t all the promise that it has to show.
A Few Thoughts
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That was just a great opening credit sequence
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The one part about this episode that really rang false to me was Ethan saying that Kate Huston was a Secret Service agent at 27. Come on, man, I’m 27, and I…oh God, I’ve done nothing with my life!
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