'Wayward Pines': Stick Around for the Big Reveal

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment
Updated
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In Wayward Pines, Matt Dillon plays Secret Service agent Ethan Burke, who goes to Wayward Pines, Idaho, in search of two missing agents. If I tell you that this the first TV series for director-producer M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs), will you guess that the show, premiering Thursday, gets odd and eerie and baffling and suspenseful pretty quickly?

Dillon’s Ethan is particularly keen on locating missing agent Kate Hewson — and who would not be, since she’s played by Carla Gugino? Ethan and Kate were romantically as well as professionally connected, but in this town, he encounters her as a woman who claims to be someone else, one who has lived here, happily married, for years. Throw in Empire’s Terrence Howard as an eccentric sheriff and The Fighter’s Melissa Leo as an excessively stern nurse, and things start getting weird and weirder for Ethan.

Related: ‘Wayward Pines’ EP Chad Hodge: 3 Things I Want You to Know Before You Watch

It’s a tricky thing, reviewing Pines — the show doesn’t really become the show it truly is until the fourth episode. There’s a big reveal at that point which sends the series spinning off in a different direction; until then, you’re as baffled about what’s going on in the town as Dillon is. Pines is based on a popular book series I’d never heard of, by Blake Crouch, and Shyamalan directed the premiere, which has an inevitable Twin Peaks vibe to it (rural oddballs; air of vague menace).

There’s good acting by all the principals, who also include Toby Jones (Capote) and Hope Davis (Allegiance; In Treatment). The performances were good enough to string me along for the first three episodes, and when the narrative trap door was opened in episode 4, I fell for it. I’m not sure if Wayward Pines can sustain its mood and outlandish occurrences for the full length of its 10-episode season, but I guess I’m intrigued enough to keep track of what’s going on in that damp, puzzling little town.

Wayward Pines premieres Thursday, May 14 at 9 p.m. on Fox.