Truly the best science-fiction television show to ever grace a network. A highly sinister cross between Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show, Nicolas Cage’s The Wicker Man, The Walking Dead, The Twilight Zone, and Wes Anderson’s Resident Evil films, with of course Blake Crouch’s incredible storytelling, suspense, and government-agent touch.
Weaving a plot-line that has you guessing between government experiments, time travel, the apocalypse, humanoid creatures, and sympathetically-evil agendas, this show is one of sci-fi’s greatest mysteries and triumphs.
Matt Dillon plays one of the greatest “What the hell is wrong with this town!?” rough-hero roles to ever exist, making audiences cheer when he finally has enough of the truth-blocking weirdos he meets, while the great Toby Jones plays televisions most sinister, yet-understandable villain, every syllable and facial expression sending chills down the spine while managing to evoke sympathy at his originally-heroic agenda.
Terrance Howard’s Sheriff-Gone-Wrong performance is an incredibly addicting surprise, as most fans expected a Sheriff more like Sheriff Hoyt of The Chainsaw Massacre fame; instead, we get a man showing much more humanity, but ultimately the twisted psychosis, that naturally and sympathetically grips the setting due to a particular plotline.
The entire show is a high-budget marvel, each episode gripping and effortlessly changing between styles of action, horror, dark humor, mystery, and good vs. evil. Plenty of fan-favorite characters pop up that one never forgets, and in many ways, this show is like Stephen King’s Under The Dome.
Season 2, however, was a major disappointment for most fans, and it wasn’t even truly needed. However, it is worth a truly moaning watch just to get glimpses of returning characters that die within an hour of their appearance, something that totally went against Crouch’s “good guys win!” approach to the novels and first Season and left the show with a much more needing cliff-hanger than the first ever displayed.
Sadly, it ruined the continuation of the show, and most fans only should watch the first Season to walk away with a truly profound interpretation of Crouch’s Wayward Pines book series. Even die-hard fans find little in the follow-up Season to find watchable other than seeing Toby Jones raising hairs on the viewer with every word on a few episodes.
A truly must-watch first Season for anyone!