Wayward

15

So, let’s cut to the chase. This is in no way related to Wayward Pines. Despite being called Wayward and taking place in a town called Tall Pines. Got that? Honestly, it’s as if Netflix put this out and just hoped that this mystery series would be confused with that one and people would just accidentally click on it. Or series creator, Mae Martin, watched that series, or read the Blake Crouch book trilogy, and subconsciously spun up this show — which, beside the name, feels eerily similar in tone and setting. Almost too much so. Yet the story itself is certainly different — lacking any sci-fi bent, but more so a psychological mystery drama about kids in peril. And some other shit that I’m not even sure how to explain other than to call it half-baked. Honestly, I’m having a hard time with this, as Mae Martin’s previous effort, Feel Good, was clearly the personal journey of a stand-up comedian trying out a fish-out-of-water romance while trying to find themself. This… is a big swing and miles away from what I assume is Martin’s comfort zone . And a thing that feels like it was noted to death by a Netflix crew who tried to bend the Wayward curve toward Stranger Things, or whatever they thought might salvage an otherwise lackluster endeavor. Or, at the very least, not correct the whole Wayward Pines confusion.

Once again, I feel like I’m perhaps the only person on Earth who watched this thing. I’ve heard mention of it nowhere, and I only turned it on because of Toni Collette’s giant noggin floating in the middle of the poster. Because she’s always worth a watch. Granted, she’s been in some terrible stuff of late, including the 2022 series, Pieces of Her, and the incredibly disappointing Mickey 17. She’s decent in The Staircase, I suppose, but I was just hoping for things for her in this show. A show I honestly had no idea was a Mae Martin joint when I dialed it up. Or, more so, hit that Netflix tile with the aforementioned Toni Collette floaty head in it. Mainly because I thought Martin was a comedian. And this is most definitely not a comedy. Not to say comedians can’t stretch, but typically new-ish show creators stick to a genre at least a little closer to home. And, based on the result, perhaps Martin should have followed this lead. I just don’t think this taut psychological mystery is something they are prepared to tackle. And I hate to shit on the acting, but — as I mentioned in the Feel Good review — Martin’s acting can, at best, be described as naturalistic. Which is a nice way of saying that it resembles the natural way an acting novice might deliver lines when presented with a script and told to “act.” I thought maybe it was Martin’s Canadianess, but after three seasons of watching them struggle to be convincing as a thespian, I don’t think that’s it. Look, acting is hard, and being a decent stand-up doesn’t necessarily translate to the screen. Just ask Chris Rock.

How do I describe this thing? Hackneyed. It’s a good word, but also pretty accurate for what’s going on here. The couple from the big city moves back to one of the couple’s remote hometown after a negative event in the big city drives the need for a drastic change. In this case, Alex (Martin), is a cop who apparently beat the shit out of some suspect in an angry outburst and was either suspended or fired from the force in… Detroit. Detroit, really? Bad Alex. But, luckily his (Martin’s character in the series is trans and uses he/him pronouns) pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), is from this idyllic town in Vermont where they can move and start over. These goings on are supposed to happening in 2003. An odd time period, but I suppose police brutality was maybe more acceptable as a character trait back then? (I’m also a little dubious — though I’m admittedly not that up on the 2003 laws — that Alex and Laura could have gotten legally married in 2003 in Michigan, or most places.) But, wait, if you thought that was bad, Alex ends up murdering at least two more people in his new town of Tall Pines over the course of the eight episodes and we’re just supposed to be cool with it. I mean, who hasn’t committed a few homicides in their downtime — only one of which he actively works to cover up. It’s a weird choice. But definitely not the weirdest.

But, yeah, there’s something weird going on in this town. It seemingly takes Alex — who, mind you, is supposed to be a police detective of some sort — almost the whole series to realize that there are no children in this town. No pregnant people other than his wife. And that the odd school up on the hill, Tall Pines Academy, is way more prison than it is a boarding school. A school, mind you, that his wife attended. Which he also doesn’t seem to know about? Honestly, Alex is a terrible cop. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or not, but he is truly bad at his job. Anyhow, leading Tall Pines Academy is this guru lady, Evelyn Wade (Collette), who seems like a direct rip of the Nicole Kidman character from Nine Perfect Strangers. Ostensibly a new age healer type, whose methods may be strange, but are effective and have a cult-like following. And maybe even a little magic — or perhaps it’s just a matter of drugs? It’s a bit unclear. Anyhow, this woman somehow holds the entire town in her thrall. I think it’s perhaps because everyone in the town is a graduate of the school, so they’ve been brainwashed in some way that is still unclear to me. I did admittedly let the whole age math distract me, as each person in the town who supposedly went to the school under Collette came on screen. But, I figured out that someone being a mere nine years older than another person doesn’t necessarily preclude them from being their teacher. After all, people don’t start school at one (making the teacher ten). And most of these kids we meet seem to be high school aged, so I let it go. They’re 15 and she was 24, for instance. Fair enough.

But that’s where things stop making sense. We follow two high school friends from Canada who are sent to this school because of one rebelling after the death of a sibling and the other because… she has a dragon mother? They’re best friends, but the nice Asian girl, Abbie’s (Sydney Topliffe), mom thinks the other is a bad influence (she kind of is) and wants to separate her daughter from the duo. Her solution is to send her daughter to this bizarre prison school in the US, mainly because she doesn’t like the way she dresses and she’s slightly rebellious. Okay… But when her friend, Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), somehow works her way all the way to Vermont to break her friend out, she ends up also going to the school. A school that her mother could never afford, but the show just kind of yada-yadas that fact. They also don’t seem to care that the whole reason Abbie ended up here in the first place was to get her away from Leila. Yet her parents are like, meh, Abbie can stay there — where the bad influence currently resides — and not either transfer to a different school or come home now that the bad influence is safely locked up hundreds of miles away in the US. Plot hole. But, hey, we have to get those troublemakers back together somehow! So, while the ladies talk about how they’re going to escape, Alex is busy killing people and looking into the repeated disappearances of students from the academy. While his wife mysteriously sleep walks and generally acts like a dumb cultist zombie. There’s also an awkward and unnecessary sex scene at one point between Alex and Laura that feels completely gratuitous if it weren’t so head-spinningly confusing. I know, my straight cisgenderdness is showing, but between the pregnancy prosthetic and my dim understanding of how things work outside of my own experience — and my general distain for graphic sex scenes in TV shows anyway — I could have done without it. Seriously.

Anyway, I’m going to basically stop now. Other than to say, the girls’ relationship waxes and wanes in a pretty unnatural way, the town turns out to be about as creepy as you’d expect (though, not to like any kind of Stephen King level) and Collette’s character’s regression therapy, or whatever it is, involves some “there’s a door in your mother’s mouth” stuff that is complete and utter nonsense. And, look, I appreciate Martin’s attempt here. They went for it. I mean, they basically cobbled together several existing stories and character tropes and made a TV series out of it, but, hey, at least the final product could theoretically be called original. There were times when I wondered if perhaps I’d been suckered into a YA thing, what with the teen relationships at the school so front and center, but I think that was just an unintended consequence of the main mystery being so flat. There was something in the delivery of this thing — and perhaps it was the generally unlikable primary character, the wayward juvenile home and the recent-past period nature of it — that reminded me of Under the Bridge. That one felt like a bait and switch as well. Whatever the case, I imagine this will get buried in the Netflix algorithm and maybe only resurface if Martin makes another series that hopefully leans more humorous or true to life. For now, though, this will go down as a miss. And on we go.