*SPOILERS … AND A WHOLE LOT OF ABBIES INTENSITY GOING ON*
So we witnessed the first strike for Abbies equality this week when it was revealed, via a neat sequence at the end of the episode, that all the males of the species are controlled, drone-like, by the females who have way more going on than good old Megan Fisher (Hope Davis), hypnotherapist/world’s best researcher (not hard when there’s only a few hundred humans left) or anyone else for that matter has given them credit for.
Not so dumb after all then huh?
If you were paying attention, and sadly no one beyond Dr Theo Yedlin (Jason Patric), who took over as Megan’s boss after a deal with Kerry (Kacey Rohl), blinkered as they are by the supposition (an increasingly erroneous one really) that the Abbies are an evolutionary deadend and will be soon be gone anyway.
Clearly that’s not the case, and one glance at the unwaveringly intense eyes of the first ever female Abbie captured in Wayward Pines – rather too easily when you think about; make you wonder if she isn’t some sort of psychic Trojan Horse … oh of course she is – tells you all you need to know.
The female Abbie, nicknamed Margaret after Megan’s assistant’s (Nathan Witte) long dead ex-girlfriend, sat there rather docilely being poked and prodded by all and sundry, all the time studying her captors, taking it all in.
The interesting part of this whole narrative strand was the way it illustrated just how Pilcher’s acolytes such as Megan and Jason (Tom Stevens) haven’t actually taken the time to study and adapt to the actuality of their new surroundings.
Everything they come across such as the Abbies in general and the female in particular are interpreted through assumptions that were arrived at a long time ago and remain steadfastly unchanged after 2000 years.
Yes a guiding hand and continuity of belief are wonderful things but not if they so skew the way you react to a new set of circumstances that you miss the truth standing right in front of you.
The female Abbie is a sterling case in point.
She is quite clearly not what they suppose her to be – she is astute, intelligent, sentient, calculating and fully able to adapt to new situations and very much the brains behind the male-centric operation.
But how do the good people of Wayward Pines see her?
As an abnormality, a dumb irritant that with enough research and resources will be consigned to the evolutionary dustbin leaving humanity free to subjugate the planet all over again.
The truth? By ignoring who she really is, and sticking doggedly to their creaky suppositions, humanity faces the real danger than the Abbies could literally and figuratively sit up and bite them, leaving humanity as the ones on their way into the evolutionary abyss.
It’s a dangerous way to operate and one that could doom the Wayward Pines experiment if someone like, oh let’s see Dr Theo Yedlin doesn’t call them on it (and trust me, arrogant he might be but he’s the only truly critical mind operating in the town right now, save for Adam Hassler, played by Tim Griffin, who keeps warning everyone that there’s more to the Abbies than meets the eye).
While Megan, Jason and the others stick their heads ostrich-like in the sand, a few other secrets came crawling out of the collective human unconscious.
For instance, turns out that Rebecca Yedlin (Nimrat Kaur) was a major founding figure in Pilcher’s Army of the Deludedly Prepared but got cold feet when she realised the town she had designed was not a here-and-now endeavour but one that would be put an ice for 2000 years.
Makes sense she’d think that – it’d be the first reaction of any sane rational person, irrespective of whether Pilcher eventually turned out to be right when he obviously did.
The fact that she was woken suddenly and way ahead of Theo suggests that her reluctance to fully drink the apocalyptic Kool-Aid meant that a lot of her choices were taken from her such as you know being assigned to Xander as his wife.
Yup she was married to the “reformed” rebel, something that Theo understandably didn’t take too kindly to – back to the marriage counsellor then guys?
And in others news, turns out Theresa (Shannyn Sossamon) wants to stay out beyond the wall to be closer to Ben who is now very, very dead, and Frank Armstrong (Michael Garza), brother to Lucy (Emma Tremblay) might be gay which won’t go down well in “Reproduce! Reproduce!” Wayward Pines.
(Rather sweetly, Frank had no idea what being gay, initially assuming Dr Theo Yedlin meant he was really happy: when he realised that it meant same sex attracted, he was crestfallen largely because not reproducing essentially makes you surplus to requirements … did no one keep the IVF How to manual?)
Minor issues on one level but all speak to the central dilemma for the cabal in charge of Wayward Pines – what happens when things don’t go according to plan and the world refuses to march to Pilcher’s vision?
More flexible souls would change strategy and adapt before it’s all too late but you have to wonder if Wayward Pines is capable of doing that; my money is on no unless someone like Theo Yedlin, who performed a coup by taking over research on the Abbies from Megan, actually gets listened to in some meaningful fashion.
If he isn’t, then humanity and Pilcher’s grand vision is pretty much dead in the water; time will tell if that’s the case …
*So what lies in next week’s ep “City on a Hill”? Not a lot of good things really … the fun and games continue with humanity’s future on the line …