On 'Wayward Pines,' Hormones are Explosive

When Noah built his ark, he brought two of each animal to keep the species going. But he didn’t have creepy lectures about it.

This week on Wayward Pines, sex (or just some heavy making out) leads to some dire consequences in a moderately enjoyable episode. Pro-abstinence educators would have a field day with this episode too, so no one tell them about this show.

Ethan investigates a resistance against Wayward Pines while his son is investigating Amy’s skirt. Finding a bomb planted in his truck, Ethan traces it to a shopkeeper with a background in explosives thanks to the power of Wayward’s incredibly comprehensive files. He eventually comes to Harold Ballinger, Kate’s “husband.” Their romance is now looking like it was a cover for the two of them to conspire. At their “annual fertility meeting” with Nurse Pam, they just skirt the question why they haven’t bumped uglies and made a baby yet. There might be a genuine attraction between Kate and Harold, evidenced by a flashback with Kate looking longingly, but romance is superseded with the desire for truth and freedom. A truly sexless marriage.

But sex looms over Wayward Pines this week. Now that we know Wayward Pines is a new Noah’s Ark, it’s time for these First Generation-ers to get busy. Not immediately, thank God, but sex is introduced in the most unsettling, wonderfully liberal biology course possibly ever on television. I’m all for real sex education in schools, but Principal Fisher (side note, is she the only teacher in that whole school?) cannot teach without being gross and awkward. And she’s not even lurid, but making Ben and Amy — an obvious foreshadowing of what’s to come, no pun intended — just stand there and basically saying “Yeah, y’all gonna have to do it soon” makes for gross viewing. But it’s provocative in a weirdly appropriate way.

Since learning of the truth last week, Ethan’s allegiance is now in question. He knows it’s the year 4028, and he’s so loose lips about it: he immediately tells Theresa, who suspects he’s been brainwashed before finally just kinda accepting it. Then he has no problem telling Kate, who also just kind of buys it but proceeds with her plot to destroy the wall anyway.

Of course, these two freight trains collide when Theresa’s plans criss-cross with Amy’s to get Ben up in a remote area to do what Bryan Adams wrote about in “Summer of ‘69.” The music box bomb assembled at the end of last week by the Ballingers is carried in a truck that Amy and Ben stowaway on. Because of course she’s nosy, Amy finds it and lets the music box score her and Ben scoring. And since the thing is a damn bomb, things get explosive, and not in their pants.

If these kids just had Apple Music, none of this would have happened.

But it was pretty thrilling, I did find myself in suspense even though I knew it had to happen. The music score was expertly done, and underscored with true first love. Amy really does appear to love Ben, even though it’s been alluded she was “an assignment” by Principal Fisher, who again cannot have a conversation without being all kinds of unsettling. She is weirdly invasive with the business of these kids, but that must come with the territory of being a shepherd in a post-apocalyptic society. Still, she’s the reason why proper law needs to be put in place. Because ew.

Elsewhere, Theresa continues to investigate Plot 33, but there’s no time for that now. She discovers there’s some kind of structure underneath the empty lot, but she continues to be blocked by her boss who has turned the dial back on his borderline workplace harassment. He warns her with the sternness of a cautious acquaintance instead of some dude straight from Mad Men.

Next week is going to get ugly. Theresa is responsible for Ben, whose injuries are just “really, really bad” as opposed to dead. After Game of Thrones and True Detective this season, I’m not sure if I’m prepared for another major character’s death. But for being so close to a bomb, he and Amy got off really lucky, Amy looking like she just finished Tough Mudder. But Ben is in bad condition, if not dead, so who knows what could happen between former lovers Ben and Kate.

I guess the lesson of Wayward Pines is just don’t have sex. Or at least let the kids have an iPod.