To my surprise I found it compelling. The characters interested me despite the inherent silliness of the plot. It did a good job of tricking me about story developments that I should have seen coming. The acting is first rate.
It’s weird that I somehow feel I shouldn’t have liked The Wilds. But there it is. I did. How about you?
I’m planning to watch the final two episodes tonight, and a lot will depend on how well they stick the landing. But overall, I’m inclined to agree (so far)—this has been more compelling than I thought it would be, and many of the hokey parts turned out to ultimately serve a purpose. For one example (spoilers just in case):
In the first episode, in the introduction of Leah, a point is made of how hellish modern teenage life is. Now, one could easily get the impression that this is a point the show wants to make: forget survival in the wilds, the real hell is high school. This coming from a teenager from one of the wealthiest societies to ever exist—earned a lot of eye rolls from me, and I was actually debating whether to continue. But then, in the course of this show, it becomes clear that this was actually setting up the character of Leah, not making any point about modern life, and her particular, somewhat warped, view of the world.
And I think this is the strongest point of the show—the characters are, all in all, pretty overdrawn, but the show still makes them relatable, and does a good job at showing the tensions (and their occasional relief) emerging from their interactions—and in particular, how this foils the simplistic theories of the head psychologist (although as I said, the final verdict is still outstanding on that part; they could still blow it there).
I like it that the head psychologist might very well be an extremely unreliable narrator when all’s said and done–and there’s plenty of evidence of that in the very nature of the entire enterprise itself. I mean really, who’s underwriting this enterprise, the Mengele Foundation?
I hope that the conspiracy is already laid out; that it will not be made up as the seasons go along. So far I think the play has been fair to the viewer, but the solution should be able to be guessed by at least some in a savvy audience. The plot also needs to be fair to the first rate acting we have seen so far from the cast. It would be a shame if the story gets too “wheels within wheels” and simply strings along a group of characters that we care about and invest in.
For some reason, I was under the impression that we’d get at least some closure by the end of the first season, don’t know why. So I guess I’ll have to wait and see—which I’m fine with, the series was definitely good enough to warrant sticking with. I agree that hopefully, this is something that has been fully planned out in advance—but surely, the showrunners must have the specter of Lost hanging over their heads with a crashed-on-an-island mystery…
I’m not quite sure, however, how Leah was so comparatively calm in the first episode, where she was interviewed. After all, she must’ve pretty much known at that point that it’s not a scenario where they just crashed on an island and got rescued, what with being lured into the trap by Nora… Also, how did they justify keeping them from calling their parents? I get the quarantine thing, but viruses usually don’t jump phone lines…
I haven’t seen it yet, mostly because I saw a message at least half a dozen times that the first episode is available free on Prime. I’ve never seen that with any other Amazon show and decided that it must mean you have to pay for the other episodes, because why specify the first episode is free otherwise. Is that true?
My wife and I watched it free on Prime. So, not unless there’s something weird going on.
Anyhow, we liked it but didn’t love it. The best part was the characters and acting. They all seemed like distinct, complete, real people.
I also thought they handled the various “twists” very well, in that they didn’t really seem to think they were fooling us, so they didn’t have big over-the-top reveals, for the most part. We can’t have been the only ones to guess the crash was faked about 10 minutes into the first episode. The point of the show wasn’t OMG-huge twists.
What dragged it down was a few things:
-bad pacing… probably could have cut two or so episodes out
-inconsistency about whether the characters would actually act sensibly. Sometimes they did… actually all talking to each other and pooling their resources, etc. Sometimes, not
-everything was a bit over the top, a big hyper-exaggerated. And not (at least to me) in a “we’re all stressed out on a desert island so we’re going to snap” way but in a “hey, look at our personality conflicts!” kind of way.
It is an interesting question as to who is at the bottom of this whole thing and what the goals are. Evil scientists or governments still must have a purpose. At one point we learn
There is some rich woman funding some of the project, but little legitimate reasoning is given for her patronage.
And I assume all the girls are chosen because they all have difficult backgrounds. But were even some of those background difficulties caused or enhanced by the villainous scientists? Wheels within wheels.
I just finished the season. I didn’t love it, but I can’t deny that I want to see more.
I disagree about the acting praise I see in this thread. Particularly unwatchable, for me, is the character of Nora. Her mannerisms and style of speech seem so forced that the character becomes a distraction for me. You’re not supposed to “see” someone acting, and that’s the overwhelming response I have with her.
My other gripe is the F-bomb oversaturation. It also seems real forced, and distracts. An occasional, well-placed “fuck” is super effective. Using it as your default adjective/adverb from virtually every single character is tiresome and a sign of lazy writing.
I can’t help but compare Season 1 with the first season of “Lost”. Maybe that is not fair, but, to me, it’s a pretty stark contrast in the levels of acting and writing on display between the two shows.
mmm
I might be wrong, but wasn’t the purpose explicitly stated?
The scientist wanted to show that an all-female society would naturally work better than a male-dominated one—she wanted to establish ‘gynotopia’. Hence, the control group of all men, which she expected to fail—the twilight of Adam as opposed to the dawn of Eve. Or was there more to it I didn’t catch?