Appointment Viewing: The shows you’ll always want to pencil in on your calendar and unpack in your group chat.
Scrolling through 12 streaming platforms but still can’t find something to watch? You’re not alone. Our television columnist Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, watches over 160 seasons of television each year, and he is here for you. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a hidden gem that’s sitting undiscovered on a streamer or a series with mysteries so tantalizing we can’t stop thinking about them. It’s all about carving out time for the shows that are actually worth it — your “Appointment Viewing.” Fire up that group chat, because we’ve got some unpacking to do.
We started spooky season early with FX’s Alien: Earth last month, but there has been so much great television to indulge in this year: from Lena Dunham’s Too Much to the Emmy-nominated FX miniseries Dying for Sex. Spooky season continues in September with Wayward, Netflix’s latest thriller about the for-profit troubled-teen industry created by and starring Mae Martin.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting impatiently for Mae Martin’s television follow-up to their excellent autobiographical dramedy, Feel Good. They’ve been touring and making other appearances (remember The Flight Attendant?), but Wayward is their grand return to Netflix. It’s an idea they’ve been percolating on for years: Like Feel Good it is also somewhat biographical, but this time it’s a thriller inspired by Martin’s childhood friend who was sent away to a correctional facility for troubled teens — only to return years later with wild tales of undergoing experimental therapies. Wayward dramatizes that experience for a captivating, atmospheric series with strong performances across the board.
Here, Martin plays Alex, a police officer who moves to the small town of Tall Pines with his very pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), for a fresh start. As soon as they arrive, something seems off, and it’s not just the toads who croak melodically through the night by their home. The house itself and its creepy basement are the first major red flag, but during his first shift in the new town, Alex stumbles upon a runaway kid pointing to something truly nefarious going on. The teen has attempted to escape Tall Pines Academy, the town’s “school” for troubled youth, run by Evelyn (Toni Collette), a kooky, unsettling woman who seems to have the whole town wrapped around her finger, including the police force.
Meanwhile, we get to know two Toronto teens, Abby (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind). They spend their days skipping class, smoking pot, and dreaming of running away to Vancouver. Unfortunately, their parents don’t see the vision, and the two best friends end up at Tall Pines Academy, right around the time Alex and Laura move to town.
I watched the first two episodes of Wayward at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere as part of its Primetime programming slate. At the post-screening Q&A, Martin said their research led them to discover the teen-rehabilitation industry is rooted in self-help cults of the 1970s, forming the foundation of Wayward’s backstory. “There’s a lot of unregulated practices, and it’s not very transparent,” they said. “It seemed like great fodder for a thriller.” And a thriller it definitely is — although a few of Martin’s line readings, in their classic deadpan comedic style, led to some laughs in the audience, Wayward is very much a spooky mystery. As the season unravels, there is plenty of great horror imagery — seeing a toad being pummeled in a garburator stuck with me, but how the teens are treated (and treat each other) at the school is unsettling on its own.
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The actual plot mechanics won’t be a total shock to anyone familiar with this genre, and there are some twists you might see coming, but the performances hold it all together — the teens in particular. As Abby and Leila become familiar with how extreme the therapeutic techniques are at Tall Pines Academy, their demeanor shifts from funny misadventure we’ll laugh about later to survival mode, and the two girls have great chemistry onscreen as they navigate the school’s strict dynamics (the actresses have remained close friends IRL and admitted as much during the TIFF Q&A). Collette continues to refuse to turn in a bad performance as Evelyn, who is every bit as offbeat and fun (she pedals a tricycle around town) as she is menacing.
The troubled-teen industry is a billion-dollar industry, as we’ve seen explored before in Paris Hilton’s documentary from 2023, and there are few solid representations of it on television. That said, the forced removal of teens from their homes feels intertwined with other histories, like Indigenous residential schools. There are many captivating depictions of this dark history on television from Taylor Sheridan’s 1923 to the CBC miniseries Little Bird. It also brings to mind Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, where young women pregnant out of wedlock would be incarcerated, depicted in the Showtime series The Woman in the Wall. The thread connecting these distinct histories to Wayward is our culture’s low tolerance for behavior outside the status quo; ways of behaving established by Catholic and colonial ideals. Abby and Leila are “troubled teens,” but the conditions of their lives (i.e., the school system and rigid parenting) don’t allow them to thrive — Abby is dyslexic and struggles to connect with her schoolwork (a disproportionate amount of incarcerated folks are dyslexic), and Leila grapples with the trauma of losing her sister. Wayward is as much a fun thriller as it is a gentle reminder of how much of our societal ideals are predicated on suppression and pathologization, and how much of our teen selves get splintered away when we emerge from that tender time into adulthood.
Stray Observations:
- Laura’s revelations midseason are something of a turning point for the series, and the season’s momentum really builds when she and Alex are on the same page. Gadon is great here, but I’ll never forget her Emmy snub for Alias Grace, the memorable miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book (she won a Canadian Screen Award, at least).
- For the duration of filming, Martin and Collette lived six houses down from each other in the Trinity-Bellwoods neighborhood of Toronto.
- Needle-drop alert: There are a ton of great Canadian bands used in the soundtrack here, but it was particularly impressive to hear some Pink Floyd. Martin handwrote a letter to both (estranged) members to get the rights.
- Evelyn’s domesticated toad is named Timothy. Stay away from the garburator, Timothy!
- TIFF also premiered Netflix’s Black Rabbit and FX’s The Lowdown, both out this month.
All eight episodes of Wayward begin streaming on Netflix on Thursday, September 25.
