Reviewed by Alicia Glass 

A picturesque Vermont town holds sinister secrets, including a hidden institution for the troubled teen industry. 

In order to fully appreciate what is now being called the ‘troubled teen industry’, we have to dig into the abusive anti-drug cult-like practices of Synanon from as early as the 1960’s, from which it is said many of the modern-day TTI practices stem. “At-risk” youth, troubled teens, and orphaned kids are abducted via a method called “gooning”, which is exactly what it sounds like, taken to a private usually middle-of-nowhere-wilderness location and subject to all manner of abusive practices, in theory to set these wayward kids straight. In many cases, that meant literally, as ‘conversion therapy’ camps and TTI practices often shared the same space and ideals. Make sure your weed is well-hidden, and let’s dive into this! 

So Laura Redman (Sarah Gadon) and Alex Dempsey (Mae Martin) are clearly a committed couple, clearly in love, and Laura is clearly pregnant, as they both make the decision to move back to Laura’s oddly-remembered home town of Tall Pines. Alex is also clearly AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth), but is now very much a He/Him, a new Deputy with the towns police force, and determined to try and make his new life here in Tall Pines with his wife work. Their house was provided by the towns effective leader, one Evelyn Wade (Toni Colette), who happens to run the rehab facility for troubled teenagers, Tall Pines Academy, that is the towns nucleus. Though Evelyn is described to Alex as “a lot’, Dempsey really has no idea just how much of a lot she is until Evelyn is in his new home, interrogating Laura in the most disturbing way. And that’s just episode one. 

Meet Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) and Abbie (Sydney Topliffe), Canadian best friends who happen to be the kind of troubled teens Tall Pines is infamous for “helping” – Leila lost her beloved sister to drugs and a bad accident and since then has spiraled into drugs herself, along with a considerably older boyfriend, and Abbie endures pressure from her parents to be perfect like her own older sister, when all she generally wants to do is pal around with Leila. The two of them are practically glued at the hip but without any real traces of lesbian attraction, just bestest friends who share a love of Pierce Brosnan movies and older musicians like Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd. Even after being secretly told that Leila is going to be sent off to Tall Pines for rehabilitation, Abbie’s parents take the upper hand and Abbie gets gooned in the middle of the night off to Tall Pines Academy herself. And nothing would do but for Leila, armed with little more than determination and some babysitting money Abbie’s older guilt-ridden sister gave her, to come trekking to Tall Pines to save Abbie! 

The townsfolk of Tall Pines, whether its the ordinary citizens who attend the farmers market or the cops who patrol for teenagers escaping from the institution rather than real crimes, are all insular and odd. And while helping his wife attend the farmers market and set up her stall there, Alex happens to notice something very odd and relevant – Tall Pines appears to have no children whatsoever. The closest the town comes is the teenage graduates from Tall Pines Academy who get farmed back out to the townsfolk in a kind of adoption situation, but even that is strange and fanaticized. There are no children under 12, no babies, no younglings at all, and the way old friends of Lauras act when they meet her again and croon about her advancing pregnancy is creeptastic. 

Then there’s the poor kid Riley (Gage Munroe), who actually managed to escape Tall Pines Academy and make it to town, only to be hunted down like, well, an escaped prisoner, ultimately holing up in, you guessed it, Alex’s new house. And after a terrible confrontation that leaves Riley dead and Alex owing coverup silence to Evelyn and her control of the Tall Pines cops, Alex begins to realize how entrenched the goings-on of Tall Pines Academy is with the town of Tall Pines. A string of kid deaths already been covered up, a history of conspiracy theories and Evelyn’s own erased past later, and Alex is watching his wife slip away further into the mad past of her own Tall Pines history! 

Meanwhile, Abbie wakes to find herself in structured teenage hell, a place called an Academy but really it should be known as an Institution, full of strange rules and odd regulations, punishments for infractions both real and imagined, and scenes of psychological torture very thinly disguised as “therapy”. Evelyn is the warden, or headmistress; her guards are adult Tall Pines Academy graduates who now use various animal names gladly given to them by Evelyn instead of their original names, like the favorite Rabbit (Tattiawna Jones); and of course there’s a series of levels for the kids to aspire to, within the sinister society that encourages them to constantly narc on each-other like the psycho Stacey (Isolde Ardies). 

No-one is surprised that the only thing Leila managed to do when she popped up out of nowhere and tried to spirit Abbie away from the Academy, was get herself caught and tossed in with the others in institutional scrubs too. What does turn out to be mildly surprising, however, is the real leadership skills Leila evinces, convincing others to revolt against the system again and again. Even in one doomed but amusingly rebellious turnabout where a whole bunch of the adult guards get “butt-shots” with their own tranqs and the kids end up barricading themselves inside the place, that was brought about through Leila’s influence. And rather than being incensed by it, Evelyn decides she wants to give Leila the highest tier of therapy, the foreboding thing known as a Leap that poor Riley was subject to, and train Leila to take her place among the adult guards of the Academy, perhaps someday as a direct assistant to Evelyn herself. 

It all comes to a head, no pun intended, when Laura begins having contractions some three weeks early, Evelyn decided the busybody-cop Alex needed some brain adjusting elsewhere, and the kids at the Academy, or at least Abbie and Leila and Rory (John Daniel), have finally concocted a clever way to make their escape, already. Will Evelyn maintain her toad-stained grip on Tall Pines, or will she be dethroned by – a newborn? A new mother who’s been plotting her overthrow, aided by bitter childless others, for a while now? How about a cop who just wants to keep his family safe? 

The show is created by comedian Mae Martin (they/them), based on their and their friends’ own youth experiences with the Troubled Teen Industry. At least some of the shows darker aspects, like the uses of toad venom and the corruption of an entire town, are added for dramatic effect. But the Game-like group therapy, the prison atmosphere and near-constant torture of these at-risk teenagers under the thin veil of rehabilitation back into normal society, is pathetically real, and in shadowy hidden places goes on, to this very day. 

Run for the fenceline to escape, and watch Wayward, on Netflix now!