Cade teaches two gangs of captured runaways that playing with guns and knives and clubs is bad. Then he frees them from the Gua so that they can be beaten and arrested.

Written by Chris Brancato and Albert J. Salke
Directed by Michael Robison

GUEST STARS

Tyron Leitso – Peter
Darcy Belsher – Henry
David Paetkau. – Ice
Sarah Lind – Dawn

WHAT HAPPENED

A psychiatrist interviews a young man named Gary Lanning. They talk about an amusement park named "Playland," and the people that Gary killed at a restaurant.

"I didn’t even know them," Gary said. It was the hunger pangs that made him do what he did.

A guard in the next room is eating a chicken leg. Gary begins twitching when he smells it.

The psychiatrist tries to confront Gary’s delusions, telling him that he didn’t grow up in an amusement park. Maddened by the smell of the chicken, Gary knocks the psychiatrist down and stabs him with a pen.

ANALYSIS

The only good thing that can be said about "Playland" is that it isn’t as gross or titillating as it might have been.

Even that is a little disappointing. A hot babe might have added a little excitement, and this episode is a snoozefest of good intentions and high moral purpose.

Writers Chris Brancato and Albert J. Salke may have wanted to open our eyes to the horrible plight of teenage runaways. Or maybe they wanted us to feel existential despair at the notion that for these kids the hell of Playland is preferable to the hell of the real world.

Whatever they were trying to do, it didn’t work.

The head of the bore god

"Playland" was probably inspired by the Lord of the Flies, but Brancato and Salke don’t seem to understand that what made this classic novel horrifying was its realism. All the basic elements are here – from conflicts over food to a geek with glasses and the worship of a talisman of power – but it’s impossible to sympathize with the kids.

They’re ciphers, so dehumanized and underdeveloped that their names are mentioned only in passing. They’re being crudely manipulated by the feeder, and have even been isolated in an alternate dimension.

The circumstances are so unreal that it’s impossible to believe in the kids’ descent to savagery.

In the end, we’ve sat through an hour of dull characters and weak plotting in the service of an unconvincing theme. If this is the socially conscious First Wave, then let’s go back to the usual formula of sex and cheap thrills.

REALITY CHECK

Electromagnetism and gravity are two of the fundamental – and fundamentally different – forces of the universe. How is an electromagnetic device supposed to alter Cade’s gravity, and why would that do anything but make Cade a little lighter on his feet?

Cade is being held on the track by two ropes, one attached to each wrist. He cuts one rope just before the roller coaster hits him and immediately jumps off the track. How did he get the second rope off?

Cade visits Boston to search for three missing women in "The Harvest".