A few notes on tonight’s “Enemy Lines”:
* The first 2016 episode begins far from Wayward Pines as we meet Jason Patric’s doctor character. “Sometimes you wish you could just start over, right?” says a familiar stranger at the end of the resort’s bar.
* Start over the series does. Gone is season-one showrunner Chad Hodge and his writing staff. The new showrunner is Mark Friedman, creator of two recent, crappy and failed network series, ABC’s “The Forgotten” and NBC’s “Believe.”
* The writing seems much diminished in this year’s first two episodes, though I found the end of 2.2 compelling enough to want to seek out 2.3.
* This year’s “Wayward” opening credits have these names: Jason Patric. Nimrat Kaur. Josh Helman. Tom Stevens. Kacey Rohl. With Hope Davis and Djimon Hounsou.
* Shannyn Sossamon, who played the wife of last season’s Matt Dillon treasury agent character, doesn’t turn up until the second hour. Charlie Tahan, who played young Ben Burke (son of the Dillon character), is assigned “guest star” status, as is Carla Gugino and Siobhan Fallon.
* In the last two episodes of 2015 Stevens played Jason Higgins, leader of the Hitler Youth-ish First Generation. This year Higgins is the town’s leader and the series’ main villain.
* Nimrat Kaur is the Indian actress and former model who proved memorable as the evil (if super-foxy) ISI agent Tasneem Qureshi who engineered Carrie Matheson’s med misadventure on “Homeland” during its fourth season.
* Australian Josh Helman plays tormentor or mutants William Stryker in the last “X-Men” movie and one coming out this week.
* Kacey Rohl played the troubled Abigail Hobbs in 13 episodes of “Hannibal.”
* Patric, Kaur, Helman and Rohl are all new to the series.
* M. Night Shyamalan, who directed 1.1, does not direct 2.1. Tonight’s episode is directed by David Petrarca from a teleplay by new showrunner Friedman. Petrarca, a newcomer to “Pines,” directed episodes of the Piven “Cupid,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Pasadena,” “Felicity,” “Everwood,” “Studio 60,” “Big Love,” “Hung,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Man in the High Castle” and “Jessica Jones.” He also directed installments of “Dawson’s Creek,” “Drop Dead Diva,” “Eli Stone,” “No Ordinary Family,” “Pan Am,” “True Blood,” “Nashville,” “Smash,” “Magic City,” “Gracepoint,” “Powers” and “Marco Polo.”
* There are many flashbacks.
Fox says of tonight’s “Enemy Lines”:
“The 10-episode psychological thriller picks up after the shocking events of the Season One finale, with the residents of Wayward Pines battling against the iron-fisted rule of the First Generation. Dr. Theo Yedlin (Jason Patric) – a new resident of Wayward Pines – awakens from suspended animation and finds himself in the middle of this rebellion, as he tries to understand what Wayward Pines really is and help preserve the endangered human race.”
9 p.m. Wednesday. Fox.
