<\/p>\n
It just so happens that, concurrent to my watching all eight episodes of Netflix<\/a>\u2018s new miniseries, \u201cWayward,\u201d twice \u2014 back to back, and with obsessive interest \u2014 I\u2019ve been reading Melissa Broder<\/a>\u2019s 2018 novel, \u201cThe Pisces<\/a>,\u201d about a lady finding herself in love with a man who is half fish. Perfect, in that, halfway through my first watch of \u201cWayward,\u201d I stopped to question if the troubled youths being held in the therapeutic school where much of the show\u2019s action takes place were being turned into frogs.<\/p>\n In the thriller series, created by and starring Mae Martin in the role of Alex Dempsey, a trans man who relocates to seemingly idyllic Tall Pines, Vermont, with his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), after a teased-out bad run of things in Detroit, the croak of toads is as much of a soundtrack as the mix of stoner classics from the \u201960s and \u201970s, comingled with peak aughts hits<\/a> to align with the show\u2019s 2003 setting.<\/p>\n Toads are simply everywhere. Underfoot at every turn. They\u2019re even the town\u2019s mascot, and eagle-eyed viewers can spot imagery of them in almost every episode. All of which led me to incorrectly presume that the parents of the wayward teens being therapised in the mysterious town \u2014 home to no local children \u2014 willingly signed them over to Tall Pines Academy to be turned into amphibians because a sentient toad child would be easier to manage than one who does drugs, gets bad grades, or has sex in cars parked on Suburban residential streets. But even though this is an anything-goes type of show, the themes of it \u2014 control, manipulation, transformation \u2014 felt deeper than something that would go to a place of rananthrope, until you factor in the common role that frogs take on in fairy tales: Slimy, warty things, living in wet darkness and good for nothing but eating flies and peeing on people\u2019s hands until they\u2019re kissed and turn into a prince, ready and capable to be a protector, plucked from the muck and made anew.<\/p>\n Tadpoles become toads, and, in tales such as this one, metaphorical toads can be \u2014 whether through will, chance, or wishes \u2014 transformed into something else. But what if the previous and the thing to follow are both better off left in the bucket? What if being yourself is no good, if you\u2019re broken inside? And being forced into something else \u2014 either by your own doing, or by a woo-woo cultish trike-rider like Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette<\/a>), head of Tall Pines Academy, is even worse?<\/p>\n