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annavereLook at me, binge watching a whole season of television. I watched the second half of this in two days and now I feel like I took a hit of hard drugs.
Preamble time!
In previous need of a Teen Wolf icon, I set forth to find a season one image that could encapsulate how freakish this show is and instantly hit a snag, because all the crazy stuff tended to happen at night, in atrocious lighting. For instance, I love that the first scene in the show is Scott greeting an upside down Stiles. It's a perfect welcome to the show, but it makes a terrible icon even by my standards.
Then I found a screenshot of the bizarre fashion advice scene I ranted about, and it was perfect, not least for having the word "style" on the wall above their heads - because that word is what keeps this show afloat. Sort of an odd remnant of the first season, I thought, given Peter Hale was only in four episodes - but whatever, Allison's a main character, and I like her more every episode. So I get that uploaded, start season two, letting the good times roll and next thing I know Lydia is being haunted by the occasionally unsightly ghost of Peter Hale. My icon might actually be more accurate to the show than I thought if he's gonna remain a reliable fixture.
He is still creeping on whoever's in range. Mostly Lydia. The plot still goes completely off the rails whenever he's around, by which I must conclude that he is the true muse of this show. Sadly, given my atrocious taste in men, I still find him most attractive, with Chris Argent comfortably ensconced in second place. I need help.
Replacing last season's other psycho hottie, we get Psycho Gramps, who proceeds to outpsycho them all. Played by my favorite hippie scientist on 12 Monkeys, Michael Hogan. Gramps keeps the Argent family focus intact even if we tragically lost Aunt Kate, along with all but the most offhand references to her having ever existed. Chris ends up accusing Gramps of twisting Allison "like he did to Kate" and it really explains a lot about Kate's insanity if she was raised by that monster. It explains Chris and his desperate need for rules a bit as well. Backstory, please.
Meanwhile, there's some Alpha pack-building instinct that makes them all bite-happy, because Derek's main plot this season is doing the same thing as his uncle, if a little more democratically. He's way more successful at recruiting for the lifestyle, biting four kids in as many episodes, while Peter only netted two in a whole season (too busy killing people, don't ya know). Derek cruises for victims among disenfranchised teenagers, in a blatant metaphor for hoodlum gangs. Good boy Scott crusades against him and they do battle in the ice rink to demonstrate who's coolest. The newborn wolfies feel on top of the world, and strut around school in leather jackets, tagging lockers with their werewolf claws. Unlike the rest of these guys, they clearly know they're in an MTV show and can practically hear the montage music. Isaac gets enough development I could care about his later choices in life. Erica and Boyd had a lot of promise as introduced, but never went anywhere.
Derek has now stepped up his game, and treats himself like the Alpha he is. No more squatting in the burned out Hale mansion, no. He's moved into the filthiest, grimiest, abandoned inner city subway station imaginable, which looks like a filming set for grunge music videos. I wonder why...
This season is stuffed with new villains and new players, and it gets a little too busy. I wanted a lot more interpersonal stuff. This show does families really well. When I think of what scenes struck me emotionally, and forced me to stop laughing, it's scenes like Stiles and his father, or Melissa witnessing her son wolfing out, or (especially) Allison finding out her mother is dead. This stupid show has enough heart to occasionally break mine. I love it and want more of what we have. No more new players, just deal with and deepen the current groups, please. No? Not gonna happen?
The Kanima and its controller made for a good mystery. I could have used more Allison, considering how much she was going through. That goes for her father as well. It was great to see Bianca Lawson, and I liked the expanded role of Seth Gilliam's veterinarian. Gramps had a disappointing master plan, because the revenge thing really was all he needed to be scary as hell. I still like all the core characters, within... limits. Only the Lydia plotline really bothered me, and it was primarily responsible for me barrelling through this thing, desperate for her situation to be resolved.
Lydia getting sidelined by her entire friend group really got under my skin in a bad way. She's left completely outside of the loop on the supernatural stuff everyone else knows about, and it's just awful. Allison making it all about her feelings for Scott when Lydia tries to demand an explanation - screw you, Allison (and I like Allison, I like all these characters, but seriously, Lydia should bitchslap every single one of them). She shows up and gets the brush off. Tries to talk, nobody listens. Everyone can tell something is very wrong, but they never try to solve that mystery. They leap to wrong conclusions, they try to protect her, but it never occurs to any of them that maybe telling her the truth would make that task easier. She spends three quarters of this season being mindraped constantly, and gets no help, but when they need an archaic Latin bestiary translated, she holds out her hand. Instead of getting an explanation and induction into the team, she's lied to some more. She is officially too good for these people.
This frustration is compounded by the lack of follow up and an overpowering sense of deja vu. So in season one, episode nine, there was a shock reveal of Peter Hale, and a huge cliffhanger which the tenth episode leapfrogged right over without any explanation. In episode nine of season two, they do the exact same thing (seriously). Shock, horror, he's risen from the dead! He's naked and filthy and sporting the most punchable smirk I have ever had the misfortune to see on a human face, and Derek's drugged and Lydia's alone with her now real abuser - and the writers didn't think any of that was worth another look. Next episode, Derek regains consciousness, Peter and Lydia are gone, I'm freaking out, Derek's a little worried about what terrible thing Peter might be planning, but doesn't even ask where Lydia went because he doesn't care about her. She never appears in the entire episode and nobody notices she's absent (granted, a lot of crazy stuff is happening, but she isn't even referenced). When she does return, after a time skip, nobody seems to be aware of what happened to her or what it led her to do, and she's not talking about any of it. The poor girl gets no closure whatsoever.
I went looking for fic, and filtered for results (one has to, in a gargantuan fandom) and found next to nothing. Some vignettes. Some excuses for kinks I don't want to read. Nothing dealing with the unrelenting horror movie she's stuck in during season two or how that affects her. I've gotten used to being mildly perplexed by preferred fandom topics and characters, but this went way beyond that. I never do this for a show I haven't even finished, but so help me, I am breaking my rules and writing a fic. It's all disturbing hallucinations and gaps in the narrative, and I have no idea if it will be worth posting when I'm done, but it jumped my entire queue of WIPs because I could not leave this topic alone.
Preamble time!
In previous need of a Teen Wolf icon, I set forth to find a season one image that could encapsulate how freakish this show is and instantly hit a snag, because all the crazy stuff tended to happen at night, in atrocious lighting. For instance, I love that the first scene in the show is Scott greeting an upside down Stiles. It's a perfect welcome to the show, but it makes a terrible icon even by my standards.
Then I found a screenshot of the bizarre fashion advice scene I ranted about, and it was perfect, not least for having the word "style" on the wall above their heads - because that word is what keeps this show afloat. Sort of an odd remnant of the first season, I thought, given Peter Hale was only in four episodes - but whatever, Allison's a main character, and I like her more every episode. So I get that uploaded, start season two, letting the good times roll and next thing I know Lydia is being haunted by the occasionally unsightly ghost of Peter Hale. My icon might actually be more accurate to the show than I thought if he's gonna remain a reliable fixture.
He is still creeping on whoever's in range. Mostly Lydia. The plot still goes completely off the rails whenever he's around, by which I must conclude that he is the true muse of this show. Sadly, given my atrocious taste in men, I still find him most attractive, with Chris Argent comfortably ensconced in second place. I need help.
Replacing last season's other psycho hottie, we get Psycho Gramps, who proceeds to outpsycho them all. Played by my favorite hippie scientist on 12 Monkeys, Michael Hogan. Gramps keeps the Argent family focus intact even if we tragically lost Aunt Kate, along with all but the most offhand references to her having ever existed. Chris ends up accusing Gramps of twisting Allison "like he did to Kate" and it really explains a lot about Kate's insanity if she was raised by that monster. It explains Chris and his desperate need for rules a bit as well. Backstory, please.
Meanwhile, there's some Alpha pack-building instinct that makes them all bite-happy, because Derek's main plot this season is doing the same thing as his uncle, if a little more democratically. He's way more successful at recruiting for the lifestyle, biting four kids in as many episodes, while Peter only netted two in a whole season (too busy killing people, don't ya know). Derek cruises for victims among disenfranchised teenagers, in a blatant metaphor for hoodlum gangs. Good boy Scott crusades against him and they do battle in the ice rink to demonstrate who's coolest. The newborn wolfies feel on top of the world, and strut around school in leather jackets, tagging lockers with their werewolf claws. Unlike the rest of these guys, they clearly know they're in an MTV show and can practically hear the montage music. Isaac gets enough development I could care about his later choices in life. Erica and Boyd had a lot of promise as introduced, but never went anywhere.
Derek has now stepped up his game, and treats himself like the Alpha he is. No more squatting in the burned out Hale mansion, no. He's moved into the filthiest, grimiest, abandoned inner city subway station imaginable, which looks like a filming set for grunge music videos. I wonder why...
This season is stuffed with new villains and new players, and it gets a little too busy. I wanted a lot more interpersonal stuff. This show does families really well. When I think of what scenes struck me emotionally, and forced me to stop laughing, it's scenes like Stiles and his father, or Melissa witnessing her son wolfing out, or (especially) Allison finding out her mother is dead. This stupid show has enough heart to occasionally break mine. I love it and want more of what we have. No more new players, just deal with and deepen the current groups, please. No? Not gonna happen?
The Kanima and its controller made for a good mystery. I could have used more Allison, considering how much she was going through. That goes for her father as well. It was great to see Bianca Lawson, and I liked the expanded role of Seth Gilliam's veterinarian. Gramps had a disappointing master plan, because the revenge thing really was all he needed to be scary as hell. I still like all the core characters, within... limits. Only the Lydia plotline really bothered me, and it was primarily responsible for me barrelling through this thing, desperate for her situation to be resolved.
Lydia getting sidelined by her entire friend group really got under my skin in a bad way. She's left completely outside of the loop on the supernatural stuff everyone else knows about, and it's just awful. Allison making it all about her feelings for Scott when Lydia tries to demand an explanation - screw you, Allison (and I like Allison, I like all these characters, but seriously, Lydia should bitchslap every single one of them). She shows up and gets the brush off. Tries to talk, nobody listens. Everyone can tell something is very wrong, but they never try to solve that mystery. They leap to wrong conclusions, they try to protect her, but it never occurs to any of them that maybe telling her the truth would make that task easier. She spends three quarters of this season being mindraped constantly, and gets no help, but when they need an archaic Latin bestiary translated, she holds out her hand. Instead of getting an explanation and induction into the team, she's lied to some more. She is officially too good for these people.
This frustration is compounded by the lack of follow up and an overpowering sense of deja vu. So in season one, episode nine, there was a shock reveal of Peter Hale, and a huge cliffhanger which the tenth episode leapfrogged right over without any explanation. In episode nine of season two, they do the exact same thing (seriously). Shock, horror, he's risen from the dead! He's naked and filthy and sporting the most punchable smirk I have ever had the misfortune to see on a human face, and Derek's drugged and Lydia's alone with her now real abuser - and the writers didn't think any of that was worth another look. Next episode, Derek regains consciousness, Peter and Lydia are gone, I'm freaking out, Derek's a little worried about what terrible thing Peter might be planning, but doesn't even ask where Lydia went because he doesn't care about her. She never appears in the entire episode and nobody notices she's absent (granted, a lot of crazy stuff is happening, but she isn't even referenced). When she does return, after a time skip, nobody seems to be aware of what happened to her or what it led her to do, and she's not talking about any of it. The poor girl gets no closure whatsoever.
I went looking for fic, and filtered for results (one has to, in a gargantuan fandom) and found next to nothing. Some vignettes. Some excuses for kinks I don't want to read. Nothing dealing with the unrelenting horror movie she's stuck in during season two or how that affects her. I've gotten used to being mildly perplexed by preferred fandom topics and characters, but this went way beyond that. I never do this for a show I haven't even finished, but so help me, I am breaking my rules and writing a fic. It's all disturbing hallucinations and gaps in the narrative, and I have no idea if it will be worth posting when I'm done, but it jumped my entire queue of WIPs because I could not leave this topic alone.
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Date: 2024-07-20 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-21 07:24 pm (UTC)