Teen Wolf 3A

[annavere]

So, I have come to realize that this show is not really driven by character, theme, or even by such a simple thing as plot. The plot is collapsing into an ignominious heap (I think season one had the strongest actual storyline, despite the plot holes, and it's just getting more and more insane as the writers make stuff up). No, this show is purely driven by Cool Scenes. Every episode is a collection of Cool Scenes, with the remaining thirty minutes just the winding garden path to get from Awesome to Badass (or Abs to Biceps, if that's more your thing).

Anyway, casual bullet point observations:

I'm not sure how many times this story can keep returning to "villain was wronged in the past and now commits mass murder to exact revenge before facing an ironic full circle death where it all began" before the well runs dry. This is the third time in as many seasons that's the template!

On the other hand, without that template, the villains tend to leave me cold. I was not impressed by Deucalion or his Alpha carnival, or his tendency to bloviate so hard he cracked his glasses. I did like the consistency with Peter that psychotic werewolves tend to become really monstrous when they transform, but as a character, I just found him less than compelling. What was his plan? What did he want? Then at the end, he was allowed to walk away with a "we'll be watching you" warning. Really, Scott? Will you really, as a high school student, be watching? Okay, then.

I much preferred Jennifer Blake and wanted way more from her.

The FBI finally showed up, but these three seasons are all taking place in less than a year, and all three seasons had strings of gruesome murder. The FBI are slow on the uptake. Beacon Hills is the murder capital of California.

Erica was kind of a discount Faith, but I think she had a world of potential for character growth and when she talked about her epilepsy and the cruelty she'd experienced, and her crush on Stiles, it was clear she had a lot to offer. What a shameful waste.

Boyd had the least development of the betas, but I liked him and again thought he could have gone places. Very underwhelming, although at least he got some scenes and stuff, unlike Erica "hey, can you reprise your role as a corpse? Oh, we'll give you a completely useless flashback, too. Thanks."

So help me, I liked Jackson, too, and he was finally ready to become a contributing member of the team and maybe move forward with his stunted character arc. Nope, gone. The cast took a hit here, is what I'm saying.

I'm glad Isaac survived, although his main use to the plot seems to be fragile homoeroticism and deadpan asides. Actually, that could be why I like him...

At least we got the amazing twist of Cora Hale - whose survival was never explained, whose first scenes with Brother Derek and Uncle Peter were skipped over, who got maybe two scenes talking about anything emotionally relevant to their shared past horrors, but I guess, yeah, I liked her. Or I liked the idea of her, anyway. She didn't really get to do much, except get into trouble and lie on her deathbed. Umm...

The writing continued to deteriorate. Derek spent two whole episodes presumed dead, Scott was suicidal from guilt and even Peter motivated enough to amble around town looking for him while bonding (?) with Cora, and everybody found out he was still alive BETWEEN EPISODES. Seriously. BETWEEN EPISODES. WTF.

Derek is cursed. Every woman he kisses dies, and it's a coin toss if they'll turn out to be evil before they go. Paige, Erica, Jennifer, Kate. Find a new theme, bros.

The Hale family are gloriously dysfunctional and always were. To casually fill a last-minute plot hole, it is revealed that wise family matriarch Talia Hale's response to Peter and Derek getting in trouble is to mindrape them both by forcibly removing specific memories. This explains so much about why the Hales are Like That.

'Visionary' was a masterpiece of an episode, even if it did center around fridging, because while at first I thought that was wholly unnecessary angst (Derek's family died in a fire! He didn't need a dead girlfriend to make him miserable!) by the end it was clear how thoroughly the death of his girlfriend led directly to the fire. Color me happy. A whole episode of interweaving flashbacks from two villainous, wildly unreliable narrators. It doesn't happen very often, but when Teen Wolf flexes ambition to go with its style, the result is catnip.

All of the supernatural adults on this show are hella untrustworthy and I love it. Only Sheriff and Mama McCall (neither of whom knew anything weird was going on until recently) are on the up and up. They would make a sweet couple. The rest? Chris Argent, Peter Hale, Deaton and Morell? To say nothing of Game of Thrones reject Gerard Argent and Jennifer Blake? They are each running the kids for their own gambits, whatever those might be. Hell, even Harris the chemistry teacher (whose death I mourn) knew more than he let on. Nefarious people. I don't trust any of them, but would adore fic about any and all. They each have so much potential and this whole post could just be me trying to figure out their motivations.

Derek mellowed out and became a very admirable person. Allison tried to make up for her past actions and move forward. Lydia continued to be relentlessly traumatized in ways that had me scribbling notes. Stiles saving Scott from a suicide attempt in the most reckless way possible has to be seen to be believed. There was a hell hotel episode where there was apparently nothing weird about the hotel, and it was all in Coach's whistle. There were the emissaries and the Nemeton and Worldbuilding Lore. There was Chris Argent handling firearms and Peter explaining every other villain's motives because he would know. There was Lydia saving the day and Allison bringing her dad around to fighting the good fight, and gah, I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

Teen Wolf is a show of potential. What it could be is so good, it creates this hopeless addiction spiral to the sexy trashfire it really is.

But hey, season 3B is up next, and according to basically universal consensus, that's where the show actually became genuinely good for a hot minute. We'll see.

Comments

[havocthecat]

I'm loving this writeup of the trainwreck of Teen Wolf.

Okay so like. Seriously. I kind of want to throw The Vampire Diaries, The Originals and Legacies at you, not to mention the non-vampire spinoff in the same universe, The Secret Circle, because they are just OTT bonkers in utterly similarly illogical ways and also I've seen more of them, and I take them not seriously *at all*, despite absolutely adoring them (two! two of my H2O: Just Add Water* gals made good on these shows! one in two separate roles!) so I mean, should you ever be into the idea, I am there for *all* these episodes.





*H2O: Just Add Water is this obscure-ish Australian mermaid YA show which ran three seasons, and which I adore, but it's really dumb and has morals of the stories and all that stuff I don't care about while I ship two of the leads in the cutest, most innocently teen girl-ish sort of way. There are two or three spinoff shows that I don't care about except for the two-parter where one of the OGs shows up so we can see what she's been doing since her series ended.

[annavere]

I am sadly tempted by the idea, especially with your colorful description - and pretty icon! ♥ ♥

[havocthecat]

I will warn you that it's a actually multiple generations of dumbassery, and the resultant productions of the trauma of that dumbassery (protagonists of show number four, darling trauma babies that they are, I love them) don't listen to their parents when they say "no, no, really, don't, been there, done that," and the main remnant character on show four is a raging alcoholic thanks to everything he's been through.

I love it so much. Also, in a surprising twist of fate, and thus proving that these are not 90s shows (and Julie Plec, the showrunner, may have many failures, but she does at least match what I like in some things, so I'll keep watching her shows), but at least some of my favorite characters made it through to the end. (So like. Women. A lot of women. And a couple of guys.)

Of course, many characters die painfully and in stupid ways, some of whom are even my favorites, and probably because they have better careers than to be on this show, but! But! NOT ALL.

Ah, the CW in its golden era. Before the bloodbath. We shall never see anything like it again.

[annavere]

Honestly, that sounds like so much fun.

What was the CW bloodbath?

[havocthecat]

They got bought out and their new owners canceled anything and everything that wasn't conservative American enough (or reality tv, or an actual sports production) which means, uh, their remaining fiction was mostly straight, and white, and very, very down-home, Midwestern American, usually rural (though speaking as a Midwesterner, that's a pile of assumptions about the Midwest right there). It was brutal.