Random Teen Wolf Review

[unheard_secret]

 Reasons why Teen Wolf, Season 3, Episode 19, failed to capture me. An arbitrary list, filled with subjective views:

Short response: the plot basically consisted of Stiles turning Scott into a glorified battery with no reasonable explanation. Also: lack of Stiles. 

For the long response, see below:

 

Up until this point, Tenn Wolf has been getting it pretty much right in 3b. It was like the writers went away, got a lesson on how to use their characters, and came back to writing with a renewed vigor, and a phenomenally increased understanding of just what their cast could do. 

This started, of course, with the fact that the new season kicked off with Stiles. More Stiles is pretty much more of a good thing in this show. My mind immediately jumps to Dylan O'Brien's acting ability, but there's actually an even better reason why this is true and I think C.S. Lewis said it best when he said that we should write extraordinary stories about ordinary people. 

The essence of the show is based in a werewolf, and that's okay, but the person the viewer is going to empathise with? The person they are going to understand? That will be the utterly ordinary person caught up in it all and trying to make sense of it anyway.

So... this brings me to my main point. This episode didn't work for me because, if you are going to rip out the 'human' heart to the show; if you are going to cut into it and use it to tear your audiences feels to shreds; if you are going to take that heart and stomp on it... then you had bloody well make it as awesome as you can. 

And this episode? It wasn't awesome. It was middling to ok.

And the main reason for this was, in short, not enough Stiles. 

Of course, all of this is entirely subjective, but here are some reasons why I think more Stiles would have made for a better episode (all of which hopefully reach beyond 'just because.' I may think that Dylan O'Brien is a brilliant actor, but this is an ensemble cast, and I like it when the writers remember it is an ensemble... I just wish they hadn't remembered that during this episode.) In no particular order, the reasons are:

• Lack of build up to the grand reveal. By this point we know that Stiles is going through some particularly heavy and unpleasant shit. We just spent and entire episode in his head while he was being tortured by a creature that ultimately turned into him. In this episode we get zero development on this plotline. ZERO DEVELOPMENT. It's as though Stiles has just been tossed in the corner and told to wait until the evil dude is done with the body... The only problem with this is that I don't buy it. Stiles was obviously fighting back in the episode before. Why didn't we see him fighting in this episode as well?
• Stiles entirely random disappearance at the start of the episode was confusing, unnecessary, and led to some very out of character moments for everyone. In particular the Sheriff was seen at work holding a phone that said 'don't worry about me, i'm fine.' (Or something thereabouts). Are we supposed to believe that he took that at face value? Or that he didn't immediately drop everything and force everyone out searching? Why is he at his desk signing for boxes when he could be out looking for Stiles? 
• More problematic: Stiles random disappearance means that we have an entirely blank page when it comes to the development of his personal plot-line. This harks back to my first point. If we are meant to feel something about Stiles being overtaken by evil then we shouldn't spend an episode following everyone but him (or maybe, we could... but not one so crucial to his personal development!)
• Lack of Stiles also meant a lack of impact when you realised that he'd been possessed by evil all along. The hints were there, but they were slight, and they weren't complicated by any 'is he/isn't he', which would have raised the stakes. 
• It also meant that Stiles essentially did nothing for the entire episode. In the end this massively evil creature, plotting to gain vengeance on whoever it is he is plotting vengeance on, just spent an entire episode apparently using Sott as a battery so he could plug into him and drain him at the end...  In terms of evil plots, I have definitely seen better.
• As for the actual evil plots... they were just bemusing. Why did Stiles booby trap the cross country run? Why did he leave a shrapnel bomb on the bus? And how on earth did he set up Chris and Derek? (I have my doubts that this was actually Stiles... it would require him to be omniscient and extremely lucky. How else could he know about the Yakuza, and the lack of money? How else could he rely on Derek going directly to Chris instead of, I don't know... chucking the emitter out the window?)

So... all in all, good reasons for more Stiles.

Other things that left me glaring at the screen a little:

• The ten minutes I genuinely thought that Derek was Peter's perverted love child with his sister. (No, really. I thought it.)
• Why with the Isaac thing? What? Why?
• Kira -- I liked you! But why do I feel like 'Can hit Oni with pole' is going to be all the character development you get for awhile

Things that were done all right:

• Scott -- your trust in Stiles is dumb, but it's admirable. It's also in character.
• Lydia -- you keep getting better and better. Continue being cryptic, confused and charming.
• Derek -- you've learned how to use words! And you save Chris! You get all the gold stars.

And that is all.