'Teen Wolf' recap: Senioritis and steampunk doctors
Ah, Teen Wolf.
Sometimes you're so good and I can see a flicker of your potential as a supernatural horror show, but then you keep throwing Scott and Kira kissing in the rain at us and I remember you're an MTV show. Nothing against that, it's just that after the hot mess that was last season, I was hoping for you to kick it up a notch. Especially now all the adults are gone from the show (RIP shirtless title sequence Derek) and Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall have been reduced to hapless helpers to the supernatural Scooby Gang.
The two-episode premiere of Season 5 was honestly a hodgepodge of the best and worst parts of Teen Wolf. The newbies I still haven't warmed to (ugh Liam), but the steampunk doctors with gas masks are the best kind of creepy and have potential as this season's Big Bad. Let's go!
Episode 1: Creatures of the Night
http://teenwolf.tumblr.com/post/122771380076/tonight
Eichen House of Horrors
Lydia is being kept catatonic at Eichen House, the lunatic asylum which only seems to cause more suffering for our favorite supernaturals. There's some creepy sexual innuendo with one of the doctors and a needle (is this implying that he's sexually assaulted her?) until thankfully Lydia goes full Banshee and escapes from her room, screaming her head off and busting out some surprising martial arts moves against the orderlies. But she runs into hot twin guy Aiden, who tells her she's not ready to leave yet. The orderlies shock her (sigh, this is going to be another season of let's torture Lydia) and she falls to the ground, screaming that her friends are all dead.
It turns out, Lydia's in the future, after she and her friends have undergone a terrible year of pain, and can't remember what happened to her friends. We get grim visions of Scott, Stiles and Malia all in various states of peril, with Kira leaving sadly. Oh, and Aiden turns out to be a hallucination, and is actually another creepy doctor who is going to drill a hole in Lydia's head. Lovely.
Feeling blue
The rest of the episode doesn't have much of a central thread, except for Scott and Stiles having anxiety about the future beyond high school. It's emotionally resonant, but doesn't really tie in well with the rest of the episode, which features a freak electromagnetic storm and a blue inky werewolf guy with talon claws -- you know, your typical day in Beacon Hills.
After the episode checks in with all the characters and moves at the same glacial pace as the episode's traffic jam, we finally get a fight scene and the first gripping moment of the episode: Blue, who calls himself a "fan" of Scott, digs his claws into Scott and seemingly drains his Alpha power -- but Scott grabs Blue's claws and breaks his arm, stopping the process. And now we get introduced to another generic hot teen newbie (seriously, do they manufacture these guys? I miss Derek's facial hair), Theo, an apparent friend of Scott and Stiles from 4th grade who's also a werewolf now and is not sketchy at all.
The group show up at the school for some minor vandalism as a senior rite -- they sign their initials on the bookshelves and Scott signs Allison's name (OK, now maybe I'm a little weepy).
Of course we can't end the episode without a check-in with our real Big Bads, who seem to be steampunk doctors in creepy gas masks who are performing some kind of human experimentation. I like 'em already.
Episode 2: Parasomnia
http://teenwolf.tumblr.com/post/122900594026
Night terrors
This season seems to be more episodic than usual, focusing on a different "monster-of-the-week." This time it's Tracy, who's getting recurring nightmares that seem a little too real. Also she's puking black ink and crow's feathers. We follow her throughout the episode, where we find scratch marks around her skylight and her locker, and continuing visions of the metal man in a gas mask. All, of course, are an excuse for Parrish and Lydia to cozy up (which turns out to be pretty dull) and only gets interesting when a CREEPY POSSESSED Tracy stalks behind Parrish as he's on stakeout duty.
Deaton posits that "someone is trying to change the rules of the supernatural," and he's right, because it turns out that Tracy is yet another one of the subjects of human experimentation by the Steampunk Doctors. At the end of Tracy's night terrors, she finds herself in the creepy experiment murder house, and gets restrained by the Doctors, who give her a shot and awaken the werewolf powers in her.
Hammer Time
http://teenwolf.tumblr.com/post/122800557853/3-hours
Stiles, angry little protective Mama Bear that he is, is of course suspicious of too-hot Theo, deciding, "This guy's not Theo." Stiles goes on a detective spree, finding the signatures of Theo's parents and figuring out that they're slightly different. Of course, no one believes him (these kids obviously never learn), and Stiles resorts to following Theo through the woods, accompanied by Liam, who has possibly the dullest side story ever (no one cares about your hot girl frenemy or your clueless best friend).
Stiles is seemingly proven wrong when he sees Theo laying flowers where his sister died of exposure. But of course Theo finds him and Stiles flat out tells him he doesn't trust him. Scott and Stiles have a sweet moment about trusting other people, but it turns out Stiles WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.
Theo turns out to be able to shift into a full wolf (I feel like this was just an excuse to have this guy be naked though), and he's been holding his "parents" hostage. Because the shaky signature was discovered, Theo breaks his "dad's" fingers with a hammer to keep up his cover. Never trust the new hot guy.