'Teen Wolf' recap: A real page-turner

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Monday night's episode of Teen Wolf.

Poor Stiles. The episode is really all about him, with much of "A Novel Approach" being basically a set-up episode, as the Scooby Gang investigate the Dread Doctors and their purpose in Beacon Hills. It's always great when Teen Wolf chooses to showcase Dylan O'Brien, who is honestly one of the best actors on the show -- there's a reason he's a fan-favorite character who is the center of many a fan fiction.

But while much of this season has been amping up the supernatural gross factor, it was nice to see a dose of old-fashioned horror in this episode (because let's face it -- Stiles makes a really great damsel in distress). And it's always a relief to have an episode where poor, battered Lydia is not the one in physical harm.

Out, damned spot

We pick up from last week's cliffhanger to find Stiles fighting for his life against the Wendigo wannabe/body horror extraordinaire, Donovan (seriously, how many teethy holes does he have in his body?), leading him on a merry chase through the darkened school. Of course, as soon as Stiles finds a hiding spot in the library, Donovan starts monologuing, telling Stiles the really lame reason that he has a vendetta against Sheriff Stilinski -- his father was his partner who was paralyzed in a shootout. Donovan's kind of a weak one-off villain, but this is still one of the most effective old-school horror chase scenes in this season, ending with Donovan chasing Stiles up a construction rig and getting impaled when Stiles loosens one of the bolts. Congrats Stiles, you took your first life (don't tell the moralizing hero, Scott).

With blood on his hands, Stiles calls the cop and flees in shock, but sees the cop leave after finding nothing. Stiles runs back into the school to find that Donovan's body is gone, but the blood remains. O'Brien is just phenomenal at playing the frantic, tortured role -- though it's a bit similar to his breakdown as the Nogitsune in Season 3. But regardless, it's a breath of fresh air to see real emotions from him instead of the wide-eyed horror and low-key brooding that we get often from the rest of the cast.

'Are we really calling them that?'

While Stiles is unraveling at his conspiracy wall, Scott finds that someone has broken into the animal clinic and stolen Tracy's body -- and the teen bodies from the hospital as well. The discovery doesn't come as a big shock to us, because who can forget naked Parrish?

The group digs deep into the Dread Doctors book that Malia found, finding that the story eerily echoes what they're currently going through. The episode gets a little "CSI," but I personally find it fun when the group is doing some actual investigating instead of just stumbling onto the dead body. But honestly -- when do these kids go to class and do anything other than hang around their lockers or the lacrosse locker room? In these respective locations, Scott and Lydia find that the book was dedicated to Dr. Gabriel Valack, that guy at Eichen House with a hole holding a third eye in his head. But hey, it turns out that Evil Hot New Guy (agh I keep having to look up that this guy is named Theo. What kind of parent names their kid Theo? Oh, the tortured, captive kind) planted Valack's name in there to lead the group to Eichen House.

No eye in team

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There are some nice, quiet character moments in this episode, despite all the building tension -- Stiles internal torture at having killed a man, Scott's oblivious moralizing, Lydia's vulnerability. We also some good, juicy Stiles and Lydia moments in this episode -- because now that we know Parrish isn't all there, how can we have our favorite strawberry blonde Banshee be with him?

I'm really not buying Kira and Scott's romance. I know they've been building it for the past two seasons, but more and more Kira feels like a concept rather than a real character. It seems like Kira's whole storyline revolves around her being Scott's girlfriend with some mysterious power that the writers throw in every now and then to shake things up. Even here where they keep trying to have a "real talk," she seems incredibly passive -- more so when they declare their love for each other after Scott (surprise) heroically carries her out of Eichen House while being burned by her electrical current.

Back to the action: At Eichen House, the team go to visit Dr. Valack, but things quickly go awry as Lydia and Stiles are interrogating him. It turns out Kira's Kitsune powers are disrupting the electromagnetic shield around Eichen House (that sounds like a made-up-on-the-spot plot device if I've ever heard of one), and it's letting the Dread Doctors in. The Doctors restrain Valack and take out his third eye in a really grotesque scene -- but not before Lydia and Stiles found out their true nature as no-longer-human scientists who were obsessed with the supernatural and used electromagnetism or something.

Blast from the past

Oh, Malia. Your subplot to find your mother is kind of dull, and the only interesting thing we can glean from it is that the Evil Hot New Guy (someday I will remember that his name is Theo) is moving in on her. He takes her for a spin in his car to practice driving, but Malia gets another case of PTSD where she sees the night her mom and sister died in the crash -- but this time, she remembers a woman standing in front of the car and shooting at the windshield. It's no other than (dun dun dun) the Desert Wolf, her mom. This will probably have some sort of significance later, but for now, it seems like the most throwaway part of this episode.

Now we get some insight at those weird visions that Lydia was seeing of the Dread Doctors while she was in surgery (also she recovered remarkably fast for someone who was essentially gutted). Valack's warnings of the Dread Doctors and his insistence that his book would bring out any suppressed memories of them bring Lydia's own memories to the surface. Will this have anything to do with why we see her restrained and miserable at Eichen House in the future?

But wait, Valack is not dead yet. Weakened by the now-empty hole in his head, Valack uses Lydia's recorded scream that he wrested from her to crack the glass of his cell and escape. Looks like that's not the last we'll see of him.

Missed last week's recap of Teen Wolf? Read it here.