Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Teen Wolf, Season 3, Episode 2: Chaos Rising


Allison drives Lydia, at night, hoping that Scott will understand the pattern of the marks on their arm. It’s important, she knows it. Meanwhile Stiles is dragging Scott to a party all in the name of moving on – which means not calling Allison back because you have a missed call.

The party is a birthday party; a girl who is determined to lose her virginity that night (she’s not waiting for love, she wants to be good at it when she falls in love. I… can’t fault that logic) she tells all this to her best friend who asks if she has a target in mind. To which she greets Stiles’s arrival with a full on kiss before leading him away to pick out wine.

Yes, yes she does have a target in mind. (The best friend takes one look at Scott and walks off)

She takes Stiles to the wine cellar, kisses him again, takes off her shoes and tells Stiles that for her birthday she doesn’t want to be a virgin. Stiles is very very fine with this, but he has no condoms – he heads to the upstairs bathroom to dig some out. He rushes off in pure Stiles geekiness – only to find the only pack there is XXL. The look on his face is priceless

In the wine cellar, the floor shakes. And wine bottles start firing themselves all around the girl, shattering and spilling their contents! Nooooo! It’s a Teetotal ghost! It’s a Ghost of Temperance! Her feet are cut by the raining glass, her blood mixing with the horrendously wasted booze and she cowers against one wall, beholding the horror of all that wasted wine. Something opens the window above her and drags her out, screaming.

Stiles returns to the cellar to find Heather missing – and no shattered wine miss. Fear not folks, the wine is safe!

Cut to Isaac and Derek in an awesome new lair, and they’re about to do something that Derek can’t do, involving someone that Isaac doesn’t like or trust. That’s enlightening. The person they don’t like is Peter Hale – and they’re happy to tell him so. He’s here to root around in Isaac’s spinal cord to bring his memories back – it’s a tricky procedure that can cause death or paralysis – so no worries!

Peter gets a confusing image of captured people who appear to be Boyd and Erica. He saw them – and Deucalion. Deucalion said that time was running out – and that they’d both be dead by the next full moon. Tomorrow night.

From that dramatic news to Scott trying to convince Derek that Lydia and Allison’s eerily similar bruise is relevant. Lydia reminds us how clever she is by pointing out the ways people see patterns that aren’t there. Scott asks Derek to help and Derek lays the smacketh down – help who? Lydia who helped resurrect his evil uncle, or Allison who evilly relished shooting him and his pack full of arrows.

I am totally, utterly and unreservedly Team Derek on this one. Stiles tries to point out no-one died which doesn’t help anything, especially since Allison says her mother died. Derek tells her that her family’s honour code killed her mother, not Derek. Not only was that accurate, but it was kind – Evil Mummy Argent was murdering Scott when Derek arrived to save him. Allison gets snarky about this – really Allison? When does she make with the apologies for her and her family’s murderous rampage? She’s going to play the badly done to one here? Scott rushes to Derek and tells him Allison’s on their side but Derek says that Scott should tell Allison that Evil Mummy Argent tried to kill him then

3 points to Derek. Perfect score. Flawless Victory.

Stiles and Scott walk to class and, along the way, Scott notices the Alpha Twins. Then it’s to business class with out-of-his-mind coach Finstock who laughs at Scott when he claims to know the answer; and it just gets weirder from there. Even more so when Stiles tries to get a coin out his pocket and pulls out the XXL condom – Finstock gives him it back and congratulates him. Finstock continues to be weird in a slightly awesome way. When Stiles’s father, Sherriff Stilinksi takes Stiles out of class – he’s the last person to have seen Heather alive. When Stiles sees Scott he’s determined to find Heather – especially if the Alphas took her

At the library Allison is still puzzling over the patterned bruise, and Lydia wants one of the twins (the straight one – the other being gay is based on him looking at Danny).


Scott has a new idea for bringing Isaac’s memory back – or, rather, Dr. Deaton does. Plunging Isaac into an ice bath until the cold makes his heart beat slow down and puts him in a trance. By slow they mean “nearly dead.” Ok, am I the only one beginning to suspect they’re using the whole memory thing as an excuse to just do random stuff to Isaac for shits and giggles?

After half drowning him, he slips into a trance and Dr. Deaton questions him – but asking about the night he found Erica and Boyd panics him. And causes the lights to flicker, oddly. He gives them a description of where they’re being held and that they’re both afraid they’ll hurt each other – that they have no control on the full moon. He panics again remembering being seen and Derek asks him where he is – against Deaton’s advice because too many voices confuse him – and he describes a bank vault. He wakes from the trance and remembers the name. But before he came out he tells them one more thing – he saw Erica’s body

Which begs the question who is Boyd afraid of being locked up with on the full moon if Erica’s already dead? Time to research how to break into the bank vault but 10 hours later finds nothing. Except that Sherriff Stilinksi was the one who investigated when the vault was last robbed (a robbery that closed it down)

Also, Allison has cracked the bruising code –it’s the logo of a bank –yes, that bank. I think this is taking viral marketing a bit too far, personally, bruising your logo on random people’s arms.  Of course she’s not going to tell anyone this because she’s in a snit about Derek not accepting her with open arms, so she’s going to break in all in her lonesome instead.

The werewolves and Stiles grab a lot of detail maps and make a plan to get in the building. And they need to go into a tiny space and then drill through a bank vault. Derek will punch his way through! Stiles doubts how possible it is. Derek punches Stiles’s hand. Stiles is convinced. Peter from the corner speaks up about how dangerous Alphas are, how dangerous a pack of Alphas are, how dangerous Alphas that merge to form super Alphas are – and really, Erica’s already dead anyway so let’s abandon the whole thing. Naturally no-one listens to him and Scott agrees to try.

While all this complex planning goes on, Allison takes some bolt cutters and breaks through the chain on the front door of the bank.

Inside we see Boyd! Boyd I was beginning to think they’d written you out this season! And yes he is in a room with a girl – but it’s not Erica.

Allison continues her suicide mission but is saved from her own blithering foolishness by Ms. Morrell (the guidance councillor who is Up To Something with Deaton) who slams her against the wall (hopefully hard enough to knock some sense into her) and orders Allison to hide in a storage closet and not come out until the fighting starts. (Ms. Morrell is going to fight? In those heels? I don’t think so). Allison hides and spills some ammonia to hide her scent from the werewolves. And looking round the closet, she finds Erica’s body.

Back at the Cool Werewolf Loft, Stiles is left with Peter and treats him to a stream of babble and some sensible musing as to why the Alphas would just lock some beta werewolves in a bank volt. Peter doesn’t care and enjoys poking Stiles, of course. But Stiles’s babble makes Peter think of something and he asks what kind of stone the walls of the vault would be made from

At the bank, Scott is having the same doubts – the Alphas have had 4 months to kill Boyd and Erica – so why now, why this full moon? But Derek knows he’s risking his life for them and chooses to anyway, they can’t wait if this moon would kill them. Which is when Peter finds the information he’s looking for and tells Stiles to call Derek – because they’re the real targets.

It’s a bit late though because at the vault, Derek punches his way inside. Boyd approaches them, growling which is when Scott gets the phone call – the vault is made of a material that scatters moonlight, stopping Boyd and the girl from shifting. Deucalion has kept them from shifting for 3 full moons, which means they have 3 full moons full of frustrated wolfiness just bursting to explode. They’re going to be super charged, uncontrollable and deadly – waiting for Derek and Scott to slaughter them. But Derek’s distracted by the girl – she recognises him and tells him to get out. He recognises her and calls her Cora.

Looking round the edge of the room, Scott sees a black powder – the same kind of powder they used to trap the Kanima last season. The vault door opens and Ms. Morrell completes the circle. She leaves them inside as Boyd and Cora lose it and leads Deucalion (he calls her “Marin”) away while the sounds of the wolves fighting echoes through the bank.

Following Ms. Morrell’s instructions, Alison comes out once she hears the sound of fighting

The werewolves fight and it’s not all going well – turns out Cora is Derek’s little sister who he thought was dead. Scott gets Boyd’s claws in the gut. Seeing this, Allison breaks the seal (despite Derek telling her not to) and shouts for Boyd – both Boyd and Cora burst out of the bank vault and run into the night. Derek is not impressed. Allison counters that she’s not the one turning teenagers into killers – Derek’s not having that (Boyd and Erica would never have been Alphaed if it weren’t for the Argents) and says no, the rest of her family are. She says she made mistakes but Gerard isn’t her fault (excuse me, you enabled him to the hilt, Alison! Unacceptable blame dodge!). In the face of this ducking of responsibility for her own evil, Derek asks about her mother (hey he could have asked about her aunt first and worked up to it). Derek tells Scott to tell her.

Elsewhere, Lydia wakes up from a nightmare screaming blue murder.




Ok, second episode and I hate Allison again.

Let’s recall that she and her family have been attacking, torturing and trying to kill Derek’s pack since the beginning. Her aunt murdered Derek’s family and was protected by the Argents. She hunted, captured and tortured Derek. Her grandfather led the Kanima on a mass murdering spree. Her mother tried to kill Scott because she and Scott were in a relationship. She went on a completely unthinking revenge spree and tortured Boyd and Erica and tried to kill Derek. She and her family have been the villains of this series since day one and have done nothing to redeem that.

But she’s going to play the badly done to one here? She’s going to play the wronged one? yeah, I’m not buying that for one damn second. She has some apologies to make and some grovelling to do – not giving people shit and glaring at them. I loathe the fact that she and Scott are in twu luv we’re supposed to ignore the evil things she has done and abetted.

I really want to know Ms. Morrell’s role now since she seems to be playing both sides to some extent – and is Deaton equally involved?

Erica’s dead – that’s the only female werewolf they had in the pack and Cora feels like a desperate replacement for an undeveloped character who is just there to tick boxes. The depressing thing is not just that Erica was fridged so everyone can be sad, but that it’s STILL better than I expected because I expected Boyd dead as well.

And that’s just kind of depressing.


But Allison aside, the episode is definitely going places and the season has hit the ground running.