Monday, August 19, 2013

Lunar Ellipse ΩΩΩ Teen Wolf S03E12

And here we finally are! Four days after we all watched the episode (well, those of us with season passes on iTunes who were quick enough to snatch it up when the download posted early [and the people who downloaded it from them]), we can finally talk about it! So let's reminisce:

First things first: the Matrix. Neo, Trinity, and Stiles all wake up from their weird bath-deaths in a white warehouse (maybe it's Simon's secret lair from Misfits?) and see the Nematon. Then they all touch it and HOLY REVISIONIST HISTORY, BATMAN! we see that the entirety of the inciting events from the start of the show happened right next to the Nematon. Oh, and that Allison wandered by the forest on the night Scott was bitten. The only cool thing about this whole thing is (1) the Nematon is the Architect and (2) MOAR EADDY!!!!!!
You can't keep a good mom down!

Their weird mission accomplished, the kids exit the Matrix and we find out that the "darkness" is severe brain damage because they were all dead for 16 hours. Just kidding! We find out nothing about the darkness and there are no side effects from being frozen for 16 hours! 

Meanwhile, back at chez side plot Hale, Cora nurses Der-der back to health and Peter's like, "Our side story involves you fighting Cali, remember? It's super irrelevant."

Back at the vet's Scott's all "Let's join up with the Deuc and kill Derek's gf!" All the other teens go, "WTF?" and Deaton says "Solid plan, bro!" Then Alpha Twin(k) Gay shows up to beg the gang's help in stopping his brother from turning to the Sith helping Cali kill Derek. 

Speaking of ignoring the problem of our parents' looming mortality, are Doctor Mom and Sheriff Dad flirting??? Are Stiles and Scott going to be step-brothers??? #fanfiction????

Anyway, it turns out Ethan only needed Lydia for help. He brings the Banshee to try and convince Derek to run for the hills. Derek's all "NO WAY MAN GRR!" until Peter asks Lydia how she feels and she goes....
"If feel like... I'm standing in a graveyard."

Ugh, creepy Lydia RAWKKKKKS!

The other Scoobs are spinning by the Argent apartment to pick up some weaps, but they get held up by an ambush... from Scott's dad! He asks some dumb questions and then Allison is a bad-as and throws a smoke grenade at him while Scott picks up a flash bomb for the climactic battle.

Stiles, on the other hand, is getting into a car crash so that he can be preoccupied during the next scene.

Ethan and Lydia stay behind in the loft to distract Cali and Aiden. Aiden is all cute and growls at Cali when she threatens Lydia. Aw, it's nice to see that you're acting nice now that you are joining the pack, Aide-y! Cali starts to threaten Aiden when, DEUS EX SKYLIGHT, Jen-rach comes to kill her former Alpha!!!!!!!!! The twin(k)s get to work...
WERQ
HERD @ WERQ

...but Jen-rach rips them apart mid-Jogress and then has a moment with Cali. She offers Cali a chance to change sides, or at least beg for her life, before she gets Dark Willow'd with the glass from Jen-rach's entrance.
Cali, surprise surprise, says she wished that she'd decapitated Jennifer, so she gets shrapnel-ed. Thus we arrive at totally-friggin'-awesome-and-problematic-scene-1:

Then the twin(k)s try to avenge Cali. Jen-rach breaks their neck yawn.
Don't worry, it'll wear off when they split.

Then she gets Lydia to scream so that Derek will run back to save the Banshee and fall into Jen-rach's trap.

Also, quick question here, why did Neo and the gang need those totems? Weren't they supposed to die and thereby power up the Nematon and thereby make their parents' murders unnecessary? Because Jen-rach does not seem to have gotten the memo about not killing the adult cast, which makes it to seem like Teen Wolf once again told us a bunch of words so that the could make boys sit in cold water and then promptly forgot about all the metaphysics that they blah-ed. Why do I watch this show again?
Oh, that's right.

So, back to the show. Scott and Allisaac meet up for their pre-arranged meeting with the Deuc and Scott realizes that it'll just be him and the Demon Wolf against Jen-rach. Back at the Hale loft, Jen-rach is pulling a Deucalion and getting Derek to fight on her side against Scott and Deucalion. Red team versus blue team!

Allisaac then hear Blue Eye's dog whistle (remember last week?) and head to the Nematon to spend the rest of the episode holding up a collapsing root cellar, later with a dash of Stiles too. Lydia and Cora stick around the loft just long enough to see that the twin(k)s survived by splitting apart (one wholly dead muscle daddy is two half-dead twinks?). They spend the rest of the episode curing the pups with Dr. Vet. It is all very shirtless.

Now, in plot-with-semi-relevant-details, Deuc goes all Demon Wolf for the FIRST TIME this WHOLE SEASON in a super cool morphing sequence! This may possibly be the best wolfman transformation I've ever seen! Derek throws himself between Deuc and Jen-rach while Jen-rach tries to air bend at Deucalion. But Deuc is impervious to bending and kicks everyone's butts! He picks up Jen-rach and forces Scott to transform and then tells the Beta to kill the druid. Scott's all, "My friends make me strong! I won't do it!" Then he uses that flash bomb he swiped earlier and blinds Deucalion's wolf form!!!!!

And then the eclipse starts and everyone goes human. Jen-rach takes a mo' to regroup, then bad-asses back into the arena:
...and starts beating everyone unconscious.

Then Derek does some weird-as stuff and convinces Jen-rach to heal Deucalion's eyes so that he can see her scarring? But then it has sapped all of her power so she STOPS looking like a monster? Which goes DIRECTLY against what she said to Cali earlier about working hard to look normal??? Anyway, Derek tells her that she needs to let the adults in the Nematon go because he won't kill Deucalion for her. Jennifer just feels betrayed and beats him up, which I guess he takes because he loves her? At least I think that's what the flashbacks are meant to show us?

The eclipse ends and Jen-rach does her mountain ash shield again. Then Scott does his go-to-Alpha-by-pushing-through-a-forcefield thing and goes TRUE ALPHA (barf) and makes it INTO THE CIRCLE! I guess negates the power of the ash (but why???) because Deucalion just skips across after him and straight-up murders Jen-rach like an Ennis that can act.

THEN Derek and Scott just let Deucalion go! Like pacifists or whatever!! And then everyone denouments:
Lydia and Aiden are in like!
Allison tells her Watcher dad that she needs to start her training again so that she can be the Slayer they can live up to a new family code: "Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger le meme."
Cora and Derek go off to spend the autumn under a bridge.
Scott and Doctor Mom hate FBI-Jerk-Dad.
Scott and Stiles feel their new angsty Hearts of Darkness and we get our happy OTP ending (for the moment):

And then the second super problematic part of the episode: Jen-rach is crawling toward the Nematon to try and heal herself because she CARRIED THIS SEASON when Peter Hale, who DID NOTHING but chew the furniture, shows up out of NOWHERE and RE-MURDERS her. He then declares himself the Big Bad of the next half season.

SO: YAY! That was fun! And also did NOTHING to change Teen Wolf's pattern of killing all the female antagonists and NONE of the male ones (except Ennis; sorry bro)!!! Seriously, JD, you even RESURRECTED your version of BtVS's The Master! And when you had a super-awesome werewolf-lady and a super-awesome druid lady and a blind clone of your version of The Master, which ONE did you let survive? Oh, yes, that's right, the DUDE.

Now, I do understand that this show is about pretty boys and awesome fight scenes and also werewolves which are way cooler than vampires will ever be, and so in that sense there does need to be a surplus of male actors who are better at going to the gym than they may be at acting. But that does not explain why the villains seems to be a boys club of old white men-- wait. I think I just got it. 

COUNTDOWN TO RANTY INTERNET OPINION IN 3...

2...

1...

/Begin Opinion/
The show creators (and to some extent, the viewers) are older (probably white) men (much like Deucalion, Peter Hale, Mr. Argent, or me) objectifying, and thereby taking an oppositional role against, the protagonists and their pack. Therefore, as the "lens" characters through which the creative team relates to the story, they are impervious to harm and continually redeeming themselves. Meanwhile, the potential obstacles to that objectification (Kate Argent and Jennifer Blake/The Darach both sought to possess Derek, while Mrs. Argent wanted to kill to Scott) drive the plot but have a perspective alien to the controlling forces of the fictional universe. Therefore, when it comes time to sacrifice someone to heighten the drama, these perfectly awesome characters are at the top of the list. Much like the resurrections, redemptions, and confounding survivals of the Ray Palmers, Hal Jordans, or Alan Scotts of the world (See also: Warren Worthington III, Peter Parker, Charles Xavier, Magneto, Tony Stark...), these characters are impervious to harm because the show creators are not suicidal, even when its only the lives of their fictional avatars in the Teen Wolf-i-verse that are at risk.

I.e., the white guys survive because they are all Gary Stus.

Barf.
/End Opinion/

So, in conclusion, Teen Wolf is still the same old Teen Wolf, even though they added more vocab, better actors, more homages to horror films, and better special effects. "Yay!" and also "Yay?'

What were your thoughts?









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