Man do I love a solid mid-season plot churner. Plus we got PETER back! We were not sufficiently prepared for getting PETER back!!!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK'S WOLF PACK PUPPY
We were pack-lite this week, so I'm going to go with (drumroll) JACKSON. He's old hat to the show, but fairly new to (us seeing him in) his werewolf-kanima role. And he and Ethan have a SYSTEM and it is entirely predicated upon his natural tendency to preening, contemptuous chattiness, and it is lovely.
I cannot wait for these two to come face to face with Scott's mature pack. I CAN'T WAIT FOR HIM TO MEET THEO (omg can u even imagine).
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
"You've heard of me?!"
WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
The humans are helping the Anog Ité spider-scour supernatural teens, and hiding the bodies in every nook and cranny they can find.
Surprise! It's always humans. We're the worst.
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
Did I not warn that it would probably just be a tie between Melissa and Malia from here on out? This week a literally near-death Melissa told Scott to stay and fight, and a theoretically near-death Malia admitted to herself and her birth dad that she's in love with Scott in spite of herself. So, it was a tie between Melissa and Malia. Duh. Obviously.
Runner-up, though: One Sheriff Noah "My Career is Trash Next To Scott McCall" Stilinski. My dude!!! What a class act.
BEST NON-TOYOTA PRODUCT PLACEMENT
Pyotr Illyich Chaikovsky, doy.
PREVIOUSLY ON TEEN WOLF
Scott's pack's stand against Gerard's neo-Hunters' frothing hatred made no real progress; Liam did not kill Nolan; Stiles, Derek, Kira, Hayden, and most importantly ISAAC did not return. Gerard and his chillingly, lethally committed new second, BHHS' newsest Guidance Counselor Tamora Monroe, armed the entirety of Beacon Hills. As a result, Scott's house got thoroughly shot up, and someone's blood came pooling ominously across the floor.
THIS WEEK
Scary Movie MCMXVII Fight Night (Not) at the Ballet
Replaying a scene I assume that everyone has, like me, watched more than a dozen times by this point, this week's episode opens in London, on Ethan (!) and Jackson (!!) fighting their way through some mean British neo-Hunters instead of attending their one-year anniversary (!!!) date night at the theater. My dudes! This turn of events is both completely shocking, and also completely UN-shocking. Like, of course the Twin Who Was Left Behind and the Boy Who Loves No One More Than Himself, both would wind up with each other. They are basically mirror images of each other. They literally could neither of them find a face more perfect or familiar to love.
Anyway, I am so curious what Danny thinks of all of this, his ex and his other ex hooking up. Probably he doesn't think of it. Probably he is LIVING THE LIFE, having escaped Beacon Hills long ago and never looking back. Live your life, my guy! LIVE YOUR BEAUTIFUL HAWAIIAN LIFE.
ALright so back to London: these neo-Hunters got the drop on a pack of omegas (does this show…not understand how its own mythology works? that's not how it's own mythology works!) and while they killed and totemized those poor wolfies, Jackson was able to track them down and get proof. He also got captured, and wolfsbaned, and that is why he missed date night. But when the neo-Hunters get to their swanky flat to also wolfsbane and capture Ethan, Ethan just laughs in their faces, because surprise! Jackson is half-kanima, and all pissed! He rises from his stupor and immediately whips the Brits' asses. Then he and Ethan show off their lie-dar skillz, wherein Jackson asks a billion questions, and it doesn't matter if the people being asked answer or not because Ethan is listening to their heartbeats and figuring it all out on his own.
It is so cute and so practical! I say this with utter earnestness: #couplegoals.
So ultimately what Jackson and Ethan learn is that Gerard is back and is building an army, an army that is based out of Beacon Hills. How they didn't just, like, intuit this very obvious outcome is anyone's guess, but also I totally believe that Jackson takes pride in never once considering Scott McCall as another soul that exists in the same reality, so whatever! Off to SoCal #Jethan goes.
The Saddest Boy in the World
Meanwhile, breaking my heart into one trillion raw and tender pieces is Scott himself, who is in the waiting room at the hospital, listening to his mom's (!!!) dicey surgery, which, in a very nice touch of continuity that isn't even commented on and doesn't matter in any plot-devicey way is being performed by Liam's surgeon stepdad. For reasons that will become clear very soon, Scott is alone during this harrowing ordeal, and his face is just, ugh, talk about a study in tragedy. He looks so very much on the edge of breaking, his eyes just gleaming, but he doesn't let himself cry even a single tear until he hears Liam's dad say Melissa will be fine, and then Malia is suddenly there, holding his hand, and then Scott is in Melissa's room, finally getting to see her in that slim slip of time before her sedative kicks in.
Scott doesn't say in so many words that he is ready to throw in the towel, but Melissa apparently can sense that he is considering it, and so she uses the little strength and lucidity she has to firmly demand that he doesn't, that he stay and fight. He agrees, more tears are shed (mostly mine), then he kisses her on the head and heads out to the hall to check in with Stilinski on the status of his FBI dad, Mason, and Lydia, who apparently were also all shot, omg. He does NOT ask about Argent, so I guess we can presume Chris both made it out safely (I also totally buy that Melissa would have shielded Chris from harm despite him not needing saving, because that is just who she is, yo). Anyway, here I was last week making light of how if one person got shot it would be (the ultimately expendable) FBI dad, and then now it is not only Melissa, but ALSO FBI dad and ALSO Mason and ALSO Lydia. Jesus! IDK if I said it already, but humans are the worst. The other three are transferred/discharged/recovering, sure, but still. Shit's bad.
Catching up to him in the hall, Malia asks Scott what their next move is. "Fight," he replies. She approves. But, they both agree, they need help.
Enter Deucalion
As in, Ent. Deucalion, stage left. Last seen helping Scott double-cross Theo in the Dread Doctor season, Deucalion's sight is still a hundred percent. Not a hundred percent? His killer instincts. He lives a life of peace now! He has a condo! He practices some non-violent art that keeps him just out of physical fighting distance/Malia's reach!
Featuring Aang in the role of Deucalion
He also knows that the only way to stop Gerard now is to kill him, and neither he nor Scott has that in them. His advice, then? "Lower your standards." "I thought I did," Scott says. Nope! LOWER.
Enter Eichen House
As in, sure!!!! Of COURSE that is where Peter Hale would want to meet his daughter and Scott to truly out-Peter himself with a demonstration of how insanely committed to hate and destruction and blind loyalty to Tamora the local neo-Hunters are, using a neo-Hunter he trapped and armed with one of Gerard's military-grade rifles for that one specific purpose. After leading Scott and Malia to the trapped neo-Hunter's cell, Peter arms the kid with a fresh cartridge and stands there with his fingers in his ears, chill-ly waiting for the bullets to weaken the glass enough for the kid to leap through to attack Scott and Scott to see that the only way to stop someone that crazy would be, you guessed it: to kill him ("No one can keep their hands clean in a war!" as he and everyone else in this show is so dead set on convincing Scott of). And Scott won't/can't do that, so nope! Peter's not joining this fight, thank u very much. He's got money; he's got TWO fancy cars; he's got it made in the shade.
OMG PETER. CAN. U. NOT.
Out in what looks like the BHHS courtyard but must be intended to be the Eichen House courtyard, Peter and Malia sit down to have a Scott-free heart-to-heart. Or rather, claw-to-neck, as Malia forces Peter to read her memories and see what the Anog Ité is and how it will poison everyone so deeply that not even Peter will be able to escape the neo-Hunters' sights in the end. Her plan works—sort of. Peter realizes just how bad the new Big Bad is, but all it does is cement his belief that they can't win, and he has to run. He also realizes that Malia is in love with Scott, which prompts him to betray his fatherly affection by trying to give her advice to not fall in love with a dead man. "Too late," Malia says. Aw, I say. Friends building a connection together over time! I'm still into it!
Anyway, despite Peter's best intentions to leave town for good, Gerard's neo-Hunters get to him, and his two fancy cars, first, which we learn when Peter shows up later when Scott and Malia are debriefing with Liam and Theo, covered in soot, hair on end, carrying his steering wheel in one hand.
AUTOMOBILE. This man is a parody of himself omg.
The efficiency of the physical comedy on this show, I just can't. I just. Can. Not. So good. So good!
So Bad
So what was the mini-pack debrief that Peter interrupted about? Oh, just the fact that Liam and his temper nearly crushed Gabe's head into a locker room mirror, at which point A) Theo stopped him, and B) Gabe broke down ("broke" "down") and showed them the bodies PLURAL of all the supernatural kids they/Aaron have found that have had their skulls and eyesockets scoured by swarms of spiders.
Like, there are so many bodies! So many supernatural kids that Scott and his pack knew NOTHING about! Also it is incredibly tragic and infuriating, yes, yes, I know. But Liam and Theo are already on Gabe about that, so let me have this one soapbox.
Gabe is very unwilling to apologize for killing any supernaturals, even when faced with the likelihood that there is a bigger superatural bad that their campaign of paranoia and hand slicing has been aiding and abetting from the start. He doesn't quite double down, which, given how things in our actual world when actual immature reactionaries are shown to have been abetting actual neo-Nazis/white supremacists, reads as fairly fantastic, but he is also not quite willing to admit that he and Tamora/Gerard/Nolan have the wrong of it. Also, he was the one who shot up Scott's house. For Nolan! To protect Nolan from beiing killed by Tamora. Which he tells Nolan, not Liam and Theo. But geez. This world is awful.
Over at the sheriff's station, Tamora is also wholly unwilling to admit she might have the wrong of anything, despite Stilinski's best efforts to find some common ground with her, and to use photographic evidence from every season before this one to prove to her just how bad and dangerous and traitorous Gerard is. He drowned an innocent teen in order to get a kanima under his own control! He killed his own Hunters to try to start a race war! He held back key Beast information that might have saved Tamora and her colleagues, just to get the upper hand!
Tamora is unmoved by these arguments. In fact, each argument actually serves to bolster her own counterargument, which is that Stilinski is singularly, provably ineffective in protecting the humans of Beacon Hills, and has proven just as thoroughly that he will protect the supernaturals in town over the humans. Besides, what Gerard has proven is that he will go to every length to win, and that is the side she wants to be on. This is such an ungenerous twisting of facts and reality and is an argument made in such bad faith, and it is followed by such a mean and gleefully vindictive alliance to win at all costs to the greater good and civic decency, that Gabe's lack of doubling down is forgotten, I'm back on board with this season being a true allegory of our alternative facts/fake news/bad faith straw man argument times. And then Tamora proves she has the whole force (minus a mysteriously missing Parrish) under her control, as her exit triggers a coup, her bloodlessly relieving Stilinski of his command.
It is intense. Almost as intense as the cache of hollowed-out bodies Scott and Malia find when they go to seek out the help of a self-proclaimed pack of "primal" werewolves, known for their utter ruthlessness and disregard for human life. Too late, Aaron/the Anog Ité got to them first! And once Scott and Malia turn around to see a hospital-gown'd Lydia rousing from a fugue state in the death house behind them, they figure out why: the Anog Ité (Aaron, per Liam and Theo's investigation) is looking for it's "other face," which apparently is some supernatural sleeper agent hidden in Beacon Hills that will be uncovered when the spiders Aaron is pushing into all these poor kids down come streaming back out the sleeper agent's eyes. And surprise! There is a skinless body with the burned imprint of the primal pack's tattoo scarred into the muscle of its arm, half buried in leaves in the woods outside the pack's lair. The Anog Ité has found its other half, and now only time (/three episodes) will tell what will happen.
A-WOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Meanwhile, Jackson and Ethan are rolling up to the halls of BHHS like it isn't a living nightmare land for every student currently enrolled. They are just kings of everything, shining and golden in the morning sun, their regency hammered home when Tamora, daylighting from her new role as town sheriff, not only knows who Jackson is, but is breathless to see him there, in her hallway. "You've heard of me?" he smirks.
And then #Jethan is ziptied to Theo's old basement chainlink fence, having buckets of water thrown at their faces as Tamora gets ready to electrocute them into giving her dirt on Scott McCall. It is very, deeply fun and funny. It is so funny and effective that I am willing to suspend all disbelief as to how she got the two of them down there by herself, even.
Anyway, despite this same trick being compeltely foiled by Theo, Tamora for some reason thinks that she will be successful getting information out of #Jethan. Lady! DO YOU KNOW THESE BOYS. YOU DO NOT. Individually, they could eat her alive. Together? "He talks; I listen," Ethan quips after their fourth or fifth round of electricity. "We're getting pretty good at it," Jackson quips in turn. And though the next thing to happen is even more electricity, we all know: #Jethan is about to win.
NEXT TIME
But they will have to do it next week, when it's a double-header! Two of the FINAL THREE EPISODES of Teen Wolf ever for us to experience for the very first time. I've got my recapping fingers spry and stretched and ready to go.
Teen Wolf 6x18: Genotype/Teen Wolf 6x19: Broken Glass -->