60 Teen Wolfs in 60 Days: day 7, Night School

[hth]

 

I really, really love a Base Under Siege episode, and I also like near-real time episodes. So this has a low bar to clear for me to appreciate it.

 

Exhibit I've-lost-track on Stiles acting like the hero of the story: rushing out for the thing they need while Scott stays behind yelling, “Stiles, no!” Honestly, if they genderswapped Scott, he'd be such an annoying girl cliché. This should really, really not be the episode where your Teen Wolf drinking game has you doing a shot every time Scott says, “What do we do?” I love you, and I want you to be safe.

 

Nice little touch there with Lydia's lingering PTSD from her first encounter with the Alpha, the other time Jackson left her alone in the car.

 

Well, way to go, Derek. You've made yourself the official go-to Frightening Thing in the Dark for a teenage boy. I hope you feel very intimidating now, you big bully.

 

Poor Stiles. They'll learn to check with you when someone thinks they have a plan, eventually.

 

You know, sometimes on tv they do that thing, where the police get a “tip” that there will be “prank calls” and that keeps you from getting police backup, and – that's insane, right? I mean, they don't actually do that? Because of how it's fucking ridiculous? I refuse to believe that happens in Reality-world.

 

Everything about Stiles is awesome in this episode. I mean, I've been kind of fangirling him all along in these recaps, but I think that's misleading, because while there's nothing not to like, I'm pretty sure this was really the episode where I decided he was all that and a bag of chips, as absolutely no one says anymore ever. Running for the bolt-cutters or whatever that was – ill-advisedly but awesomely taunting the pinned Alpha – having the integrity to object to Scott pinning murders falsely even on a guy he doesn't especially like – punching Jackson right in the snout. I mean, he's just fucking on fire. I think I was pretty much a Scott girl for the front half of the season, and this swung me single-handedly around to the Great Stiles Majority. Though also, in counterpoint to that: Scott. So it's really a stumper for me, to be honest, and I'm happy that there is no reason to choose.

 

I like that Scott's tell when he's lying is just that he can't lie convincingly.

 

Where else have I seen someone get almost killed/actually killed by the automated bleachers? Was that The Faculty? Damn, there's something hovering at the edge of my brain and I can't pin it down.

 

I really think I don't understand what's happening to Scott there when he's attacked and also not attacked by the Alpha that is or possibly is not there. I feel like the first time I didn't really question it – werewolf magic, probably, why not! – but now I just – what even is that? Can other alphas put the whammy on betas – just the ones they create? Were they both physically in that room or not? How is this related to the janitor's disappearing body – was that an illusion too? I mean, I hate to be that rules lawyer who disrupts the flow of a good story by wanting to know the stats and the die rolls involved, but...yeah, I want to know if that can happen again!

 

“It's still good, being alive?” Ah, Stiles. If you haven't figured it out yet, allow me to be the first to explain to you that Scott McCall can snatch defeat from the jaws of any victory you've got. He took you from “Yay, we won this round!” to “How in holy hell could it get worse?” in... I don't even know because my watch doesn't have a second hand. It was literally too short a time to be measured given the limits of my current technology.

 

Huh, I didn't realize that the show was framing Scott's people as his pack this early on; I didn't remember it coming up until s2 when they save Lydia from Derek and Derek says it. That's cool, but I don't know what to make of Scott's first line roster, there. “My pack? Oh, my best friend, my beloved girl, the girl who's my girl's BFF and also the unwilling object of my best friend's borderline-creepster affections, so that's cool, and...Jackson, who hates my guts.” One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong....

 

I was really on the fence about Deaton at this point. I always thought he was a little freaky – guys, he's so freaky! Which is pretty cute when you realize he's weird-old-mystic freaky, but I was not unconvinced he was dangerous-freaky. But it's still the middle of the season, and usually the thing where circumstantial evidence looks bad for someone but the hero insists that he just knows that person is trustworthy – usually that thing ends with vindication. (If the hero is really going to be betrayed, it tends to happen all at once in the worst possible moment, not through a series of scenes where various people mount arguments to prove that a betrayal is coming.) It seemed to me that he was not the Alpha, but had some connection to the Alpha that he was hiding – which I guess was technically right, but just in the interest of full disclosure, I was suspicious of him and I was totally wrong, because Deaton is the bee's knees.

 

So I still am not really sure if I'm not groking the breakup here at the end, or if it's really just ginned-up fake conflict and there's nothing really to grok. She was madly in love with him like two hours ago, and now she – doesn't trust him, I guess, but – because he was acting...strangely? I mean, it was a strange situation. And going out alone semi-unarmed was a dubious thing to do, but – I guess, is she mad because he wouldn't stay with her even though she was clearly terrified and begging him to stay, so she felt disregarded? But she doesn't actually seem mad, per se. I mean, I just feel like I'm missing a few puzzle pieces here, and maybe it's that thing I have where sometimes people being flatly illogical just seems baffling to me even though it's utterly realistic and people do it all the time, because – why do they? Is that it? Are we just supposed to be reading Allison as still traumatized and running blindly away from everything associated with this fucked-up night? Because if that's not it, then I really don't get what she thinks Scott has done that requires the complete about-face on the trajectory of their relationship. It has the feel of manufactured conflict to me, where the writers needed to drive a wedge between them but didn't want either of them to actually do anything wrong and never quite figured out how to justify the plot point, but...sometimes I don't get people? (If I were particularly good at anything, they could totally make a hit tv show about me.) So I'm not absolutely sure of that.