60 Teen Wolfs in 60 Days: day 13, Omega

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LUCKY DAY THIRTEEN, y'all!  Season Two!!

 

Bullshit, show, you're not going to make me like Jackson, no matter how naked he is.

 

Wow, see, that flashback was one of the things I totally missed on the first watch. I thought the montage of their sneakiness was endearing and cute, and now it's actually sort of terrifying. I've said it before, but I love so much how this show makes you fear your favorite characters. I love Chris! But you know he'd have shot a kid in the face if he hadn't just barely decided that his daughter's therapy bills would be super expensive.

 

All joking aside, I am curious about Chris' thought processes there. I can think of a few different reasons he might not have gone through with that – fear that it would drive an on-the-fence Allison out of her family's sphere of influence forever, the fact that the Code seems to require waiting until a young werewolf has tasted blood, not tasted your daughter – but I kind of like the idea that he backs off for the same reason he got angry: his paternal fondness and protectiveness of Allison. Because the Argents are doubtless made of stern stuff, but standing by while your boyfriend is shot in the face for something you encouraged him to do seems like pretty shattering stuff, psychologically. He could well have been – probably should have been – concerned that she would hate him for doing it, but I like to think he also just didn't want to burden her with this forever.

 

YAY, CREDITS! I am 1000% happier with this show with the addition of credits. I don't even care what they look like, but they do have the added virtue of looking great.

 

So we're starting just a few days after last season, right? “He's been here all weekend” implies the one weekend that Lydia's been in her coma, and Kate's funeral is just happening. I'm never sure about the timeline of this show. I feel like they've been in high school too long.

 

HERSHEY'S HERSHEY'S HERSHEY'S HERSHEY'S.

 

I'm impressed with Lydia. No goddamn way would I have stuck my hand down in that water. Hey, so was trying to pull the hanks of hair loose a visionary way of experiencing her body trying to purge Peter's werewolf...infection, or whatever it is? Because that's a pretty cool way to debut her psychic stuff. And that definitely seemed like Peter's burned/mangled arm. I don't suppose I have any real evidence of that – I don't really know Peter well enough to pick his mangled arm out of a lineup – but I just assumed at first glance that it was. Lydia's powers don't seem wholly consistent, but really nor should they be, I think. I appreciate that her brain is supposed to be a churning mess at this stage, not neatly accessing useful information. I love that it perceives the lycanthropy that she, like Jackson, is purging right now as some unpleasant mess of fur and injury.

 

Scott riding in the car with his head out the window seems about right for his development at this point in the series. He's useful, loyal, and adorable! And still, let's face it, pretty absurd in the role of a badass. Far more werebeagle than werewolf.

 

Did Derek just corner his New Best Friend in a literal grave? That's not ill-omened or anything. It's generally not a great debut episode for Isaac, who isn't given anything like a personality – and I know it's early days, but they had a whole episode. They could've given us something to hang our hats on with this important new character, if they'd made an effort. I've had my complaints about the writing on this show (I generally admire it, but I have had complaints!), but this mishandling of all Derek's new recruits is really puzzling to me. They seem to struggle terribly to give these poor kids anything at all to do, or in some cases anything resembling the basic building blocks of character. I don't know what the deal is, because on down the line, they don't seem to have any trouble introducing new characters in engaging ways. I'm tempted to believe they're making some kind of comment on how incompetent Derek is at every aspect of pack-running.

 

Wow, this is the second McCall Pack reference that I totally missed. I really thought the first time was when Derek said it. They were hammering this home, and I was just oblivious. I feel like we're really getting into the stuff that I was watching too fast and too late at night to digest the first time, and that's exciting! There's going to be more and more new stuff from this point out!

 

At the risk of reading too much into things, I think they're doing a good job of showing how Scott 2.0 has benefited from the events of the last few weeks. There's a natural connection in a season premiere not just to the finale before it, but to the premiere of the seasons before and the pilot (in this case, the same thing), and I feel like they're leaning hard on how willing Scott now is to do things on his own, from the big things like sneaking into the Argent house and tracking Lydia down, to the basics like getting himself out of the trap without help. If that trap scene had played out in season one, I strongly believe there's no way Scott would've fixed it on his own. I think his obvious glee indicates that he knows it, too. He's beginning to grok that he's a guy with Special Powers, and beginning to have fun exploring them.

 

Weird how Harris and the Coach can both be huge assholes to their students, and one of them is despicable and one of them is amazing.

 

I think what it means, Jackson, is that you're such a douchebag that the abstract concept of lycanthropy is trying to flee your body. You are literally leaking awesome. It's trying to get away from you.

 

“Work in progress.” I love Scott's optimism. Okay, your dad wants me dead really badly. But he could've killed me several times and didn't, which is a great sign! It won't be long now before he doesn't really care if I'm alive or dead, and from there on in it's all sunshine and ice cream!

 

This may be the first time that Stiles directly asks Scott for anything – if you don't include general variations on “get your shit together and stop messing this up.” Part and parcel of Scott flexing his muscles and discovering that he can do cool stuff is that from this point on, people stop seeing him as “that idiot who hopefully won't get us all killed” and “someone who might be able to do something about this.” I feel like this is all pretty artfully constructed to take us from the era of Scott is a Deer In Traffic to the era of Scott is a Beagle or Some Other Sturdy Working Breed.

 

(I suspect that may be why Stiles is such a flailing yahoo for much of this episode, unfortunately, instead of the same guy from first season who dove directly into the werewolf-wrangling business without blinking, consistently brought things around to the realm of the practical, and got shirty with Derek, Chris, and Peter. TPTB might've found themselves somewhat uncomfortable with how thoroughly Stiles' general badassery was stealing the show away from their hero and tried to entrench him in the role of Nebbishy Sidekick. Fortunately, I don't recall this phase lasting too long before they figure out that Stiles being less competent doesn't really make Scott look more competent.)

 

So this is what I still don't get about the concept of omegas! Gerard, who seems like he knows a thing or three about the mythos, specifically lists “survivor of a pack that was killed off” as one means of becoming an omega. But how is that not exactly Derek through the whole first season? And he lists “by choice” as another way of becoming packless, which seems like it would describe Scott, although I guess they could be pushing the concept that Scott's ad hoc cliquepack gives him all the same benefits that a werewolf pack would. Or maybe Scott's just special because he's Scott and the show is named after him, which is an old and venerable tradition in fiction and I'm not going to quibble it. But Derek! Derek should definitely have been an omega. Maybe he was an omega, and calling himself a beta was just his way refusing to accept that his family was gone. But leveling up to alpha conveys actual powers, and they sort of imply here that being an omega is an actual weakness in a similar way – a weakness that Derek didn't seem to have. Yeah, he's functionally the same as this poor bastard here, squatting and lurking and whatnot, but he always seemed to have things together internally in a way that I feel like they're saying is not what omegas are like. Or maybe that's just an insulting stereotype and #notallomegas.