60 Teen Wolfs in 60 Days: day 32, Visionary

[hth]

So I missed another day, because I was out on Sunday doing Druid Things – unfortunately, they didn't include mentoring werewolves, but I did have a big Earth Day ritual to lead at a festival, and it was great, but sort of freezing (it's almost fucking May! WTF.), and it didn't rain on us, and I bought a cool cloak in a spiffy houndstooth pattern with an asymmetrical hem, and I was exhausted by the end of it all. I thought about trying to bail through this episode anyway, but then I remembered this one is totally fucking weird, and I figured in my state I'd never sort through it all.

 

The first time I watched this, I was so out of it that it took me like fifteen minutes to figure out we were doing a flashback thing. I just remember thinking that Deucalion was acting really weird and Gerard was suddenly really mobile and maybe I needed more coffee. Let's see if I can do better this time.

 

So far, things don't look good. Cora is telling a story about – I think that's young Derek and young Peter – hiding for two days after encountering the Argents. This is them around the time of the fire, but I suppose before the fire, since Peter isn't charred to a crisp. That is Peter hiding in the basement where Derek goes to hide, right? So Cora would've been around ten at the time, and she doesn't seem to be present for this. But of course this was before the fire, so I assume after the two days were up and they felt they wouldn't be leading the Argents home, they went home and told everyone the story, which Cora is now telling to illustrate that it's Hale pack SOP to disappear yourself after tangling with hunters. Good rule. I can't figure out exactly why Cora is sharing this story in particular, but then I haven't been able to figure out that much about Cora yet.

 

Hey, it's old Peter! I feel like we haven't seen him in a while; he was pretty spectacularly absent while the fighting was happening, which seems to be Peter SOP.

 

I like that Gerard is just over pretending to be anything but a creepy, manipulative asshole. It's weird; this whole exchange of Scott's magic pain powers (that's such a random-ass werewolf power; why even is that? I mean, it's fine, but it seems so unconnected to the typical werewolf vibe) for Gerard's information is ostensibly a fair arrangement benefiting everybody, and yet Gerard really makes it sound like he's forcing something out of Scott and he's feeling awfully smug about it. Scott kind of reacts the same way, like he can barely make himself touch Gerard, even though he agreed to this trade. The whole vibe of the scene is super molesty, honestly. I wonder if there's something uncomfortably intimate about plugging into someone's bodily sensations in that way, because while that hasn't been established, it would explain a lot about this scene.

 

I think that was a little metahumor about the way the timeline doesn't seem to make a damn bit of sense on this show. The Hale fire was six years ago as of the premiere – so let's say seven now. That makes Cora's age pretty consistent, but if Derek was a high-school student when Kate got hold of him, that means he should be 23 or so, which is quite frankly hard to believe, and young Peter is portrayed as only a few years older, which is clearly insane, he's got to have at least ten years on Derek. So I guess the show's answer to all of that is, “How old is everyone? Ha ha, hard to say, we guess!”

 

(Okay, in fairness, I just went and looked up the actors' ages, and they're both younger than I would have guessed, so I'm going to give Hoechlin a pass on playing 23. Bohen is, however, 11 years older, which I did suspect. I guess in the flashbacks he's just a creepy 26-year-old dude hanging around the high school? I...can see that, actually.)

 

So I appreciate this unreliable-narrator thing they have going on in this episode, and I'm realizing now that much of the reason I couldn't track the episode the first time is that you really have to be watching to notice when the visuals contradict the dialogue, which is cool. The frustrating thing – and of course it's deliberately frustrating, but it's still frustrating – is that you don't know if what Peter is saying is a lie, per se, or just a partial truth. Like, was he Derek's confidante? Were they buds back then, telling each other secrets and whatnot, Derek all bouncy and idealistic and Peter full of sarcastic advice, like a proto-Scott-and-Stiles? We know that's not how he learned this particular story – that he spied on Derek – but that doesn't mean he's lying, just that he's leaving that part out. I'd love to know more about their pre-fire relationship.

 

Wait. Okay, so – the first alpha summit happened at the abandoned distillery on the same day that Derek took Paige there, yeah? And they skedaddled when they heard all those people starting to show up. But also, Derek was present when the Argents killed Ennis' beta, which was recently – so the story we started the episode with, about Derek hiding out for two days after that event – just happened. He seems to be pretty cavalier about running around in the woods with his breakable girlfriend, in that case. Someone's lost the plot already, and I'm not sure if it's them or me.

 

That girl who looks like Cora can't be Cora, because Cora is ten. Is it Laura? But it doesn't look like her, either – so it's just a different Hale? That's all right, I guess; it makes sense some of them would resemble each other.

 

Cora, if I may take you up on a small point: even if you lose a limb, killing absolutely everyone involved with that event is still revenge. That's actually exactly what revenge means.

 

So what's Peter's game? I mean, I guess maybe he's just trying to be helpful, since this was when Peter claims to have been less insane. But he sure seems intent on talking Derek into procuring the bite for Paige, for a guy who doesn't have any real stake in the matter.

 

Okay, so now we're trying to address that question I had ages ago: if Deaton was the Hales' emissary, why didn't Derek know him? Apparently the answer is that only the alphas are allowed to know the emissaries, which...doesn't make a lot of sense? Why would that be the system? The only thing I can come up with is that alphas like to be able to dispense or withhold information at their discretion and don't want just anyone in the pack to have access to the emissaries, which seems kind of jerky, but maybe it's a territorial thing. Or I suppose it could be intended to protect the emissary, but that still seems counterproductive in terms of allowing emissaries to be of service to the whole pack.

 

Did Derek know that this whole thing was going down, this Ennis thing? Because the way he's sitting broodily alone in the locker room at night makes it look like he did know and he was waiting til it was done. But then of course he attacks Ennis, so – did he not know, and he was just brooding in the locker room coincidentally? Or did he initially know and agree, but then change his mind/lose his nerve when he heard her screaming? I thought the latter for sure when I first saw it, but now I'm really ambivalent. This episode is not measurably less confusing the second time, I have to say.

 

Heh, he's not lying. It was an ambush. Did not catch that until just now.

 

Fucking finally, someone admits that listening to someone's heartbeat is a shitty lie-detection system. Thank you, Scott. Also, thank you for threatening Gerard, because it's about time, and also rowrr.

 

It's a fun little parallel, that neither Scott nor Stiles are entirely fooled by the lies they're being served, because neither of them are naive about the fact that they're talking to self-serving assholes. I don't know what Stiles really cares, though. He says he'll get the story out of Derek “if I have to” – but why on earth would he have to? There wasn't much pretext for the story to start with, and it didn't really gain in importance as it went on.

 

I'd be down for more Talia flashbacks, though I don't know that my chances for that are good. She seems cool.

 

Yeah, that.... Okay, I think more of it made sense this time – not all of it, but significantly more than the first time. And I guess some of that was valuable to know: that Deucalion used to be a decent guy who was betrayed by Gerard and went into a psychotic revenge-spiral, that's pretty crucial. The Derek half of the story doesn't contribute all that much, and the more I think about it doesn't even really fit with the rest of continuity – Paige's death actually didn't make him “the way he is,” unless you really want to suggest that Kate and the fire had no significant impact on his character. I guess it's very slightly valuable to know that Derek has tangled with Ennis in the past, but only very slightly. It's probably pretty touching if you're a big Derek fan, but I'm mostly a Derek-tolerator, and the whole thing seemed like a lot of running in circles because Gerard's story wouldn't fill a full hour.

 

Comments

[green_grrl]

I'm a Derek fan, so I was interested, but the fact that the show runners decided to pile on the dead!Paige angst was ridiculous. Really, he doesn't have enough manpain? The Derek&Peter relationship was interesting to me, though, and I <3 Talia. The Duke&Gerard backstory was good, too.

I guess in the flashbacks he's just a creepy 26-year-old dude hanging around the high school? I...can see that, actually.

Hee! Exactly. That's how I read him, since I absolutely do not buy Jeff Davis's flimflammery of "oh, you don't know how werewolves age." He's just covering his ass because he doesn't keep a show bible and continuity is hosed. Stiles remembered Derek from a few years ahead of them in school. He's not more than six years older than Stiles, and Stiles ages normally.

I feel like the show heavily implies that Derek knew Ennis was coming for Paige and only interfered when she screamed. But I think he was in the locker room after practice and smelled Ennis coming. Dude is 7 feet tall and an alpha—I'd be nervous about what he was doing at the school, too. Then when he realized, he had to try to save Paige. We never saw Derek buying any of Peter's bullshit, right up to now!Peter saying that Derek insisted Paige should take the bite, when we see then!Peter being the one saying Paige should take the bite while Derek looks at Peter like he is a crazy person. I suspect Peter had some complex power play up his sleeve involving eventually becoming an alpha himself, since we know he always wanted it, but it was never spelled out.

[ravurian]

For the longest time I tried to convince myself that the story about Derek and Paige was actually the story of Peter and Paige, and that Peter was passing it off as Derek's story for reasons. It would've made a great deal more sense that way, if Peter's destabilisation began in high school over his miscalculated manipulations, and that in telling this untrue thing about Derek he is telling a very true thing about himself. This could potentially have made more sense of the later plot wrt Malia (which was in any case recycled Jackson backstory IMO). It would also have made more sense for this to be Peter's story in terms of timeline and history - it would've given the plot a great deal longer to sink in, the divisions in the groups involved a greater length of time to spread, and provided an even better structure to build the fire storyline on, I think.

[mific]

"The Derek half of the story doesn't contribute all that much" - yeah, this. Plus the fact that young-Peter and young-Derek don't look anything like their adult selves really bugs me. They go on and on about the damn eye-colour thing. Don't spoil me but is that why the long flashback story about Derek? Do we desperately need to know what blue eyes means in later eps?