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60 Teen Wolfs in 60 Days: day 43, Letharia Vulpina
One of my father's favorite phrases, back when I was young and entirely too trusting in the general goodwill and decency of humankind, was – when I would try to excuse someone's overall shittiness by mentioning that one time they were less shitty – “Hitler liked dogs.” I don't even know if that's true, but I have found in my cynical old age that it actually is a pretty good guideline. Sure, nobody is entirely full of hate and darkness. Everybody likes their dog, or their mom, or loans their truck to help friends move, or whatever. That means they're human, which is good to remember. But also, they can still be legitimately dangerous, destructive, toxic people. It helps me when I want to reflexively disbelieve bad news about someone, because I have that tendency a lot of us have to go, “That can't be right! He's so nice!” But usually what I mean is, “He has from time to time been quite nice to me!” And so what? The worst people in the world are nice some of the time, when it doesn't cost them much. Hitler liked dogs.
Oh, but the episode! I continue to love Dr. Deaton, who likes dogs but isn't easily fooled.
I'm pretty excited about this one, actually, because I know I slept through it entirely last time. I know because I woke up with a bit of a start at the beginning of “Echo House,” and I remember thinking, “Hey, look, something must have happened to Stiles to put him back in greater control of the nogitsune. Good for him!” No idea what it was, though. I didn't even remember how the electricity issue from the end of “Riddled” got resolved – apparently through Kira being awesome, so that's nice!
It's cool of Melissa to break them in and all, but isn't she sort of Isaac's guardian? I guess there's a legal gray area, but his parents are dead and she's feeding, clothing, and sheltering him, so at this point she's kind of his foster-mother, right? Which begs the question of who's authorizing this underage kid's treatment to start with, if it's not already Melissa. I feel like there should be a social worker around here somewhere.
Why did they think he'd be healing by now? Haven't we established at great length over numerous torture scenes that electricity is exactly what you use when you don't want a werewolf to shake off the damage?
Aw, you know Coach is super worried about Stiles; he loves that kid. (Also, it's LEAHY, listen to him, he says LEAHY! I'm not crazy, godammit!!!)
Always keep Peter away from your mother. Life advice.
Yeah, I know I was dead asleep through all of this, because if there's two things I wouldn't forget, it's Danny getting some action and Coach being shot through the chest.
Shut up, Derek, he's totally smart enough to frame you for murder. I'm probably smart enough to frame you for murder, because you're not all that bright. (I don't like my chances when it comes to Chris, though, admittedly.) Also, quit saying he's skinny, because he's actually not particularly. Even compared to you, he's not really that much narrower in terms of his build – you just look broader through the shoulders than you really are because you have that Dorito proportioning. Stiles doesn't have the same waist/chest discrepancy, but he's really not by any means a reedy guy – nobody on this show really is, except arguably Isaac, who has a lot of muscle over a rather delicate, fine-boned frame. Although I suppose Derek has an excuse, since Stiles has apparently undergone a massive growth spurt in the year Derek's known him (thanks to the three RL years it took to film that year's worth of events), so maybe Derek just has Stiles: Day One lodged in his memory and hasn't yet overwritten it with Present Day Stiles.
The pacing in this episode is absolutely jacked up by this Peter nonsense. Nobody cares! Lydia just in general deciding she needs to know more about her powers is – important, but so thoroughly irrelevant to the actual life-or-death A plot happening elsewhere that it crosses over that invisible threshold from being kind of distracting to being really fucking annoying. This is not time-sensitive stuff! Put it in some other episode to set up whatever you're trying to set up. Malia, I guess, but since I've seen the next season and a half, I know they're not going anywhere with that anytime soon. It did not need to be here.
Okay, that's – HOLY SHIT, that was fucked up. In a good way! Stiles tapping his fingers idly along the hilt of the sword through Scott was perhaps the most gruesomely perfect demonstration of the nogitsune's personality; gold star to whoever thought that up. It took me a few minutes after the episode ended to piece together why Stilesitsune would've come back at all, and then I realized he'd set up these traps and needed to be able to get close enough to the carnage to siphon it off, which he could do by pretending he was racing to the scene to stop each one. I don't think Scott was fully factored into the plan, however – the glances Stiles kept giving him when he took the pain of Stiles' victims were, I think, him trying to figure out how he was going to retrieve what Scott was robbing him of. What I'm not sure about is whether the nogitsune receives any benefit from the whole “pain and chaos” thing – does he need to absorb that stuff in order to bolster his strength, the same way Jennifer caused the animal deaths to bolster hers, or is this just one of those situations where a creature does what a creature does just because that's what this creature does?
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I never managed to figure out an answer to your last question there, either. I am inclined to favor the latter interpretation.
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