![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Did you know that the key make-up effects artist for this show is a man named Erik Porn? Now you do!
We've been rocking a more atmospheric, gothic sort of horror on this show lately, and I'm enjoying the return of the slasher-movie aesthetic from the first couple of seasons. I always like shows that play on those urban legends (X-Files was good at that, and early Supernatural), like the axe-murdering practical jokester of the “Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?” variety. Often with these shows there's a twist in regard to the victim, but this episode really pops because they resist that reveal until the very end, when you've given up waiting for it. Well done.
Good of them not only to solve the mystery of how Derek pays for his loft, but also to get off a pretty good joke about how the obligatory independently wealthy supernatural creatures on tv would be utterly screwed without their convenient vault of magic cash.
Also, “this hospital has seen a bizarre amount of damage.” I know hanging a lampshade on crazy things doesn't spontaneously make them less crazy, but I do appreciate the effort.
Scott looked a little too impressed by Liam's chutzpah by the end of that locker-room scene. Scott! No flirty eyes at the freshmen, they're very young! We've already had to have this conversation from Lydia. I expect better of you.
She knew you'd see it on the news? Do high school students still watch the news – like, The News, on tv? I thought only people over 62 still viewed the news as a lump sum of information you see at a certain time.
I wonder if Scott's easy internalizing of the idea that Kira is his to treat like a girlfriend, even while his logical brain catches up to the fact that she's not actually his girlfriend, is an alpha thing? I mean, it's such a marital/familial sort of kiss, maybe it's just the way Scott in his human body physicalizes that sense of – I don't want to say “ownership,” because that's not the right word, but that slight possessiveness of knowing these people are his people? In the same way that an animal might casually scent-mark one of its companions, human-Scott just feels natural and comfortable giving them a friendly kiss? I think that's the beginning of a super adorable story that now I really want to read.
What the fuck, show, seriously? Jackson's gone, Leahy's gone (LISTEN TO COACH, HE CLEARLY IS NOT SAYING LAHEY, LAHEY IS NOT HIS NAME, DON'T BUY THE LIE) – anyone else come to mind? Anyone at all? Maybe someone who's been on the team for two years now? Your fucking goalie, is this ringing a bell? What the fuck is this? If you couldn't get Danny back or you didn't want Danny back, okay, whatever, but why is there some kind of “there has never been a Comrade Mahealani” information blackout happening? We're not going to forget Danny exists, he was here three episodes ago.
I love Scott struggling to be a good team player and not to be jealous of Liam. Poor little fella, he's really doing his best! (Also, everything about him and Stiles in these lacrosse scenes is both shippy and hilarious, but especially O'Brien's delivery on “hey, Garret, shut up.” It's the definition of a nothingburger line, but he just makes it pure gold.)
I think Malia should go to all the practices and bet on them with Coach. It's not against district rules or anything if it's just practice, right? Although I feel she'll learn quite quickly that Kira is the safer money, and that is also the beginning of a story I want to read.
Excellent kiss music, by the way. And also, Vancouver Sleep Clinic is a fab band name.
What does “hunting's legal in some parts of the state” mean? Obviously there are places in any state you're allowed or not allowed to hunt, so that's not news. I assume (too lazy to Google) that California has a Fish & Wildlife Department that issues state hunting licenses, but I guess it could be done on a county-by-county basis, so that's what he means by legal in some parts, and by implication, not in other parts? That just seems like such a weird phrasing to me, but what do I know, I've only ever lived in Red States.
I get that it was Very Necessary and Significant to use red for “I have no clue,” so Stiles would feel simpatico with her because they came up with the same system or whatever, but... red markers aren't highlighters. Look at the book. You clearly can't read any of those lines. She's not highlighting those lines in red, she's blocking them out in red. You know what a red highlighter is? It's pink. It's a pink highlighter.
Also, what? No, it's not because you use Lydia's notes, although I'm sure they're great. Math is easier for you than it is for Malia because the last math class she had was in the fourth grade. It's legit crazy that Malia's been dumped in the same math class as all her friends. It's not like she's hidden the fact that she was missing/a runaway for all those years. Does Malia not have a fucking IEP? Who's writing this stuff? Are the special ed teachers in Beacon Hill all stuck in the same parallel dimension as the social workers? Oh, my god, why does the show do this to me? This episode is like “Galvanize” all over again. Parts of it are so fucking great! Why does it want to hurt me with so much gratuitous nonsense at the same time? Quarantine that shit in its own episode! Quit getting nonsense all over all the good ones!
Aw, that's a nice, low-key reveal though on Liam's interracial family. (I started to say “Liam's parents' interracial marriage,” but then it occurred to me that Liam could be both adopted and have a stepfather. That seems far less likely than that his mother is white and her husband is black, but it's certainly possible! It reminds me of an old Marsha Warfield stand-up routine from the era of Diff'rent Strokes and Webster – I said it was old! – about trying to pitch a sitcom to the networks about a rich black couple who “adopt a little white boy who won't grow.” That is, I assume it was a routine, and not the legitimately saddest missed opportunity of the 1980s, because that would've been the best.)
In spite of my bitching, I did like this episode. It was sort of a weird tonal balancing act between the extended adorable and hilarious lacrosse plotline and the basic-cable gore and jump-scares of the first and last acts, but I think they pulled it off, and they gave us just enough time with the Liam stuff at the very end for the implications to sink in and to get us psyched about finding out what happens next. The Derek stuff was a bit of a fun-sink, but I'm pretty used to Derek being where fun goes to die in this universe. Bless his heart.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-29 04:32 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2015-06-17 02:31 am (UTC)From: