While You Were Sleeping – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “Monstrous”

Question: What valuable life lesson can be gleaned from both the adorkable mid-nineties romantic coma comedy While You Were Sleeping and this past week’s installment of Teen Wolf?

Answer: They both teach us that comatose thirty-somethings named Peter with disturbingly expressive (sometimes frightening) eyebrows have the power to provide purpose in the lives of shy, socially awkward girls, who make questionable hair care choices . . .

. . . but only while mid-coma.

Poor Meredith Walker! If she had only shared her hospital room with The Dad from The O.C. instead of The Gorilla thing from Season 1, her life would be so much less complicated right now . . .

This week’s installment of Teen Wolf was equal parts satisfying and frustrating . . .

Satisfying, because our oddly loveable Benefactor has finally revealed her motivations for mass murder, and they are, if not entirely understandable (Who recorded all those tapes? How exactly did Meredith manage to control a 70’s era computer program WITH HER MIND?), at least weirdly sympathetic. (If we had to listen 24-7 to the dream-state ramblings of a scarfaced wackadoo with seemingly czarists designs on his easily extorted upper class town, we’d want some heads to roll too . . . )

Frustrating because . . . HUH?

I mean talk about a Deus Ex Machina! This was literally a case where there appeared to be an actual ghost in the machine . . .

. . . who pretty much controlled everything bad that happened to the characters throughout the entire season. . .

Our heroes then discovered that ghost almost entirely by accident . . .

. . . and then, sometime around the 50 minute mark of the episode, that ghost just got tired and went home.

But hey, at least Scott’s Wolf Facelift looked cool, right?

Let’s review shall we?

[As always a big hearty thanks to my screencapping pal Andre, who is 100% immune to the charms of the sometimes naked (always sexy) Deputy Parrish (WHY? HOW?), but always screencaps him faithfully for me anyway, because he’s just cool like that.]

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This . . .

Don’t you just hate it when it’s pouring buckets of CGI-perfected rain outside, and you just so happened to leave the house/cave (?) without your umbrella?

“My perm is ruined!”

Don’t you also hate it when it’s raining, and you are being hunted by an army of black suited militia types with laser guns?

“Think anyone will see us?”

“There’s no place like cave .  . . there’s no place like cave.”

I know I do . . .

That’s why I always make sure to have my own personal pocket ninja available to defend my honor at a moment’s notice . . .

Hiiiiyaaa!

(Also, I never leave home without my umbrella . . . well . . . almost never.)

Speaking of pocket-sized things one should never leave home without . . .

The Trials and Tribulations of Teeny Wolf

I think a part of Scott assumed that the second he turned Liam (accidental or not), the latter would immediately become his fashionable accessory for always . . . not unlike one of Paris Hilton’s purse dogs . . .

“Yo quiero ser Scrappy Doo . . .

. . . a permanent guest on the back of his motorcycle . . .

. . . the permanent squire to his knight, during Weekly Werewolf Fight Time . . .

. . . a permanent awkward third wheel on his kissy face dates with Kira . . .

Unfortunately for Scott, Liam doesn’t seem to really be feeling his purse dog status. (Though he’s sure got those puppy dog eyes down pat.)

The thing about supernatural TV shows is that they tend to require an Audience Surrogate character to keep things grounded . . . someone with the ability to say the type of things you or I would say when placed in the ridiculous supernatural situations the Scooby Gang gets placed in each week . . .

Someone to say things like, “Isn’t it kind of weird how so many of our friends die, and the following week we just seem to forget they even existed?”

And, “This whole Werewolf Curse Thing doesn’t seem like anything that a really good razor, a cough drop, and some Visine couldn’t cure.”

And, “Where the heck is that really bad techno fight music coming from?”

Up until around Season 3, that person for Teen Wolf was Stiles . . .

But, while the Scooby Gang’s Resident Human is still just as relatable, clever and wisecracking as he ever was . . .you’ve got to admit he’s gotten a wee bit blasé about the whole Mass Murder Thing of late . . .

. . . (maybe it has something to do with all that time he spent as an Evil Japanese Spirit, with a face wrapped in Charmin Extra Soft)

“Don’t squeeze the Charmin.”

Enter Liam . . .

He’s new to the Werewolf Game . . .

. . . he finds being almost brutally killed week after week a teensy bit traumatizing . . .

. . . he believes becoming Lacrosse Team Captain is a bit more reasonable of a goal then Rescuing The World From Evil . . .

In other words, he’s just like us . . .

(Only slightly younger and much, much prettier . . .)

Anyway, Liam earns some major points cool points from me this week for getting Scott to acknowledge the existence of all his instantly forgotten Dead Friends . . .

Bravo, Little Guy . . .

Psycho Killer (Que’st-ce que c’est!)

Ahhhh, Meredith, faking your own death, and then casually admitting to singlehandedly orchestrating the systematic Mass Murder for Hire of what seems like three-quarters of the town of Beacon Hills has lost you a few popularity points with Everyone’s Favorite Authority Figure . . .

“I’m definitely selling my Team Meredith t-shirt on E-bay!”

Now, they are never going to let you date Isaac . . . assuming he ever returns . . . and/or anyone decides to remember that he exists . . .

When Sheriff Stilinski’s and Lydia’s feeble attempts to glean from Zany Meredith something resembling a motive fail miserably, they decide to call for reinforcements . . . Deep V-Neck reinforcements . . .

Shame on you Meredith! Peter is pretty much old enough to be your FATHER . . . or, at least, her father . . .

But hey, you know what they say . . . a lid for every pot . . . even if that lid is a full-on sociopath with a possible furry fetish . . .

Help is on the way . . .

Remember all those Buddhist werewolves who went out into a forest, got poisoned by canine distemper and died?

They’re baaaaaackkk . . .

“We’re going to need a bigger bathroom.”

Well, some of them, anyway . . .

Scott and Co. somehow locate the surviving members of Satomi’s pack. (It probably helps that they hide in completely inauspicious places . . . like in the center of high school football field.)

But where to put them all?

I know! How about that adorable hotel the gang stayed at a couple seasons back? That place was swanky!

Scott, being Scott, decides on a spectacular hiding place for his furry friends . . . a place that no one would ever think to look . . . unless they were a werewolf hunter . . .

. . . or a Werejaguar . . .

. . . or a gang of trained assassins . . .

. . . or Peter Hale . . .

OK, on second thought, maybe this wasn’t the best hiding place for a family of werewolves (or the second best, or the third best, or the fourth best, or the twenty ninth). But hey, at least they didn’t use the Hale Vault again . . .

Of course, Scott has barely had enough time to show his new roommates the Argent Arms bathroom when company arrived . . .

. . . and then . . . even worse company . . .

Tongue Tied . . .

Meanwhile, back in Death Trap hospital, Stiles is nursing a possible concussion from his most recent Brush With Death . . .

Mama McCall asks everyone’s favorite human if he has any dying requests . . .

He does.   He wants a tape player . . .

. . . or, as Mama McCall knows them, cassette player.

And so tapes cassettes and the record player make yet another cameo appearance on this season of Teen Wolf.

Next season, phone booths . . .

. . . Oregon Trail . . .

. . . and that asshat dog from Duck Hunt . . .

But Mama McCall has other ideas, apart from archaic technological devices, to aid Stiles on his road to recovery . . .

How about, conjugal visits?

That’s right, boys and girls. Stiles and Malia are back together . . . and all it took was a few minutes in an antiseptic hospital room . . . possibly reminding them of that time they took one another’s virginity in the basement of another wellness institution . . . The Nuthouse . . . shortly before a possessed Stiles went on a murderous rampage and attempted to assassinate all of his friends . . .

. . . aka . . . the Good Ole Days . . .

Mystery Date

Back at the Beacon Hills PD, the moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived . . .

FRO . . .

Meets . . .

DUDEBRO . . .

It’s a showdown of epic proportions. They meet. They exchange pleasantries . . .

BRO RAPES FRO’S NECK WITH HIS GROSS NAILS . . .

Perhaps, I should backtrack a bit . . .

You see, Uncle Peter doesn’t seem to remember Meredith at all. (And that fro and those Massive Googly Eyes are not the kind of things a guy like Peter quickly forgets.)

And yet, Meredith remembers Peter VERY well. It seems she knew him back in the day . . . you know . . . before the magical werewolf plastic surgery . . . and the gorilla thing . . . and the whole rising from the dead thing . . .

In fact, Meredith knew Peter VERY well . . . so well, in fact, that she was willing to orchestrate a Mass Murder Deadpool, using his money . . . because he ASKED HER TO DO IT!!

*record scratch*

Yup, that’s right . . . Peter Hale arranged for the theft of his own money. He is literally the benefactor of The Benefactor . . .

. . . and he doesn’t remember one minute of it . . .

The Smoking Gun . . .

Back at Stiles’ house (I guess tonguing Malia cured his concussion after all), Stiles and Malia play around with a tape cassette player to determine whether any additional information about the Benefactor’s source of funds distribution can be gleaned from Lydia’s grandma’s Death Tape.

Guess what? It can! Somehow Malia discovers that the tape in question was actually made at Lydia’s grandmother’s lake house . . . i.e. the creepy place with the white walls and the Really Rickety Tape Recorder.

So, Little Red Riding Stiles and the Big Bad Werecoyote take a nice little trip to grandma’s house, where they proceed to listen to the same record player Lydia’s been staring stonily at just about all season. Only this time, they hear something different . . . something Lydia apparently missed . ..

“You had ONE job, Lydia! One job!”

There’s something in the wall!

I wonder what it could be?

Is it? (A) The cast from Sixth Sense?

(B) A band of vengeful Oompa Loompas

(C) The set piece for every movie involving computers that took place between around 1975 and 1988.

If you guessed (C) you get a cookie.

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the source of the Deadpool . . .

But how did it get there? How did the Benefactor access it? How does it work / distribute funds?

Well, Werebangers, hold on to your hats. Because you are about to get the answers to all some almost one of those questions . . .

Pillow Talk

So, here’s how it all went down . . .

Apparently, Peter and Meredith were coma bed buddies, back when Peter was suffering third degree burns from the Hale House Fire, and Meredith was suffering from . . . really bad music?

Also during that time, Banshee Meredith’s I See Dead People’s powers apparently magically expanded to I Talk To Coma Patients . . .

And Peter . . . well, he was the chattiest coma patient ever . . .

So, chatty, in fact, that he basically wrote the entire plot for Season 4 of Teen Wolf . . . a plot that Meredith wrote down faithfully in her mind.

You see, Coma Peter was MAD about the Hale Fire . . . mad about what it said about his werewolf heritage, how it made them seem weak and helpless.

And so, Coma Peter devised a plan in his mind . . . a sort of Darwin Survival of the Hairiest Plan . . . a Noah’s Arc for Were Things plan to rebuild the supernatural nation, by murdering every supernatural being that couldn’t fend for themselves, and (presumably) having the surviving supernaturals engage in a LOT of sex and repopulation pronto . . .

And then, Meredith, being industrious and only slightly psychotic, immediately upon getting out of the hospital, used her heretofore nonexistence Berserker contacts to steal $170 million from Peter’s Hale vault, her heretofore unused computer knowledge to arrange for a complex wire transfer system to be run out of the heretofore unseen computer in Dead Grandma Lorraine Martin’s wall, and her heretofore unseen anger against “wimpy” supernaturals to arrange for the murders of an entire truckload of them.

When Peter learns about this, he’s of course, wryly amused and slightly smug, as he is when he learns pretty much every piece of information on the show.

He’s also, as it appears, entirely innocent. Because, if thinking bad thoughts was a crime we’d all be guilty. And if wearing Deep V-Neck shirts was a crime . . . well . . . that’s another story . . .

So, Sheriff Stilinski pulls a gun on Mr. I’m Always the Alpha . . .

. . . snorts and stirs for a bit . . .

. . . and ultimately lets him live to aimlessly plot the murder of Scott McCall another day . . .

. . . And plot the murder of Scott McCall, Peter does . . . big time . . . again . . .

Fight Fight Fight . . .

Meanwhile, a team of trained assassins ambush the Scooby Gang at Argent Arms . . .

And Scott gets MAD! SUPER MAD!

Almost Gorilla Thing Mad . . . or Gargoyle Smurf Mad . . .

Maybe even Darach mad . . .

Except not quite . . .

And then, just when things start to get really Alpha-y . . .

Stiles and Malia shut down the deadpool by . . . wait for it . . . turning off the computer . . .

No seriously, they found a key in some wine bottle and . . . turned it to off . . .

Just think, an entire season worth of murders . . . and they all could have been avoided in the same way you fix your laptop when it freezes . . .

As for Alpha Scott . . . well, better luck next season.

Next week, on Teen Wolf . . .

See ya then, Werebangers . . .