Is this a TV show, or a REALLY long commercial for Axe body spray?
A few months back, I previewed the trailer for MTV’s Teen Wolf, a sort-of new take on a VERY old comedy film of the same name that starred Michael J. Fox. Last night, after MTV’s Shamless Promotion of All Things Twilight Movie Awards, I managed to catch the show’s premiere episode. But just in case YOU didn’t, here’s what happened . . .
It was a dark and stormy night . . . (Stop me if you’ve heard this one, before.)
“When they told me I was going to get a cameo role in a new teen drama, I didn’t think this was what they meant.”
Meet “typical high school student, from a small sleepy town,” Scott McCall, and his half-naked torso . . .
I vaguely recall glibly remarking, when I first watched the trailer for this show, that the main character was shirtless for about three-quarters of the scenes featured in the promo; and that this was most likely a nasty case of false advertising. Well, ladies and gentleman, I stand corrected. Suffice it to say that our new pal Scott never met a shirt he liked very much. Fortunately, he has the body to pull it off. (Pun intended.)
Anywhoo, we interrupt our regularly scheduled program of Naked Pull-Ups by Scott, to bring you this Very Important News Flash: There’s a STRANGE NOISE Coming from Outside!
So concerned is Scott about this Strange Noise that he must put on clothing to investigate. And we all know how much Scott hates wearing clothes. With his trusty bat in hand, Scott slowly creeps outside, so as not to alert the Thing That Goes Bump in the Night that he’s coming. It is not until he reaches the edge of his front porch, that he learns the source of the Strange Noise. Brace yourselves, kiddies! Because the Strange Noise is coming from . . .
AHHHHHH! It’s the Upside-Down QuirkyBest Friend / Insertion of Comic Relief! Wow, they really had me going for a minute there. And by “really had me going,” I mean “didn’t have me going at all.”
Upside-Down Quirky Best Friend has a name. It’s “Stiles.” Why is it that the quirky best friends always have the cool names, like “Boner,” “Cockroach,” and “Stiles,” while the “heroes” always have run-of-the-mill names, like “Mike,” “Adam,” and “Scott?” These are things I think about WAY too often.
Stiles’ dad is the Chief of Police in the Sleepy Town of Beacon Hills, where Scott and Stiles live. After doing some snooping, Stiles learns that the police found HALF a dead body in the woods. So, he thinks it would be a SWELL idea for him and Scott to go Corpse Hunting. Though clearly reluctant to interrupt his fun-filled evening of Naked Chin-Ups and Admiring His Own Hot Body, Scott ultimately agrees to accompany his friend into the Dark and Evil Forest in search of Trouble with a Capital “T.”
“Bet you can’t do THIS, Naked Chin-up Boy! Weeeeeeeeee!”
I should perhaps mention now that our hero uses an inhaler. This, of course, is meant to show that, at least prior to The Change, Scott has “Human Limitations.” Either that, or the producers just like watching him blow and suck . . .
Scott’s and Stiles’ Corpse Hunting Excursion doesn’t last long. Stiles dad promptly finds his son in the woods, and drags him home by his ear. Nice going, DAD! Way to poop on your son’s CSI fantasies! Fortunately (or, unfortunately, depending on how you look at these things), Scott has managed to evade capture. His cunning is awarded, when he is ALMOST STAMPEDED TO DEATH BY A CAVALRY OF BAD CGI GRAPHICS FRIGHTENED WOODLAND CREATURES!!
As this was a surprisingly DARK show, in the sense that there was hardly any LIGHT on the screen at all, I couldn’t manage to secure a solid screencap of the Stampede Scene. Suffice it to say, it looked a little something like THIS . . .
Though Scott’s head miraculously manages to escape the melee, unsquashed by hooves, the stampede does happen to nab his inhaler, during their escape. Using his cell phone as a flashlight, Scott combs the woods for his inhaler, but instead finds the chewed-up female pictured above. Though she kind of looks like an inhaler . . . and, in her previous incarnation, Scott may have liked to suck on her, she is woefully too large to fit in our hero’s mouth.
(Yes, I recognize this joke was in VERY bad taste. My apologies.)
And just when you think this night can’t get any worse for our hero . . . HEEEEEEEEEEERRREEEE’S WEREWOLF!
Wolfy tackles Scott, taking a sizeable chunk out of his insanely well-defined abs. However, it ultimately chooses not to cut our hero IN HALF, like his last victim, because . . . well . . . that would make doing Naked Chin-ups WAYYYY too easy for him, now wouldn’t it?
“Dude! Take it from someone who knows! Get that sh*t checked out by a doctor, STAT!”
“I concur!”
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the minute Scott escapes the werewolf, he is ALMOST HIT BY A CAR!
“You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!”
Now, under normal circumstances, I would have made some cracks about how UTTERLY MORONIC it was of Scott to go home, put some gauze on his tummy, and go to bed, rather than heading STRAIGHT TO THE HOSPITAL, for some heavy-duty rabies shots. However, given the CRAP night Scott, had, I can understand why he just wanted to call it an evening.
After all, had he gone to the hospital, with his luck, the doctor on-call would probably have confused him with the patient next door, who was suffering from gangrene of the weiner. . .
“Hi, nice to meet you! My name is Love Interest . . . er . . . I mean Allison.”
It’s the first day of school. We learn immediately, that, despite his penchant for Naked Chin-Ups, and the fact that he sort-of, kind-of, resembles Taylor Lautner, Scott is NOT popular. We know this instantly, because he (gulp) RIDES HIS BIKE TO SCHOOL! Later on, in the episode, we see Stiles pick up Scott in his car, and we can’t help but wonder why the former doesn’t drive his pal to school in the morning to spare him this cruel indignity.
Quirky Best Friend FAIL!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Stiles than adds insult to injury, by telling Scott that it is HIS fault that Stiles isn’t popular either. “I’ve been Scarlet Nerded by you,” says Stiles. (That’s funny. I thought Stiles was unpopular, because he keeps interrupting Naked Chin-Up Time.)
In class, we get our first sign that Scott is going through “The Changes,” when he hears a cell phone ringing from OUTSIDE the school, as well as the ENTIRE conversation that takes place thereon. I’ll admit that the whole “superhuman hearing” thing confused me a bit. Why do certain sounds seem EXTREMELY loud to Scott (like this phone call, and his coach’s whistle, later in the episode), while others don’t? For example, if Scott could hear telephone conversations made 100 or so meters away outside, wouldn’t closer sounds, like the breathing of his own fellow classmates, drive him insane? Science geeks out there, feel free to help me out with this one . . .
Regardless of how or why Scott was able to hone in on New Girl Allison’s cell phone conversation, it ended up helping him out BIG time, when he overheard that she brilliantly arrived at school without a pen. (She’s a real world-beater, this one!) Let that be a lesson to you boys, ALWAYS carry an extra pen between your legs in your pocket.
“Drink the Kool-Aid, Allison!”
After class, Scott is once again able to ignore the conversation his friends are having RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, and, instead, focus on the conversation Allison is having with the Popular Kids, who are trying to make her join their Cool Clique, because she is hot. Allison doesn’t seem interested in being Popular, however.
I assume this is supposed to make us like her/ relate to her more. But I just didn’t buy it. After all, when you are the new kid at school, ALL you want to do is make friends . . . any friends. And if you can manage to befriend the kind of kids that are going to make your life easier in high school, you DO IT, no matter how big of jackasses those kids ultimately end up being. Just sayin’. Anyway, Allison looks longingly at Scott from across the hallway. Eye f*&king ensues . . .
“I would very much like to devour the bottom half of your body, and leave the top half in the woods for dumb high school kids to find.”
“I didn’t know werewolves played lacrosse?”
School’s over. And it’s time for the First Lacrosse Practice. Every student who’s not on the team seems to be in the stands, which makes me wonder whether Beacon Hills High has any other sports / extracurriculars, or if it’s just a One Team Town. The Lacrosse Coach is WAY TOO energetic and has an obnoxiously nasal voice! He reminds me of what I imagine a used car salesman on crack would sound like. It works for him, though . . .
“CRACK IS WHACK . . . BUT TASTY!”
“My whole life has been spent sitting on the sidelines,” Scott whines to his bestie Stiles. Get it? SIDELINES? It’s a SPORTS METAPHOR!
But Scott’s not going to sit on the sidelines today! No sir! He’s going to sit in the GOAL . . .
He does this, based on his Oh-So-Supportive Coach’s theory that he’ll suck so bad at defending the space, that it will give the other players the confidence they need to start the season off right . . .
Things get off to kind of a bad start, when Scott, deafened by the ear-splitting sound of Coach’s whistle, becomes distracted, and takes a shot right in the head. After that, however, his werewolf abilities kick in, and he catches EVERYTHING thrown at him, like he was BORN to play goalie. This does not please Alpha Male Douchebag Jackson, AT ALL! In fact, it makes him SO MAD that he homoerotically slams Scott into the lockers, and asks him where he’s getting his “juice?”
“I REALLY want to kiss you, right now.”
“My mom does all the grocery shopping,” responds the completely innocent to the World of Roid Rage, Scott. When Scott then comically starts monologue-ing to his rival about all the weird stuff that’s been happening to him since his werewolf bite, Jackson thinks the Unpopular Kid is making fun of him. And so, like any cliched villain, Jackson utters THIS classic line, “There’s something going on with you, and I’M GOING TO FIND OUT WHAT IT IS.” (Are you trembling with fear? Because I’m trembling with fear . . .)
Who’s afraid of the Hot Bad Wolf?
After school, Stiles and Scott go back to the woods to retrieve Scott’s inhaler, and to get another glimpse of the corpse version of Venus Di Milo . . .
But, lo and behold, the body is GONE!
In it’s place is Wolf Man, Derek Hale. He glowers and smoulders a bit, making some remarks about this being “private property,” before tossing Scott his inhaler, and walking off into the sunset.
“Hey Derek, what’s with ALL the clothes? I thought our kind liked to be naked all the time . . . Maybe that’s just me.”
Stiles explains that Derek is a few years older than they are, and that his whole family died in a fire, ten years ago. How convenient!
Speaking of convenient . . .
Scott McCall – Dog Whisperer / Lady Killer
Did I mention that new-ANIMAL Scott works at an animal clinic? Did I also mention that all the non-canine animals sheltered there now seem deathly afraid of him? Gee, I wonder why?
It’s yet another “dark and stormy night.” There’s a knock on the animal clinic door. It’s Allison. She’s wet . . . and sad. Apparently, she hit some cuddly little puppy with her car. Does it have an owner, one who’s worried sick about its absense? Nobody seems to know or care . . . not when it gets in the way of Flirtation and Foreplay.
Though Allison was somehow able to get the dog that she ran over into the backseat of her car, now, conveniently, she can’t touch it, because it is too angry and snarly. Enter Magical Scott, and his Mesmeric Dog Whispering Eyes of Lust . . .
All of the sudden, Puppy could care less about having his leg flattened by the car of some random pretty girl. He (or she) is in LOVE! (And Scott didn’t even have to take off his shirt to obtain this result. Go figure!)
“Take me to your Naked Chin-Up Bar, and show me your biscuit.”
As it turns out, unpopular as he may be at school, Scott is quite the little charmer with the ladies and the dogs. Ever the smooth operator, Scott wraps Puppy’s wound, while telling Allison that he TOO would have CRIED, if he ran over a dog with his car. (Wimp!) He then helps Allison gather up the courage to pet Puppy’s fur.
“See? He likes you,” whispers Scott. (And by “he” I mean, “My Weiner.’)
Scott then pulls the “you have something on your face” trick, so that he can gently caress Allison’s cheek. And if I wasn’t so impressed by how ridiculously good Scott is at this, I’d be truly nauseated by this entire conversation.
Given how many points Scott has already scored in the “Get Into New Girl’s Pants” Game, it should be absolutely NO surprise to anybody that, when he asks her out to a party (to which (1) he was never actually invited; and (2) when SHE was initially invited, she lied and said she had Family Night) she agrees, before he can even finish his sentence. Well played, Teen Wolf!
We end the evening with an at LEAST Half-Naked, if not MORE, Scott jerking off blissfully staring at the Full Moon rising outside his bedroom window. (Uh OH!)
More Naked Scott (YAY!) More Obligatory Lacrosse Scenes (BOO!)
The next morning, Scott wakes up in the woods, with no idea how he got there. And so, he frolics around half-naked for a while (which is WAY more fun than Naked Chin-ups!), and takes a quick dip in the neighbor’s pool . . .
The whole scene was about two minutes long, and had no plot significance, whatsoever. And yet, it was my favorite part of the entire Pilot Episode. Hmmm . . . interesting. 😉
At Lacrosse tryouts, Scott, not surprisingly, kicks ass again, this time, on offense. When the Coach tells Scott he’s made the team’s starting lineup, everyone in the stands gets up and cheers, making me wonder if they too have wolf-sensitive hearing. But Quirky Best Friend Stiles is concerned that his friend’s sudden sports prowess is “unnatural.” And so he takes a page out of the Bella Swan Book of Plot Explanation, and Googles “Werewolves” . . .
Stiles forces a very annoyed Scott, who is just hours away from his Date with Destiny Allison, to come over to his house so that he can explain this particular television show’s werewolf mythology warn his friend that he is now a werewolf. In other words, from now on, but especially during a Full Moon, Scott is at high risk of becoming a bloodthirsty monster, any time he gets angry or sexually aroused.
“First you interrupt my Naked Chin-Ups, and now THIS! You are the BIGGEST . . . COCKBLOCK . . . EVER!”
Scott does not exactly take this news well. And Stiles’ attempt to call Allison, on his friend’s behalf, to cancel their date, gets him even MADDER. I smell another SEXY WALL SLAM!
“I am so turned on by you, right now.”
Scott quickly apologizes for his animal-like behavior, but it doesn’t stop him from going on his date with Allison. After Scott leaves, Stiles notices to his horror, that at some point during the Sexy Wall Slam, Scott managed to CLAW THE CRAP out of Stiles’ desk chair. Oops!
Scott McCall – Party ANIMAL!
We are treated to a few more Obligatory Shirtless Scott Shots, as our hero’s mom engages in conversation with him, while he prepares for his date. She made some comment about him not getting his new girlfriend knocked up. However, I can’t really tell you the specifics of what she said. I was too busy staring at THE ABS.
At the party, things are going quite well between Allison and Scott. They are grinding up one another, all close and sexy. And EVERYBODY is taking notice. (Remember, Scott is a SPORTS STAR, NOW! No more being Scarlet Nerded for him!)
Clearly, Alpha Male Douchebag is not that good of a kisser.
But then Scott starts getting SEXUALLY AROUSED, and the TRANSFORMATION begins. He rudely rushes out of the party, leaving poor Allison stranded, as he speeds back home, in his mom’s car. (First Date FAIL!) Fortunately, Hot Derek Hale is there to drive Allison home. So, what if he’s SO OBVIOUSLY the werewolf who bit Scott? Who cares that he literally CHEWED OFF A WOMAN’S ASS, prior to the start of the episode? Mommy LIKES Derek Hale, A LOT!
Hey Derek, just so you know, you can eat my ass, ANYTIME!
Back in Were-Puberty Land, Scott is in his bathroom, and, SURPRISE, he’s taken off his shirt again, and gone to sit in the shower. That’s when the cliched ugly wolf fingernails start to sprout . . .
Either Quirky Best Friend Stiles is a TOTAL stalker, or he was expecting this to happen all along. (Thanks Google!) Because, the minute Scott is out of the shower, Stiles is at his door, telling him he still loves his pal, even though he’s a Beast in Desperate Need of a Manicure. Scott inquires about Allison. And Stiles informs him that his girlfriend went home with Derek Hale. (So, I guess we are supposed to assume that Stiles was invited to the party too?)
Knowing exactly WHAT Derek is now, and the terrible things of which he is capable, a Wolfy-Headed Scott rushes into the forest to find Derek, while Stiles runs to Allison’s house (How did he know where she lived?) to make sure she still has legs. Fortunately, Allison is OK. The same can’t really be said for Scott, who looks like THIS now . . .
Scott runs into Derek. And he’s all “WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME? WAH!!!!!”
And Derek’s all, “You have a wonderful GIFT now. I am your were- ‘brother.’ I will teach you how to survive and control your sexual urges. We are going to bone so many hot chicks, together. Blah, Blah, Blah.”
Then, the Evil Hunters arrive and start shooting darts at poor Scott. (Phallic imagery, anyone?) Those bastards would have killed him too, if Derek didn’t go all BIG BAD WOLF on their lowly human asses. (Like I said, I WANT ME some Derek, BIG TIME!)
The next day, Stiles picks up Scott for in his car. (Sure, NOW he does it!)
I’ll admit that Stiles makes me fall in love with him a bit, when he tells Scott that he will help him cope with his Little Werewolf Problem. Mr. Sidekick is even willing to go as far as to chain Scott up in his basement during Full Moons (sounds kinky) and feed him mice (sounds gross), if he has to do so. Now, THAT is true friendship!
Speaking of people who are unrealistically forgiving of Scott, Allison seems not nearly as peeved as she should be about Teen Wolf bailing on their First Date, and leaving her to get a ride home with the Hot Serial Killer. In fact, all it takes is one puppy dog look from Scott, and Allison is already agreeing to Date 2. Then, Allison’s dad comes to pick her up from school. And I bet you will never guess what HIS occupation is . . .
. . . Oh, that’s right. He’s an EVIL WEREWOLF HUNTER!
And THAT was the Pilot Episode of Teen Wolf, in a nutshell. Be sure to tune in next week, for more Obligatory Shirtless Shots of Scott, Wacky Stiles’ Antics, and Smouldering Derek Hale Hotness.