Burning Up for Your Love – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “The Fox and The Wolf”

Memories, like the corners of my mind . . . misty water-colored memories, of the way we were . . . before you got burned alive by grandma, and had to wear toilet paper around your head . . . and I accidentally got you possessed by an evil fox spirit . . . and killed you with my big ole sword .  . . and you came back to terrorize the entire cast of Teen Wolf . . .

Hey there, Werebangers!  This week’s installment of TeenWolf took us back in time to 1943, in order to finally “unwrap the bandages” on the Nogitsune’s sort-of origin story.  Turns out our evil villain was simply following orders from Kira’s mom????!

“I’m kind of The Worst.”

We also learned that the Nogitsune’s tendency to possess attractive likeable boys with good hearts didn’t start with Stiles.

“Hey Kira’s mom?  Wanna play with my balls?”

But hey, now that we see what happened to the Nogitsune’s previous host, I’m starting to think our loveable hero has it easy.  At least Stiles gets to keep his pretty face for all his troubles  . . .

 A face that’s too pretty to be wrapped in Charmin. . .

It wasn’t my favorite episode of Teen Wolf.  I’m not going to lie.  While I appreciated the cinematic beauty and standalone-quality “The Fox and The Wolf” offered, I’ve never been one for flashback episodes that are focused almost entirely on supporting cast members.  While I feel like the episode was important to Season 3B in its reveal of the Nogitsune’s “humble beginnings,” and its finally tying the ever- pervasive theme of Japanese internment camps (and the Nemeton, for that matter) to the Story Proper, part of me feels like the narrative could have been condensed to one or two scenes, leaving more time to focus on the present-day dilemmas of our Scooby Gang, as they prepare to wage war against the Nogitsune.

(I mean, Dylan O’Brien literally had no lines in the entire episode.  All he got to do during the entire hour was wave at the camera for two seconds.  What the f*&k was that about?)

Nevertheless, I appreciated Arden Cho’s impressive efforts in an episode that fell almost entirely on her shoulders, as she tackled the dual role of both Kira, and a younger version of her nearly 900-year old mother (Now , that’s some GOOD plastic surgery!).  And hey, I like looking at pretty soldier boys as much as the next girl.  So, who am I to complain?

Let’s review, shall we?

[As always, special thanks to Andre my screencapper, for whom I would totally steal a baseball, if we were ever stuck in an internment camp together.]

Why I’ll Never Look at a Bottle the Same Way Again . . .

Let me start by saying that the Nogitsune will likely go down in history as my favorite Teen Wolf villain ever.  He’s crafty.  He’s terrifying.  He took Dylan O’Brien’s acting to a whole other level . . .

But one of the things that always pissed me off about him was his insistence on spouting off those annoying childish riddles.  He’s like the only kid in your elementary school class who still found knock-knock jokes funny after age 5, and continued to spout them off annoyingly to anybody who would listen all through middle school.

But now we know that the Nogitsune’s reliance on riddles is merely ironic.  He’s just making fun of his first (scratch that second  .  . . ) victim (who was kind of an asshat, anyway, truth be told).  And that makes him SO much cooler . . .

“YOLO!”

The episode opens in 1943.  Two mildly attractive soldiers are disposing of dead bodies.  One of them keeps trying to annoyingly pepper his comrade, who is clearly unamused, with stupid riddles.

Q: “What has teeth, but doesn’t bite?”

A “A comb.”

Q:“What has a neck but no head?”

A: “A bottle”

“OK. I’ve got one.  What has two thumbs, a really bad sense of humor, and is about to be killed in the most ironically awful way possible? THIS GUYYYYY!”

Then Mr. Toilet Paper Head himself appears out of nowhere in the middle of the field.  Non-joke loving comrade tries to shoot him to no avail.  In fact, Mr. Toilet Paper Head wrenches his gun from the put-upon shoulder and shoots him, multiple times, in the chest.

“Kiss me, Sweetheart.”

Bad Riddle Teller tries to run, but it isn’t long before Mr. Toilet Paper Head Nogitsune’s got him by the throat as well.  “What’s got a neck, but no head?”  He asks slyly, before decapitating the annoying soldier, and holding his blood dripping face toward his disembodied corpse.

Now, that may very well have been the first riddle I actually enjoyed.  Does that make me a bad person?

Probably . . .

The Older the Tail, The Stronger the Oni

Having broken free from the nuthouse, a slightly sleep-deprived, but still sexy scary Stiles pays a visit to everybody’s current favorite history professor, Kira’s dad.  Why is it that history professors are constantly put in mortal danger on these supernatural teen shows?  Did all the writers of these television series flunk history, back in high school?  Because, personally, I did fine in history.  If I wrote a teen television series, it would be the math teachers, who’d be in serious trouble . . .

“Oh, hello Stiles.  Let me guess.  You want me to teach you how to read again.”

“No way!  Books are bad!  I hate you and your stupid books.”

He knocks over a few books with his long, oddly erotic fingertips,  as he opines the location of Kira’s mom’s hidden tails . . .  the tails that, when broken create the Darth Vadery-looking Oni, the Oni that are out to murder Nogitsu-Stiles, but, so far, haven’t been all that successful.

It appears that a Kitsune obtains a new tail for every 100 years of life, and Kira’s mom has already lost seven of hers attempting to eradicate Nogitsu-Stiles.  But there is one left.  And it’s the oldest, and therefore, strongest, one of all . . .

When Kira’s dad won’t willingly give up the location of Tail number 8, Nogitsu-Stiles makes him swallow a bug, which gross, but an entirely effective method of torture.

I mean, I’d auction off my first born to not suffer the indignity of having to choke on bugs in front of a sexy evil Dylan O’Brien.  So embarrassing. . .

Picture Perfect

Last week, we saw Stiles’ first possible sex partner escape the Loony Bin, in order to offer up a photograph as payment to Scott McCall, the one person with access to the knowledge Kira needs to turn back into a coyote forever.  (Hey Kira, are you sure this is what you really want?  Because, last I checked coyotes, only got to screw other coyotes . . .in other words, no more Stiles Sex for you!)

This week, we see Scott studying the photograph recently retrieved from the Nogitsune’s pocket.  The woman in the photograph looks just like Kira, herself, though the black and white photo was clearly taken before Kira’s birth, and the man in it is unknown to her.  Suspecting the photograph is of her a relative of hers, Kira takes Scott to the high school for a long-overdue confrontation with her parents.

By the time they arrive, Kira’s mom is already there, helping her husband un-choke on a bug.

“I don’t get it.  He wanted me to talk, but then he made me swallow a bug so that I couldn’t.  He must really hate books.”

Kira’s mom immediately cops to being the woman in the picture, and the true reason for the Nogitsune’s appearance in Mystic Falls.

In other words, it’s HER fault Stiles might die.  KILL HER!!!!!!

Reap What You Sow . . .

Back in flashback era, we see Kira’s mom stealing apple crates and baseballs from soldiers at olden-day Eichen House, and are SOOOOO not amused.  That Stiles killing biatch!

“I’ve really got you by the balls!”

Present day repercussions aside, we learn that Kira’s mom was actually a bit of a Robin Hood, stealing from the soldiers to give to the hungry and deprived in her WW2 Japanese Internment Camp.  She even stole a baseball for a little boy, something that would have seemed out of character in her cold-hard, present-day incarnation.

“I eat small children for breakfast.”

A grandma type warns Kira’s mom, who is about 800 years old at the time, that she is “young and reckless” and itching for a beatdown, if she doesn’t become more careful about what and when she steals.   Kira ‘s mom just blows her off.  After all, what do people who age naturally know about getting ahead in the world?

“Botox is for pussies.”

Especially, Granny here.  She does nothing to save her friends in the internment camp but sit around and play that wanna-be chess game, Go.  And Go has absolutely nothing to do with defeating the villains of this season . . . or does it?

Besides, Kira’s mom will never get caught . .  . not as long as she keeps boning the enemy. . .

Someone’s balls are about to drop about to drop the ball.

Save Stiles

Back at jail, Papa Stilinski breaks Derek and Papa Argent out of jail in the hopes that they will help rescue his son from Evil Fox Mind Control.  With a couple of brain scans in his arsenal, Papa Stilinski reveals what many Werebangers have already surmised, that Stiles’ supposed brain legions were nothing more than a trick perpetrated by the Nogitsune to break down Stiles’ emotional defenses to mind control.    He’s not brain damaged!  He’s just possessed.  SOOOOO MUCH BETTER, right?

This is your brain on Nogitsune. .  . Kind of looks like a frog, doesn’t it?

Kira and Scott want to save Stiles too, but Kira’s mom insists that murdering him is their only way out?  Why?  Because that’s what she had to do LAST TIME . . .

The Ring of Fire

When the entire internment camp comes down with pneumonia, and the medics find themselves without the medication required to cure it, Kira and her American boyfriend discover that the army doctor and those two dorky soliders who died in the beginning of the episode, have been selling the stuff on the black market at the expense of their patients.

The little kid with the baseball dies and his dad is furious.

The entire internment camp readies itself for revolution.  Of course, angry sick prisoners with sticks are no match for well-armed soldiers, right?  Unless, of course, one of those well-armed soldiers messes with grandma . . .

NO ONE BEATS UP GRANNY (the secret werewolf), AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!

Sorry sexy American boyfriend.  It looks like this Bud is for you!

“I’ll take that.”

“Don’t ruin his balls!”

“This takes the term fire crotch to a whole new level.”

“Why did she waste my flaming beer on the only nice soldier in this episode?”

“Give me back my pretty face!”

Then, Kira’s mom gets shot a couple times, and decides to play dead long enough to get shipped off to pasture with the other actually dead bodies, including her boyfriend’s.

Back in the present day, Allison cries to Stiles’ dad in the elevator at the hospital, for no conceivable reason.

“I’ve got the sads.”

“And I’ve got a really inappropriate boner.”

But it fits the mood, and Papa Stilinski is relatively sweet about it (especially considering that HE is the one with the possessed son).  So, we don’t think much of it . . .

Nogitsune Rising . . .

Back in Beacon Hills, the Nogitsune makes his next move, right from the bedroom of his host . . .

“Where the magic happens . . .”

But in 1943, the Nogitsune has not yet arrived, because Kira’s mom has yet to call it.

“Catching a quick nap, before I do something REAALLLLLLY stupid.”

Then, she does call him, unwittingly offering up to the trickster spirit an entire truck filled with the bodies of potential hosts.

“It keeps my burnt crispy skin Charmin soft.”

But only one has a toilet paper head!  And boy is Nogitsu-Burned-Up American Boyfriend Pissed Off!

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again . . .

Nogitsu-Boyfriend responds to his girlfriend’s call to action, by killing, not only those jerky soldiers, but also Kira’s mom’s internment camp friends.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you with your gross pointy teeth!

Realizing that she pretty much brought about the deaths of everyone who croaked in this episode, Kira decides to take down her Nogitsu-Boyfriend once and for all.  And she does it with the big fat sword under her bed that nobody thought to find, despite the fact that (1) she lived in an internment camp, which was inspected daily for contraband, and (2) her internment camp friends REALLY could have used it during the revolution they lost miserably earlier in the episode . . .

“Grandma, what big teeth you have.”

Long story short, Kira’s mom stabs Nogitsu-Reese with her big fat sword, and the help of the Wolf Granny responsible for burning him to a crisp.  She shatters her big fat sword in the process.

But then, just in case Kira’s mom hasn’t done enough stupid things in the context of this episode, she decides to do something REALLLLLLLLY stupid.

A fly comes out of Nogitsu-Boyfriend’s mouth.  Now, let’s guess what Kira’s mom does with the evil fly.

“My precious.”

Does she

(1)    Crush it with her fingers

(2)    Squash it with her heel.

(3)    Keep it alive, put it in a jar, and bury it underneath an ALL POWERFUL SUPERNATURAL TREE.

Did you guess 3?  Of course, you did.  Because you know that being really friggin old doesn’t necessarily make you smart.

“This is a souvenir of my sex life.”

Back in the present day, Kira uses her electric fingers to put her mom’s Big Fat Nogitsu-Killing Sword back together.  Then, her and Scott rush off to “save” Stiles, by chopping up his insides with the largest sushi knife in the world.  Let’s just hope Kira is smart enough to bring along some bug spray . . .

Meanwhile, the rest of the Scooby Gang has found a little gift in Stiles room.  It’s a chess set with all the Teen Wolf characters helpfully labeled.  Derek is the king, of course.

“I’m the King of the Woooooorllld!”

(I smell another Kung Fu Fighting scene to the tune of Mortal Kombat at Derek’s house!)

“You know, you really ought to consider getting more furniture in here.  At least a bed . . .”

Everyone else is pretty much pawns.  And Isaac’s already out of play.  Sorry Isaac.  It looks like having Allison grab your ass has done little to improve your chances for longevity on this show.

It all sounds pretty ominous.  But what does it mean?

Only Nogitsu-Stiles knows .  . . and Jeff Davis, of course.

 

Until next time, Werebangers!

 

The Shadow Knows . . . – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “Riddled”

 

Source

“The Riddler” . . . not exactly one of  the Batman franchise’s most impressive villains.  For one thing, he seemed totally redundant.  I mean, why would Gotham need another “Joker-type” when it already had the Best Joker Ever?

Second, “The Riddler’s” modus operandi was basically asking his adversaries inane questions . . . making him seem much less like a Denizen of Evil, and much more like your Annoying High School Algebra Teacher . . .

But, more than anything, “The Riddler” just looked lame . . .  with the scrawny body, the bad ginger haircut,  the head-to-toe neon green spandex suit with those stupid question marks all over it.  This was a man meant to evoke fear in the hearts of comic book geeks the world over?  He looked more like an out-of-shape cage dancer you’d find working at a gay nightclub catering to the over-70 crowd .  . .

Teen Wolf too has had problems in the past creating truly terrifying looking baddies.  I mean, they always got off to a promising start.  Who could forget the mesmeric druid chanting of the Darach . . . the growls of the Alpha pack and the bloody marks they left in their wake .  . . or hushed talk of the unstoppable, all powerful Demon Wolf?

But then, when these evil doers finally made their way to center stage, their appearances were . . . well .  . . a bit underwhelming, to say the least . . .

In a sense, Season 3B’s Big Baddie is a comment on all the poorly executed villains of Teen Wolf past.  He’s a Riddler done right .  . .

Sure, just like a certain Batman character, the Nogitsune speaks in puzzle, using his words as weapons.  His war against the Scooby Gang is one waged, not on it’s body, but rather against it’s mind, soul and, perhaps most importantly, it’s heart.

But unlike the Baddies before him, the Nogitsune’s appearance is truly terrifying, mainly because it has no appearance at all!  By lingering in the darkness,  and shrouding itself in shadow, the Nogitsune becomes no one and everyone all at once.  He (or she) embodies all of our deepest most secret fears, and tosses them back at us in the form of a mirror showing us our darkest, most despicable, selves  . . .

He also has really f*&ked up teeth . . . and f&*ked up teeth are the worst .  . .

So, come out of the shadows, Werebangers; and be sure to bring your thinking caps . . .  and some dentures,  because it’s time to get “Riddled” . . .

[Once again, a special thanks go out to Andre the Most Powerful and Talented Screencapper in all the Land . . . also the first person I would call at 4 a.m., if I ever found myself trapped in a coyote den having schizophrenic conversations with myself . . .]

Wish you were here . . .

Poor Stiles!  He’s on a Bad Trip.  And I’m not talking about the usual garden-variety bad trip . . . the kind where the pillow smells like feet, the blanket has bed bugs, the pool is being fumigated, the baby in the room next store won’t stop crying, and you are positive the housekeeping staff is stealing your toiletries.  I’m talking about the Wrong Turn, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax, Evil Dead kind of Bad Trip . . .  the kind that usually ends with you rotting away in a forest, missing a few of your most prized body parts . . .

 

Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night to find himself in a dark, fetid smelling place, with no clue where he is or how he got there.  What’s worse,  he’s injured and can’t escape.  What’s even worse than that?  He’s pretty sure he’s not alone . . .

Stiles still has his trusty cell phone though!  And in Beacon Hills, even the Depths of Hell, apparently, get pretty decent cell reception.  So, Stiles does what any of us would do in a situation like this.  He calls . . . The Hottest Girl.

Even under the best of circumstances, Scott is not exactly a brainchild.  And he’s hindered here by a sleep-fogged mind, and the almost incoherent,garbled ramblings of a confused and clearly terrified Stiles.   But Scott still does his honest best to keep his bestie calm, and find out the information he needs to find his pal quickly, and keep him from harm.

The problem, of course, is that the call keeps getting disconnected!  And whenever Scott calls him back, it goes straight to voicemail!   Time to switch to Verizon, Scott!  (Hmmm, I wonder if I can get product placement money for saying that.)

 

 

Scott wakes up the new Robin to his Batman (who also happens to be currently boning his ex), Isaac, so that the two can be useless and ineffective together in finding their pal.  (You know what they say, two half-brains is better than one!)

“I think I just pissed my self.”

“Me too!”

But Stiles is no dummy.  He knows that if he wants to increase his odds of being found, he has get someone with above-average IQ on the case as well.  And so we head to Beacon Hills High, where Lydia and Aiden are engaged in some Sexy Naked Painting Times to the tune of Sexy Retro Music from not-so-retro Bose Speakers, without the threat of being found by school security, because,  as Lydia rightly notes,  “No one in their right mind would take a nightshift job at the High School Where All Extras Die Gory and Painful Deaths.”

 

 

 

“Screw this Banshee Crime Fighting Sh*t.  I’m going to art school!”

And then, just when it seems like things are about to get a little X Rated, Stiles, whose possession by the Nogitsune has apparently armed him with Magical Cockblocking Abilities, chimes through the speakers with a Very Important Message: DON’T HAVE SEX WITH THAT DOOFUS FORMER ALPHA AGAIN, WHEN YOU COULD BE TAKING MY VIRGINITY FROM ME. “HELP FIND ME!”

 

 

“Hey Lydia!  It’s me . . . Stiles .  . . climbing through your speakers . . . snatching up your sex life.  The usual.”

Come quick, Lydia/ Daphne!  Stiles/Velma and the rest of your Scooby Gang need you!

The Cats in the Cradle

You ever play that game when you were a kid?  The one where you and a friend would hold a single string together, and use it to form a series of unrelated images, the chief of which being a baby cradle, and a cat’s eye, which all somehow wove together to tell a very abstract, loosely defined, story?

There’s a bit of childlike innocence in Stiles’ obsession with the red yarn, and his use of it to weave together “unsolved cases” in Beacon Hills.  It’s almost as if there’s a part of Stiles that believes that by physically connecting a series of unrelated incidents together with a strand of yarn, he can somehow forge a literal connection between them.

It’s also kind of f*&ked up.  Seeing the strands of red yarn, each connecting  from a gruesome picture on his bedside wall to his bedpost, one can’t help but be reminded of every episode of Law and Order: SVU she ever saw, where the bad guy inevitably gave away his identity by having similarly lousy taste in room decoration.

 

But, as Lydia notes when she and the Scooby Gang convene in Stiles’ yarn-warped bedroom, Stiles’ Yarn Art may very well be more than a childish pipedream, or even the workings of a diseased mind.  Stiles may be offering his friends up a clue to all the wacked out things that have happened in the town over the past few years.  Could the Nogitsune be the cause of all of them?  Could the Nemeton?

 

 

 

 

After rightly lecturing Scott for listening to an addled-brained Stiles’ advice,  and not telling the teen’s own father he’s missing, Lydia decides to remain behind, amidst the yarn of Stiles’ psyche, in hopes that she alone might be able to decipher the message her partner in crime has been desperately trying to convey.

 

If only Stiles was around to see how easy it was to get Lydia to more spend time on his bed . . .

It’s Just Me, Myself, and I

With the flashlight app from his cellphone casting the only light in his world of darkness, and his foot bare and bloodied inside a coyote trap, Stiles’ schizophrenia / multiple personality disorder / existential crisis gets a bit more literal,  when a bandaged figure crouched in the corner of Stiles’ prison, scratches the Oni “Self” tattoo onto the wall in white chalk, in between what appears to be two crude drawings of eyes.  Then the figure cackles demonically and disappears, as the “self” mark evaporates, and Stiles is left alone with nothing but his smelly bloody feet and those pesky judgy eyes . . .

 

“Hey buddy, you got a first aid kit in here?  I could really use a band-aid?”

 

 

“No bandaid.  Just the entire roll of toilet paper wrapped around my head.”

But who is Stiles’ true Self anyway?  Is he the scared kid lying on the floor in the middle of the night?  The crazy kid with all the yarn over his bed?  The goofy guy who everyone thought was funny, but no one took seriously?  The smart guy who solves all the mysteries for the Scooby Gang?  Or the freaky guy with toilet paper wrapped around his head, who draws all his “S’s” backwards?

And just like that, this show just got a whole lot more Meta . . .

Wack-a-doodle

It’s kind of refreshing to see that Scott’s douchey dad has become the Town Joke, after he spent the first few episodes trying to make Stiles’ dad look like the crazy one.  With his jacket wrapped around him like a cape, due to his broken arm, Papa McCall storms into the Sheriff’s office and tries to give the new deputy hell for not following up on his description of the “Caped Crusader” that massacred his arm last week.

The Deputy smiles smugly as he inclines his head toward the two Wanted Posters behind him, both of which look more like those “Learn to Draw Cartoon” advertisements you find in the back of comic books, than renderings of actual criminal masterminds.  One picture looks like a cross between a Cowboy and a Pirate.  The other looks like a cross between a Ninja and Darth Vader.

 

“Hey dipshit,” the Deputy tells Agent McCall, more or less.  “Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass long enough to listen to the police radio, every once in a while, you’d know that nobody gives two craps about the Ninja that clipped your wing, when the Sheriff’s son has gone missing on the coldest night of the year . . . .”

At the hospital, the cops have located Stiles’ jeep, but it’s been abandoned and the batteries are dead.  Surprisingly enough, it’s Derek of all people, who makes himself the most useful, by smelling Stiles’ body odor on the rooftop of the hospital, and concluding that he smells “stressed.”

 

“Smells like Teen Spirit.”

Well thank you, Captain Obvious!   I’m glad you are here to tell me he’s stressed.  Because the last five times we’ve seen Stiles on screen, he’s seemed downright chipper to me!

In all seriousness though, Derek wins MVP of this episode for being the first member of the Scooby Gang to correctly ascertain that Stiles is struggling for control of his body against the Nogitsune trying to possess it, and make it do  Very Bad Things!  He proves himself further useful later, by explaining to Kira that her Electric Light Show with Barrow might have been the precise spark the Nogitsune needed to make that possession possible.

 

“I rule!”

Hey Sterek fans?  Do you think it’s possible that Secret Sex has the ability to transfer IQ points?  Because Derek seems to have gone and become intelligent on us all of the sudden?  Who’dda thunk it?

 

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

Back on Stiles’ bed,  Lydia decides to play banjo with Stiles’ Crazy Strings,  and somehow comes up with the idea that Stiles might be trapped in an insane asylum.  Why? Because the Crazy Strings told her so!

Dear sweet Lydia,  Stiles might not be the only one who ends up trapped in an insane asylum by the end of this season.

On the bright side, the two of you could share a cell, and spend your days drawing one another crazy pictures!  Now, if that’s not True Love, I don’t know what is!

 

Ooh, how embarrassing!  Lydia gets the entire police force to search for Stiles in the basement of the insane asylum and he was never there!

Or was he . . . .?

 

My What Big Teeth You Have?

Alter Egos can be a real pain in the ass, sometimes.  And Stiles’ alter ego is the worst!  First of all, Dude doesn’t shut up.  Yammering on in Japanese, then English, then Japanese again, spouting off stupid riddles that no one cares about.  “When is a door not a door?”  “Everyone has it but no one can use it?”  “Hey,  watch my magic trick, where I make the trap on your foot switch legs!”

 

What a douchebag!

He’s basically the kid from the Jerry MacGuire movie, only slightly less adorable . . .

Then, he gets all up in Stiles face with his  janky teeth and bad breath,  and tells him that “we” have to save ourselves, or “we” are going to die.

 

Now, that’s just rude.   There’s no “we” about Stiles Situation.  Bad Teeth Guy doesn’t have his leg trapped in a coyote trap?  Bad Teeth Guy is warm and cozy in his rotten bandages, so HE’S NOT FREEZING TO DEATH in a thin cotton t-shirt.  Bad Teeth Guy can just get up and leave anytime he pleases.

In fact, he’s doing it right now, dragging Stiles across the floor, like it’s no big deal.

 

“This is really not very sanitary!”

Outside of Hell, Papa McCall has somehow used his vital life experiences of getting drunk and peeing in closets, because he was convinced they were toilets, to find Stiles in a coyote den.

Wait, what?  Did I miss a connection here?

 

“So, basically, what I’m trying to say is that, all this time you thought I was just a bastard and a bad drunk, I was really a super hero whose pee possessed magical powers.”

So, according to Papa McCall, Stiles was sleepwalking and wandered right into the coyote den, where they found the pretty chick from The Secret Circle a few episodes back, and where the cops apparently sprayed some stinky stuff, to keep the animals, but not the Nogitsune, at bay.  And the poor guy’s basically been sleeping this whole time.  In fact, he may very well have been sleeping all through Season 3B.

That’s fine.  But it doesn’t explain the abandoned jeep, or the stinky sweat smell on the hospital roof .  . . or the Crazy Strings, or the “S” on the insane asylum wall, or what it was about Papa McCall’s laundry basket that made it look so much like his toilet . . .

Color me confused . . .

BatMan Strikes Again . . .

Derek wanders into Beacon Hills High, as he is wont to do on occasion, hijacks Kira, and takes her back to the site of her almost-electrocution.

Ahhhh . . . memories!  There, they find Stiles’ Magical Metal Bat, which has been magnetized and possibly possessed by evil demons, much like Stiles’ brain .. .

Speaking of Stiles’ brain, back at the hospital, Mama McCall finally breaks the news to Papa Stilinski that his son might be suffering from the same degenerative brain disorder that killed his mother ten years earlier.  Papa Stilinski is understandably devastated, but admits he’s been suspecting the same thing for quite awhile.   They agree to have some tests done at the hospital.

 

“I think I liked it better when my son was solely used on this show for comic relief.”

Not cool, Teen Wolf writers.  Stiles’ brain is too cute to be fried, scrambled,  hard boiled, or sunny side up, maybe.  But never fried!

Fix this, Jeff Davis!  And fix it fast!  Or I’ll personally see to it that all your breakfast bacon is burnt for all eternity!

S.O.S. – Save Our Stiles

As Stiles waits to endure his MRI, he and Scott speak honestly about his possible condition: frontal temporal dementia, which is basically incurable . . . unless, of course, you have a powerful Alpha Werewolf Friend with the power to bite your brain, and make it healthy again.  The two lifelong best friends embrace, as their parents look-on sadly, in this quietly devastating scene that is possibly one of the series’ strongest to date . . .

A word about frontal temporal dementia . . . After reading a bit about it, am I the only one who thinks the symptoms don’t seem all that consistent with Stiles’ and his mother’s at all?

For one thing, they both seem much too young,  considering the disease tends to afflict most individuals in their 50s and 60s, while Stiles is still a teenager, and his mother passed in her early 30s.  For another, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, insomnia, none of these are listed as common symptoms of frontal temporal dementia.  In fact, they are more common symptoms of other diseases . . . like, say, a brain tumor . . .

So, now I’m thinking that either Jeff Davis an Co., didn’t do their web MD homework, before choosing their character’s ailments, or BOTH Stiles and his mom never had frontal temporal dementia at all.  Rather, they are/were both suffering from something else .  . . something everyone has but no one can lose . . . the Shadow of the Nogitsune.

Though,  I guess the MRI they show of Stiles’ brain toward the end of the episode would beg to differ with me . . .

What do I know, I’m not a doctor . . . I’m just the recapper.

Speaking of symptoms . . .

Lydia appears to be suffering from a really bad migraine.

Did I say migraine?  I meant MRI / brain hijacking sympathy pains for Stiles.

 

It’s not easy being a banshee . . .

In which the Bad Guys Win . . .

Inside the MRI machine, Stiles faces off with Toilet Paper Head, FINALLY solves that stupid riddle (“It’s a SHADOW, DAMMIT!”), and gets to meet the man behind the Charmin for all his trouble.

And the guy dressed up in the lame Mummy Halloween costume with the funky-looking teeth is .  . .

STILES?!

 

Wait . . . what?

So, Stiles has an evil doppelganger?  What is this The Vampire Diaries?  All I know is if someone starts talking about “Saving Elena” I’m changing the channel . . .

All kidding aside, Evil Stiles is both super cool, and extremely terrifying.  Real Stiles could stand to take a few notes from this guy . . . what with his sexy Bad Guy Walk, and sly self confidence.  Lydia would f*&k Evil Stiles in a heart beat . . .

 

By the way, I’d totally watch the HBO version of this show, in which Stiles and Evil Stiles engage in a threesome with Banshee Lydia . . .  Now, that would give her a good reason to scream .  . .

Back on the roof of the hospital, Derek and Scott learn that Real Stiles and his stinky stress sweat, ultimately lost the battle with Evil Stiles and the pair ended up electrifying the entire power grid of the hospital, all  while Real Stiles was supposedly “dreaming” in the smelly coyote den.

Take that, Papa McCall . . .

Elsewhere in the hospital, Evil Stiles attempts to make his escape, only to be encountered by the two remaining Oni he didn’t kill in last week’s episode, and their fearless leader . . . Kira’s mom?

 

 

It’s a pretty cool scene, actually, with Kira’s mom all sophisticated and self-righteous, “I’ll kill you, even if you are hiding inside the most popular character on Teen Wolf!”   She threatens coolly.

 

Evil Stiles shrugs it off, throwing some major shade in the direction of his elder.  “Bring it on, Firefly B*tch,” he responds, before casually walking out of a hospital that’s about to be completely electrified.  In other words, Nogitsune Stiles is the Honey Badger . . . basically . . .

Outside the hospital, a stray electrified wire almost kills Kira . . .

 

Somehow, I think the Girl on Fire will make it out just fine .  . .

Speaking of girls Scott wants to bone, Allison seems to be on a completely different show from everybody else.  She slept through Stiles’ entire ordeal.   And now she’s getting telephone messages from Fake Japanese Internment Camps?  (By the way, for an honestly brilliant theory about the Nogitsune’s true identity that actually connects to Allison’s bizarro subplot, check THIS out . . .)

Evil Stiles is unamused . . .

Next time on Teen Wolf . . .

Until next time, Werebangers!

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “Silverfinger”

 

 

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Konnichiwa, Werebangers!  This past week, on a heavily Eastern Mythology-inspired episode of Teen Wolf, Scott and Kira read a children’s book together . . .

 

“I’m not a great reader.  But I’m very good at looking at pictures.”

Isaac dressed up like one of the bad guys from The Matrix . . .

 

 

Lydia . .  . did nothing, because she wasn’t in the episode.

And in earth-shattering, climactic news, Stiles . . .

. . . killed a firefly.

 

Perhaps, more than any episode in the 3B block, “Silverfinger” was, at its heart, an origin story.  Nothing fleshes out a hero more than a Great Origin Story.  It shows us what drives and motivates this character . . . how he came to be the living, breathing entity you are watching on screen.

But what about the Villain?  Too often writers don’t care enough about their villains to give them a satisfactory Origin Story.  Rather, their motivations for wreaking havoc are hastily explained in the moments before their demise at the hands of the hero.

Writers neglect their villains at their peril.  Because the viewing public loves a solid villain, one with specific dreams, goals and disappointments, beyond the usual “Plans for World Domination.”  Cool villains like the The Joker, Loki,  and Magneto make their protagonist counterparts more interesting, and their inevitable final encounters more epic.  In short,  it’s  the ultimate love / hate relationship . . . a twisted romance of sorts.

Now, I’m not saying that the Oni and Nogitsune we met this week, are particularly well fleshed out yet.  I mean, we aren’t even sure what the latter looks like.  And though there are five of the former, we still can’t tell them apart . . .kind of like those pesky not-so-Alpha twins.  Yet both of these baddies,  actually have fairly solid motivations for doing what they do.

 

“It’s complicated.”

The Oni are kind of like cops.  As far as they are concerned, the Nogitsune is seriously bad dude, a dark spirit that infects society with evil.  Is it so wrong them, for these guys to hunt it down and try to destroy it?  I mean, they are even learning from past mistakes and trying to minimize harm.  Back in the day, they used to just kill everybody, in hopes that one of them would be the Nogitsune.

 

“In hindsight, we might have overreacted just a bit.”

But now they test people first.  If they aren’t evil, they get a nice little neck tattoo and can go on their merry way.  That’s a pretty humane practice for a bunch of so-called super villains?  Don’t you think?

As for the Nogitsune, we’re told he’s this awful guy.  But so far, all he’s been doing is hiding from the Oni and trying his best to stay alive.  Wouldn’t each of us do the same thing, if some pesky fire fly guys were trying to kill us?

See . . . it’s all a matter of perspective, folks.  Let’s keep that in mind as we review, shall we?

[As always, special thanks to my Evil Genius Screencapper Andre,who is deftly plotting his path toward World Domination, one screenshot of shirtless men at a time . . .]

A Long Time Ago, We Used to Be Friends . . .

When Papa Argent first encountered the Oni (i.e. the new word we learned this week for the Firefly Guys), he wasn’t the badass Mr. Mom he is today.  Rather, he was a strapping young arms dealer, just trying to please his old man, by striking a deal with the Japanese Mafia.

 

“I’m way too attractive not to get my own prequel . . .”

Enter the Oni, whose idea of successfully closing a deal is killing everyone on the other side of it.

 

 

 

“Say hello to your intestines leaking out of your body.”

What a waste of some seriously swanky suits!

And then there was one left . . . and, as luck would have it, he was the one the Oni were searching for all along.

 

“I feel pretty.  Oh so pretty.  I feel pretty and witty and bright.  And I pity any yakuza who isn’t me tonight!”

This one supposedly had a dark spirit inside of him, and some awesome magical powers. But the only thing “impressive” I saw about him was impossibly large teeth and some bad cataracts.  He growled and made a lot of noise, but ultimately Nogitsune 1 died without putting up much of a fight.

 

 

“When are people going to learn that throwing your arms out and embracing the world pretty much guarantees you aren’t going to make it out of the end credits alive.”

Or did he?  Because I have this sneaking suspicion that a very important part of this story is missing.  And the Ole Horse Teeth was nothing more than a pawn in the Real Nogitsune’s game . . .

But, of course, we can forgive Papa Argent for being a bit hazy on the details.  After all, he was young (and hot) and spent most of the experience peeing himself behind a rock . . .

Then Young Papa Argent shot an Oni in the mask, and learned he had no face, which pretty much makes the Oni the Japanese Cousins of the soul-sucking Dementors from Harry Potter . . .

This little distraction allowed Little Papa Argent to escape  .  . .

Not satisfied with Papa Argent’s explanation of the leather suit-wearing freaks currently trying to murder them all, the Scooby Gang decide to gather additional intel from some old bald Japanese Yoda-like guy, who conveniently also survived the great Yakuza Massacre of 1980 something . . .

The problem, of course, is the last time Papa Argent attempted to find Beacon Hills Yoda, he kind of / sort of got his ass kicked . . .

So, being a Good Dad, Papa Argent does what any self-respecting father would do . . . he sends the guy who wants to bone his daughter directly into harms way, to do his dirty work for him!

It’s actually a pretty crafty idea, if you think about it. I mean, either way, the Elder Argent eliminates a threat . . . though the latter threat is only to his daughter’s panties . . .

Beauty and the Beast

Awww how sweet!  After a night of battling Oni, Kira rode home on the back of Scott’s motorcycle, he showed her his goofy-looking wolf face, and she fondled it, and thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world, thus proving that this girl REAAAALLLY needs to get out more . . .

 

In other romance news, Ethan and Aiden stalk Scott on their matching motorcycles and tell him that they will stay loyally glued to his side forever and ever, or until he gets eaten and brutally murdered by Oni, whichever comes first.  I smell a werewolf threesome!

 

 

 

I guess there are some folks who were born to always be minions to “The Hottest Girl.”

Now, while I’m not entirely sold on the twins as individual characters,  I’m actually not minding the idea of them as part of Scott’s pack.  After all, up to this point, Scott’s Scooby Gang basically consisted of Allison (weaponry), Lydia (annoying screaming / death detection), Stiles (brains), and Isaac (?).   Every good pack needs a little muscle power . . . no matter how empty the heads that come attached to those muscle bags might be.  And Ethan and Aiden, they give good muscle (and good bone), if nothing else .  . .

Speaking of Stiles’ brains, they are beginning to look a bit less like hard boiled eggs, and a bit more like scrambled ones,  with each passing week . . .

This is your brain on Nogitsune . . .

Scott wants to warn Stiles about the Oni.  But Stiles is too freaked out that someone had the nerve to erase his chalkboard encoded murder message to Barrow about Kira.  That same someone has stolen his key to the chemistry closet.  Hey Stiles, ever heard the phrase, “Take a picture.  It lasts longer . . .”?

Maybe, next time, Kira will let you borrow her camera phone . . .

For his part, Scott is fairly confident that his best friend is not a love-interest murdering sociopath.  But, in all fairness, Scott and Stiles haven’t been spending all that much time together of late.  As for Scott, he’s been kind of busy swatting fireflies and eating mouthfuls of wasabi with his new girlfriend, the fox.  Meanwhile, Stiles has been making out with random bisexuals, going on investigation missions with his gal Friday Lydia, and, most recently enduring the horrors of a life that has become a perpetual waking nightmare.

Scott and Stiles have been so out of sync lately, that Scott has barely had time to tell Stiles all about his most recent Oni encounters.  This is a shame, because we all know that demon-possessed or not, Stiles would have been all up in that amazing opportunity for Nerd Research  . . .

Though not necessarily wise enough to retain evidence of his own serial killing tendencies, Stiles is smart enough to seek the help of a medical professional when he’s about to go full-on nutso.  He visits Mama McCall because she is clearly the only professional left alive in Beacon Hills hospital.  Being a mom first, and a nurse second, Mama McCall is loath to get Stiles any more riled up than he already is about the potential severity of his condition, before she knows what exactly is wrong with him.  And so, she diagnoses Stiles with “being sleepy, very sleepy,” shoots him up with some hospital-grade Ambien and shuffles the young lad off into Dream Land . . .

 

. . . which is precisely the place where all Stiles’ troubles began in the first place.

“Thanks, Mom,” indeed . . .

In the “After Show,” Holland Rhoden suggested that Stiles half-asleep referral to Scott’s mother as “Mom,” is a foreshadowing of sorts . . .

I’m going to take her word for it.  But, foreshadowing (and Mama McCall’s questionable medical tactics) aside, I actually think it was a very sweet, quiet, authentic moment between these two characters.  After all, why wouldn’t Stiles, whose spent at least the past few years of his young life without a mother, experience feelings of warmth and parental gratitude toward a woman he has known since he was a very small child and trusts very much, who has tucked him into bed, and is lovingly caressing his forehead as he drifts off into some much-desired sleep?

As for Stiles’ biological mom, it appears, based on some quick research on the part of Mama McCall that she experienced the same symptoms as Stiles shortly before her own death, which actually dovetails quite well with my trusty ole Brain Tumor Theory.

However, based on the last few moments of the episode, something a bit more supernaturally sinister may, in fact, be afoot here . . .

 

 

 

Why it’s bad to take selfies on your dad’s computer . . .

Agent McCall / Daddy Douche, tech savvy scamp that he is, apparently installed some security function on his computer that takes pictures of people other than him that try to use it.  And while I’d say, just password protecting the darn thing would be a heck of a lot more efficient  /effective.  Doing it this way, does make it that much harder for the intruder in question to deny his guilt.  Not to mention the fact that secret selfies are just hilarious.  Because who doesn’t look super goofy, while they are staring into a computer screen?

 

 

Anywhoo, Daddy Douche wants answers. So off he tromps to his son’s house to get them.

Meanwhile DARKNESS IS COMING . . .

Isaac Plays Dress-up

Sure Daddy Argent, dress your daughter’s boyfriend up in a penguin suit and send him into a scary warehouse filled with roid-raging bouncer types with really bad manicures under the pretense of selling some old gun.  Sounds like a great idea!

 

Because Isaac is not a total moron, he’s a bit conflicted about the whole “entering the jaws of death” thing.  So, Allison puts her tongue down his throat and makes him grab her ass, and suddenly everything is totally cool!  (Everyone claims Allison is totally human.  But I’m not so sure.  Clearly she has a Magical Vajayjay.)

 

 

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As Isaac yammers on about stuff he knows nothing about, the Argents easily work their way through the lamest excuse for security ever.  Then Mr. Clean tells Isaac the true story about the weapon he’s “selling,” turns out it was used by one Argent to shoot another one, before he could turn into a werewolf, back in the day.

 

Pretenses tossed away, Isaac and Mr. Clean both show their fangs to one another, while, upstairs, Papa Argent reunites with Silverfinger for the first time in 24 years . . .

 

Silver Finger . . .

 

 

Missing a Finger . . .

Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid is more than happy to explain to the Teen Wolf audience the mystery of the Firefly Guys.  They are Oni, demon warriors traveling through the darkness in search of one being possessed by a dark spirit, the Nogitsune, a form of kitsune.  They sift through individuals with supernatural auras, marking them with an S, once they have determined they are still themselves.  And once they find their target, they will kill everyone in their way to reach him or her.

Mr. Miyagi politely thanks Papa Argent for saving his life all those years ago.  Then, he warns the werewolf hunter that if he finds the Nogitsune he should kill it, “even if it is his own daughter . . . or that goofy kid that hangs out with her daughter’s wolfy boyfriends . . .”

Meanwhile, Scott and co. are back at his house, learning about the Oni the hard way . . .

It’s an Oni Slumber Party!

Scott, that horndog, somehow convinces Kira that the place she will be safest for the night is right in his bed . . .

So, Kira does what any girl would do when she finds herself in a sexual situation with the boy she likes.  She . . . pulls out a children’s picture book about kitsune and reads to him.

 

 

Dear Sweet Kira.  Didn’t you get the memo?  You’re on MTV, home of sexed up series like The Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, and about six shows starring Snooki . . .

Sesame Street is two studios down . . .

Scott’s and Kira’s playdate soon gets rudely interrupted by Agent McCall, who is piping mad about Scott and Kira getting their grubby pawprints all over his MacBook Air.  Then, Scott’s mom comes home.  And this place is starting to get more crowded by the second.

Honestly, for me, the funniest part of the episode, was when the CLEARLY DEMONIC AND SUPERNATURAL Oni materializes in the kitchen, and Scott’s dad’s response is not “AHHHHHHHH!!!”

Or, “HOLY F*&K!  WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?”

As most normal people would react.  Rather, he’s all, “Who is this tall, poorly dressed gentleman?  He is clearly not on the lists of people I approved for you and your mother to hang out with, before I abandoned you both years ago?”

Doofy Papa McCall then walks toward the Oni like he’s actually going to ARREST HIM  .  . .

So, of course he gets a sword in his belly for his trouble . . .

 

With Papa McCall out of commission and Mama McCall tending to his wounds, this were-house party can really get started.  Enter Twins . . .

 

And Derek . . .

And MORE ONIS . . .

It’s like the blacklight party all over again, minus all the body paint and bad choices!

Mama McCall gains her hero wings by temporarily ejecting the Oni from her home using . . . you guessed it . . . Everybody’s Favorite Magical  Plot Device . . .

 

Buuuuuut then they get in anyway . . .

 

 

Allison conveniently calls Scott just in time to tell him that, provided he and his girlfriend are not totally evil, the Oni are just there to give them both nice neck tattoos.  So, chill out!

And so, hands clasped, Scott and Kira meet the Oni head on and prepare to receive their brands . . .

 

 

. . .  which they do.  So, the Onis disappear . . . in search of their real target.

 

 

“Zzzzzzzzzzzz…..”

That was easy.

Eat Stiles’ Dust, Firefly Guy!

In the hospital, Stiles awakens to find everybody gone.   He wanders sleepily into a lonely dark corridor, just as the McCall family wheel in douchey daddy on a gurney.

Then the Oni come to give Stiles his tattoo . . .

But we all know how Stiles feels about tattoos . . .

So, when the Oni moves to give him one he RIPS OUT THE ONI’S FIREFLY SOUL WITH HIS BARE HANDS, INSTANTLY KILLING THEM ALL .  . .

 

 

 

 

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It’s a miracle!  Stiles is a hero!  Yay Stiles!

Oh .  . . wait . . . that means he’s evil.  Oops!

Then, Scott comes in and Stiles acts like he’d didn’t just do something totally awesome and bad ass, which is not like Stiles at all.

Because everyone knows if the REAL Stiles defeated a villain, he’d be acting like this . . .

And this . . .

And this . . .

Not like this . . .

Consider myself officially freaked out by you, Stiles Stilinski .  . .

(You know that Grinch Gif is actually really frightening if you look at it for too long . . . )

Next week on Teen Wolf. . . AHHHHHH STILES NOOOOOOO!

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.  Until next time, Werebangers!

Unmasked – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “Illuminated”

Happy Faux-Halloween Werebangers!  As much as this week’s installment of Teen Wolf was all about black-light parties, mostly naked people with paint on their toned torsos, and oddly-attired warriors, who may or may not have descended from fireflies, with the capacity to tattoo people with their fingernails and produce long swords from their stomachs . . .

. . . it was also about masks . . .

.  . . but not just the masks we wear on Halloween with the little eye holes cut out of them so we don’t bump into walls while we are trick-or-treating .  . .

. . . but the more subtle masks we wear every other day of the year.  These are the masks that allow us to hide parts of our true selves from the rest of the world . . . parts of ourselves that we don’t like, or don’t think others would accept . . . parts of us that make us seem less . . . normal . . .

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Of all the characters on Teen Wolf, Stiles — goofy and virginal, though he might be  – always seemed to be the one most comfortable in his teenage skin.  It’s one of the things I always admired most about his character  . . . how unabashedly unafraid he was of being himself, even if being himself got him pushed around or excluded, or kept him from getting the girl . .  .

In “Illuminated,” however, we learn that Stiles too is wearing some masks.  And these masks are more dangerous than the ones donned by his friends.  Why?  Because he doesn’t even realize he’s wearing them . . .

So turn out the lights, break out the glow-in-the-dark body glitter, and beware of creepy neck-tattoo giving ninjas, because it’s time for another Teen Wolf-cap . . .

[As always special thanks to my supernaturally gifted screencapper Andre, who I would totally invite to my blacklight party if I had one, because I know I could trust him not to tattoo me against my will in a wine cellar . . .]

SMUSH!

It’s a bad day to be a jack-o-lantern in Beacon Hills, with mean derelict kids around every corner, just waiting to put their foot in your skull, and turn your brain into the mushy stuff on the inside of a pumpkin pie . . .

“What did I do to deserve this?“

But worry not jack-o-lanterns!  The Neighborhood Watch has come to the rescue!

“Dressing up like the guys from The Matrix for Halloween is SO last decade!”

Boy, the Neighborhood Watch has changed a lot since I was a kid.  It used to be a bunch of soccer moms in bathrobes.  But these guys are stylin!  I mean, check out those leather dresses.  I would not want to be Jack-o-Lantern Killer in Beacon Hills.  That’s for sure!

Speaking of the Neighborhood Watch, Jack-o-Lantern Murder isn’t the only bad act that seems to royally piss them off.  They also seem to REALLY HATE THE POSSIBILITY OF PREMARITAL SEX.

Sorry Isaac.   But the Neighborhood Watch is apparently very against the idea of your impregnating Allison with your were-cub sperm . . .

Population control . . .

When Allison and her dad find Isaac, he’s super traumatized and definitely still feeling the effects of his run-in with the black skirted ninjas, who he described as having Firefly Eyes . . .

“Between this and my dad locking me in the freezer before getting killed by my classmate the were-lizard, I’m going to probably need to be in therapy until I die.”

Hmmm . . . now where have we seen fireflies before on this show?

Something about the way Allison’s dad was behaving during Isaac’s “debriefing,” seemed to suggest this wasn’t his first time at the Firefly Eye Guys rodeo.  Maybe it was the way he instinctively knew that beating the sh*t out of Isaac to force him to wolf out would break the spell the Firefly Eye Guys had him under . . .

(Then again, perhaps he was just using that as an excuse to beat the sh*t out of the current winner of the Teen Werewolf Most Likely to Bone his Daughter this Season award . . . sorry Scott.)

Or maybe it was the way he warned Allison and Issac to keep their mouths shut about the Firefly Eye Guys for the next 24 hours while he “figured things out.”

Oooooorrrrr maybe it was the BIG OLE BROKEN FIREFLY EYE GUY MASK HE HAD HIDDEN AWAY IN HIS DRAWER, RIGHT NEXT TO HIS SECRET STASH OF HASHISH AND PORN MAGS . . .

And if we think the Firefly Eye guys react poorly to kids smashing up jack-o-lantern faces, imagine how pissed off they get about people who smash up THEIR FACES!

Cue the theme song, which was a bit more “club dancey” than usual, wasn’t it?  I was only kidding about it last week, but this week’s version of the theme song REALLY did remind me of this . . .

This Girl is on Fire

Once upon a time, there was a popular young adult fiction character who wore a pyrotechnically enhanced outfit designed by Lenny Kravitz, and everyone called her The Girl on Fire . . .

But That Girl apparently, has nothing on our Kira, whose face literally appears to burst into flame, every time someone snaps her picture.  Now, most cameras these days have a Red Eye Reduction function that is probably very helpful for folks like Scott .  . .

However, until iPhone invents a Face Flame Reduction Feature, Kira is kind of crap out of luck . . .

But hey, at least she didn’t end up chargrilled by Mr. “Their Eyes Were Glowing” Barrow!  Something that Scott’s dad honestly seems pissed off about, because dead kids have always been super good for his career.  Have I mentioned yet this recap that Scott’s dad is a douche?

Well, consider it mentioned!  Anywhoo, the Scooby Gang, plus Kira, find themselves in super hot water with Douchey Daddy for accidentally blacking out the entire town in their attempt to evade being murdered by a child-killing psychopath.  The nerve of these kids and their pesky survival instincts!

Meddling Kids!

Douchey Daddy gets incredibly frustrated when he can’t get a straight answer about what happened from our characters . . . something Papa Stilinski finds positively hilarious, because, for once, he’s not the adult being made to look like a moron by a bunch of teenagers less than half his age.

“How come you and Lydia always seem to solve every mystery on this show, when no one else can?”  Scott’s dad asks, echoing the question in the minds of Teen Wolf fans everywhere.

“Because my dad’s in law enforcement,” Stiles replies with a wink.

Adorable . . . but also not true.  I mean, Scott’s dad is in law enforcement too, and it hasn’t helped him a lick, when it comes to logical reasoning .  . .

I mean, Scott’s a sweet guy and all, but, let’s face it, he’s kind of dumber than wolf poo  . . .

Of course, by the end of this episode, we have another, more logical, explanation as to why Stiles has seemed to miraculously have all the answers so far this season.  And it’s genius, on a Usual Suspects-like level that leads me to believe I haven’t been giving these writers nearly enough credit in my recaps this season.

I like how the show took the inherent ridiculousness of the “Kill Kira” coded message on the chalk board last week, and immediately offered the explanation that SOMEONE ELSE, aside from Barrow, wrote it.    Now, while that assumption ended up being correct, I’m not sure, as a detective, I would have immediately arrived at that conclusion.  (In fact, if I recall from the message boards on last week’s episode, most fans, myself included, assumed that the code came from Barrow, himself.)  I mean the guy was basically a schizo psychopath who enjoyed killing kids with glowing body parts.  Why would he need a coded message instructing him to do the thing he loved doing so much in the first place?

Just a thought . . .

Speaking of glowing body parts . . .

Clothing Option . . . Paint Mandatory

At School in the Dark, Stiles finds a new mysterious key on his key chain, which I can totally relate to, because every time I stick my hand in my purse, I’m always finding things I don’t remember putting in there.  I swear I’m convinced my purse is a portal to another land . . .  either that or a very expensive trash receptacle for old receipts, candy wrappers, pens without ink and unmatched gloves  . . .

But enough about me!

Let’s talk about Kira . . .

Last week, Stiles was TOTALLY pro Kira, telling Scott he should absolutely hit that because he’s “the hottest girl” in school . . .

Then again, maybe Stiles was just saying those things to hit on Scott . . .

This week, Stiles basically thinks Kira is Jenny the Darach 2.0, which makes her more or less undateable, unless you are really hot for people who secretly look like Lord Voldemort . . .

“Let’s leave the dating of secret murderers / super villains to MY future girlfriends, mmmm kay?”

. . . or you’re a moron . . . like Derek . . .

And because I had the exact same idea last week, I am now more convinced than ever that Stiles and I do, in fact, share a brain . . . which worries me, because I’m pretty sure Stiles’ brain has a tumor in it . . .

In the boy’s locker room, Aiden and Ethan are naked, and everyone else is fully clothed, because, like children in the 1950s, these are two characters that are at their best when seen not heard.

Danny’s there too.  He’s fighting on the phone with some unseen person, about a blacklight party, which will now have to be canceled due to the “blackout.”  Hello Irony!

Ethan wants to help Danny find an alternative location for the party, because he feels that will help him find an alternative location into Danny’s very busy pants.  He also believes that helping Danny through a really bitchin party will make Care Bear Scott know that Ethan and Aiden “care a lot” about their fellow man.  And even if this doesn’t cause Scott to make Ethan and Aiden into fellow Care Bears like Stiles . . .

. . and Isaac .  . .

. . . and Lydia . . .

. . . it might at least convince him to take the twins on as Care Bear cousins . .  . you know . . . the characters that weren’t bears, but still got to make an appearance every so often in the Care Bear Movies, and Specials, because they were basically nice people/ animals .. .

At first, Aiden is not down with being a Care Bear Cousin.  But then Lydia, whose mom will likely be brutally murdered very soon is now teaching at the school (?) and everyone knows that the only teacher at Beacon Hills High who can never die is Coach Crackpot tells Aiden that he can’t f*&k her in janitors closets anymore because his murdering Boyd just became a total turn off.

“Awww . . . how sweet . . . and also about 10 episodes too late.”

And Aiden and his blue balls decide being a Care Bear Cousin is better than being eternally celibate.  So, he decides to help Danny by suggesting he throw a party in Derek’s supposedly abandoned loft.  Yes, Aiden, because throwing a party in the place where Boyd died, will TOTALLY make Lydia forget you killed him.  Good thinking!

Photo Finished!

Kira is sitting alone in the hallway eating her sad sandwich, and wearing very sad pants.  Scott completely ignores Stiles’ advice .  . .

. . . and decides this is the perfect opportunity to hit on her . . .

. . .to show her gratitude Kira shows Scott her nifty magical power that involves looking weird in photographs . . .

(I don’t know, Kira.   I always look weird in photographs too.  And nobody’s ever tried to electrocute me for it . . . yet.)

Scott agrees to help get Kira’s cell phone (which contains evidence of her weird photographs) out of the police station’s evidence locker.

Meanwhile, Derek (rightfully) scares some kids who are stupid enough to go trick or treating in an abandoned parking lot during a blackout.   (Seriously, are all the parents in this town mentally retarded?)  But before he does that, he gives them candy.  Because grown men who carry Milky Ways and M&M’s  in the back of their truck, just in case they happen to come upon unaccompanied minors aren’t creepy at all . . .

“Hey kids, wanna hop in the back of my truck and eat Snickers?”

“Sure sounds like fun!”

“STRANGER DANGERRRRRRRRR!”

Obstruction of Justice 101

I’ve always said that watching Teen Wolf makes me smarter and more pervy.  This week’s installment of Teen Wolf had the added benefit of making me a better criminal!  Be amazed as Stiles teaches us just how easy it is to break into the police department and steal incriminating evidence against yourself!

Step 1 – Clone the key cards

Thus proving that Stiles literally does own the keys to every door in this entire town . . . including the door to his own mind, Lydia’s heart, and of course, the chemistry lab.

“This could be The Key to solving this week’s mystery . . . literally”

Step 2 – Avoid the completely incompetent police force, by merely crawling underneath them . . .

“Off to get some donuts.”

Step 3 – Unlock evidence Drawer

Step 4 – Find evidence, and then dawdle for an unreasonably long time for no other reason than to increase narrative tension . . .

                Was it just me, or did that phone take a ridiculously long time to charge enough just to turn on?  That’s BAD product placement, if ever I saw it.  An iPhone takes about 20 seconds.  Just sayin . . .

Step 5 – Almost get discovered, just so Stiles will have to save your ass by being Stiles . . .

I don’t know about you.  But I vote when Teen Wolf gets canceled about 25 seasons from now, Stiles gets his own spinoff, which consists solely of him ragging on Scott’s Douchebag dad for an entire hour . . .  I’d watch that show.

P.S. What do you guys think the “big secret” Stiles’ dad has on Scott’s dad is that makes the latter hate the former so much?  Part of me thinks it has something to do with Scott’s mom . . . then again, maybe that’s because I’m totally rooting for Stiles’ dad and Scott’s mom to start boning in the next season or two.  They’d be adorable together!  Admit it!

After they escape, Kira is totally turned on by her introduction into a Life of Crime.  She wonders whether Scott and Stiles have ever broken the law like this before, at which point, Stiles wryly hands Kira a DVD set of the first 2.5 seasons of Teen Wolf, and replies, “Only every Monday at 10 p.m., for the past three years.”

Ain’t No Party Like a Firefly Guy Party

Danny’s blacklight party is banging!

The music rocks, the nudity and creative body paint all over the place is insane.

And what other place can you go to get drawn on by Kelly Osbourne!

.  . . or at least someone who looks a lot like her.

Danny is eagerly getting painted up, when someone calls for ice, and a flirty Ethan tells him he’ll   . . . BE RIGHT BACK . . .

Silly Ethan.  Did you forget you were on a horror show?

Sex makes men stupid . . .

While Ethan goes off into a dark abandoned corner of Derek’s loft to get brutalized, Danny notices some uninvited guests at his party, who are wearing way too much clothes . . .

“Why is Neo from The Matrix at my blacklight party?”

But they have cool firefly eyes, so he decides to let it slide.

Elsewhere in the loft, Allison and Isaac show up at the party completely overdressed (just like the firefly guys).  So, they decide to improvise and also hump . . .

. .  . because really no blacklight party is complete without some good old fashioned humping . . .

Also humping?  Stiles!  You go boy!

So what if he may end up being this season’s Big Bad?  Stiles is so Geek Chic and Dorky Sexy that even lesbians whose girlfriends were recently brutally murdered want to bone him!  Because everyone knows that having Stiles in your mouth is better than any antidepressant.

But who does Stiles want in HIS Mouth?  Answer:  Apparently EVERYONE!

Source

It’s always the “innocent” ones that end up being the biggest freaks in the sheets . . .

Stiles takes a break from sucking face with a lesbian to notice that his Magical Mystical Key has chemicals on it . . . as in chemicals from a chemistry lab.

RUH ROH!  It looks like our baby may have done a bad bad thing . . .

Speaking of bad things . . .

Ashes, ashes, they all FALL DOWN!

At the blacklight party, relationships, advance, discoveries are made, people are attacked, and everyone gets tattoos, all in a matter of minutes!

After coming to a silent understanding with Allison that they are both going to screw other people this season, Scott finally sees Kira for what she really is . . . a fox . . .

No, I mean, like, a real fox . . . like the “fire” around her body in pictures actually has a fox shape . . .

And being a member of the canine family himself, Scott totally digs it . . .

Allison and Isaac too finally give in to their mutually shared sexual tension, which causes Allison to discover Isaac’s brand new neck tattoo.  A backwards “five,” put there by the Firefly Guys?  Why, are they dyslexic?

Then again . . . it could also be an “S” for Superman . . . or STILES . . .

Speaking of the Firefly Guys, Lydia spots them at a crowded party stalking her.  And so, rather than staying amidst the massive crowd of people who will undoubtedly keep her safe, she decides to say “I’ll BE RIGHT BACK,” to no one in particular, and heads out to balcony alone.

“Oh no, demons are trying to get me!”

“Let me go out here, and make it so much easier for them to do so.”

Silly Lydia!  This is what happens when you don’t hang out with Stiles, and allow him to makeout with lesbians instead of protecting you . . .

And they say you’re the smart one . . . sheesh.

The Firefly Guys take Lydia’s Banshee scream, give her the dyslexic tattoo, and then seem to entrance her in some sort of way.   But I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to determine what the consequences of that entrancement are . . .

“Look deep into my firefly eyes.  You are getting very sleepy.”

“I really loved you in The Matrix, Mr. Keanu Reeves.”

Also, attacked and tatted up?  Ethan . . . and Derek . .  . whose super pissed off about it, and breaks up the party, the exact same way he traumatized those pesky trick our treaters.

“STRANGER DANGERRRRRR!”

The Scooby Gang, minus Stiles, reconvene in the now empty loft to face off against the Firefly Guys.  I smell a Musical Battle Sequence . . .

“MORTAL KOMBAAAAAATTT!”

Unlike most Musical Battle Sequences on this show, in which the Werewolf Always Wins.  This time around, the Werewolf Always Sucks Ass . . .

In the Scooby Gangs’ defense, Firefly Guys are much better armed than our heroes, with Magical Tummy Swords . . .

Hypnotic Tattoos . . .

 

 

Bet Isaac is wishing he was wearing the scarf last night . . .

“No tatt for me, Firefly Guy!”

And the Ability to Regenerate Heads . . .

Then The Sun comes and saves everyone from getting murdered!  Hooray Sun!

Unfortunately, things are less sunny elsewhere in Beacon Hills, like back at the Argent house, where Papa Argent looks like he had a pretty crap day . . .

Also having a crap day, Stiles who has just learned that HE might be the one trying to kill Kira . . . which was a pretty ingenious development on the part of the writers, as it makes the oddity of Stiles magically figuring out the “code” on the board make so much more sense in hindsight.  It also makes Lydia’s comment about not wanting to be with the “bad guys” seem much more ironic / ominous.

Either that, or he’s dreaming / in a coma . . .

Or he has a brain tumor . . .

Whatever the reason, Stiles sure seems to be working very hard to make sure “The Hottest Girl” in school doesn’t get it on doggystyle with “The Fox.”

Thus, proving that prolonged virginity can make you evil and/or cause brain tumors / comas.

So, go forth and get laid, Werebangers!  It might just save your life and YOUR SOUL!

Until next time . . .

 

This Bug’s For You – A Recap of Teen Wolf’s “Galvanize”

“Can you paint with all the colors of the wiiiiiiiiiiiiind?”

Aloha, Werebangers!  Since the main driving force behind Season 3B is to illustrate the consequences of our Beacon Hill’s Scooby Gang landing on a Hellmouth,  succumbing to a Kryptonite-Infused Meteor Shower,   dropping The Veil between the Natural World and the Supernatural One, temporarily sacrificing themselves as a tribute to the Supernatural Beacon Tree that is the Nemeton, it makes sense that this collection of episodes would seem a bit more disjointed and “freak of the week”-y, than the ones that preceded them . .  .

Let’s see, so far, in addition to our usual round-up of Alphas, Betas, Omegas, Banshees, Were-hunters, Emissaries, and people who REALLY, REALLY HATE MOUNTAIN ASH .  . .

. . . we have met Were-Coyotes . . .

. . . Fly Guys . . .

. . . Bug Tummies (who may or may not be related to the Fly Guys) . .  .

This is kind of like what happens to me whenever I eat burritos . . .

 .  . . Samurais (who also may or may not be related to the Fly Guys)  . . .

It’s like the Scream Mask on Steroids . . .

.  . . and Kira the Kitsune . . .

There’s a benefit to this type of narrative structure.  For one thing, the plot possibilities are endless.  (Consider how long shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, and Scooby Doo managed to stay on air!)  Freaks-of-the-Week also enable episode plots to be self-contained.  This means that new and casual viewers can join the fandom at any time, without getting bogged down in the quagmire of complex series mythology.

The downside?  End-of-the-season payoffs on these type of shows tend to be much smaller, and the rewards for loyal viewers, who stuck by the show since episode 1, are less substantial.

But hey, it’s only been three episodes.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Perhaps, all of these seemingly disconnected episodes are about to tie together in some brilliant way we have yet to discover.  Maybe the entire season is taking place inside Stiles’ Brain Tumor!

On that note, let’s review, shall we?

[As always, a special thanks to Andre, whose X-Men esque spectacular screencapping abilities, unique YouTube video-finding powers, magically delicious capacity for internet research relating to all things supernatural, and undeniably awesome propensity toward snarky commentary, have all clearly been brought on by his being born next to a Nemeton-Tree .  . . on a Hellmouth . . . surrounded by meteors.]

Making Mischief

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure this show had actual seasons.  But apparently, it’s almost Halloween!  YAY!”

It’s Mischief Night over in Beacon Hills and Scott and Stiles have just broken into the school to play a very kitsune-approved prank on everyone’s favorite teacher, Coach Crackhead . . .

Meanwhile, over at The Hospital Run Entirely By Scott’s Mom, a child-killing psychopath is being wheeled in for an emergency operation by, you guessed it, Papa La Douche McCall.   Seriously!  This guy is basically a magnet for mentally disturbed, murderous, and basically sh*tty people.  He brings them wherever he goes, like some Pied Piper of Evil.

“I’d like you to meet someone.  He murders kids who look just like our son, so I brought him to your hospital just for you.  You’re welcome!”

“And to think I had honest-to-goodness sexual intercourse with this person.”

Papa La Douche wags his eyebrows suggestively at his ex-wife, as he casually tells her that the man she will be feeling up with her stethoscope is an Electrician Turned Child Blower-Upper with shrapnel in his tummy, and basically no remorse for his bad deeds.

To her credit, Mama McCall maintains her composure, even as Mr. Bug-Eyed McCrazypants  totally invades her personal space and stares into her eyes like he wants to swallow her whole.  Bug-Eyed McCrazypants pretty much goads Mama McCall into asking him why blowing up tots is his favorite pastime, and he explains, quite tellingly, that “Their Eyes Were Glowing.”

“Sounds like your heart is two sizes too small.”

“Yeah . . . I can see that.”

Then, he goes all batsh*t, and practically bites Mama McCall’s face off  . . .

.  . . once again reminding the Mother of the Alpha that she totally should have taken the job at Seattle Grace / Grey’s Anatomy, where she could spend her days humping doctors who look like Jesse Williams in the on-call room  . . .

. . . instead of having to put up with this crap . . .

In other news . . .  glowing eyes, huh?  We know a few guys with glowing eyes on this show?  Don’t we?

“SH*T!”

Greenberg Strikes Again

It’s a Beautiful Day in Beacon Hills!  It’s Mischief Day!  It’s Coach Crackhead’s Birthday!  It’s . . . a Day of Forgiveness?

“We want to be series regulars part of your pack.”

Not so much on that last one . . .  as Scott and his Scooby Gang totally reject the not-so-much Alpha anymore Twins from joining their Pack . . .

And why shouldn’t they?  After all, the Twins are responsible for the death of Boyd . . . and Erica  . . . and their entire range of emotions can pretty much be summed up in two expressions: Growl . . .

. . . and Smirk . . .

These are NOT the kind of dudes you want in the foxhole with you, when you are battling Lizard People, Skeletor, Gorillas on Steroids, and Crotchety Old Men . . .

Besides, Scott doesn’t need lame-o Growlers and Smirkers in his pack!  He doesn’t need anybody!  He’s The Hottest Girl in School!

Wait . . . what?

Yeah, apparently, that’s Scott’s new nickname!

(I hear gender identity disorder is particularly common among werewolves.  Basically, this is what happens when your private parts are covered in fur, and you can’t always see them.)

Elsewhere in school, Coach Crackpot learns an important lesson:

A lesson that inadvertently led to our first “Greenberg” reference of the season  . . .

OK, I’m calling it right now.  Somewhere around season 7 or 8 of this show (if it lasts that long), Greenberg will be revealed as the Ultimate Uber- Big Bad of this show, and Coach Crackpot will be his first official victim . . .

(P.S. I like how, with all the bardo, and mental breakdowns and murder going on in Beacon Hills, Stiles and Scott still somehow find the time to pull elaborate pranks on their favorite Psycho Coach.  It’s kind of sweet, actually . . .)

By now, we all know that being a teacher in Beacon Hills is a pretty dangerous profession.  Of course, it’s not nearly as dangerous as being a medical professional in Beacon Hills . . .

Just ask This Guy  . . .

“Is there a doctor in the house, or just Scott McCall’s mom?”

. . . who learned the heard way that joking about “accidentally” killing your psycho patient on the operating table, while he’s not quite unconscious, is the easiest way to earn a first class ticket to your nearest Morgue.

“That joke about my dying was hilarious.  You should have gone to clown college, instead of medical school.  Maybe you still can .  .  . IN HELL!”

Ever see those weddings, where, SURPRISE, a flock of doves fly out of the wedding cake and probably poop in it on the way out and it’s supposed to be “Oh So Romantic.”  Well, this is kind of a variation on that . . .

(Andre had a great screencap of this up close.  But I just didn’t have the “stomach” to use it.  TOO GROSS!”

Seriously, they are coming up with new and inventive ways to off doctors every week on this show!  (Perhaps, Jeff Davis secretly flunked out of medical school, and this is his subtle way of exacting revenge.)

Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time Teen Wolf has used insects as a tool of doctorly demise.  Remember THE MOTHS IN THE CAR?

Except, this time, if we want to get technical about things, Bug Tummy didn’t actually murder Doctor Snarky by making him choke on flies and/or crash his car.  He just killed him the old-fashioned way . . . with a deft hand and a scalpel . . .

See?  This is another problem with Freak-of-the-Week villains.  They croak before we ever get to really know them!  Bug Tummy is already dead (at least he is by the end of the episode), and I have so many unanswered questions about him.  Like . . .  why does he have bugs in his tummy?  Does he eat them?  Keep them as pets?  Did he just accidentally swallow them one night, while on one of his usual child-killing rampages?  How did he manage to stay awake under anesthesia?  How does he keep his model-thin figure?  Do bugs contain carbs?

The world may never know . . .

In other, seemingly unrelated news, that nifty box Derek and Peter Hale stole from the Mexican baddies contains .  . . wait for it . . . dirty nail clippings from Derek’s dead mom.

“Would it have killed her to add a little red polish?  Geez!”

Man, this show is gross . . .

Peter then wears the dirty nails, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, homoerotically stabs them into Derek’s backside . . .

. . .  and then Derek, sort of / kind of talks to his wolf mom in a dream / hallucination thingy?

“Worst . . . acid trip . . . ever!”

In which Beacon Hill’s School Security System Fails Yet Again

Bug Tummy steals an ambulance (the preferred method of escape for Beacon Hill baddies everywhere, like Zip Car for Evil People), and heads to . . . where else . . . the high school, of course!  In response to Bug Tummy’s presence, Lydia’s eardrums start being bombarded with incessant buzzing, which the Scooby Gang takes as a sign that they need to scour the school for Bug Tummy ASAP, before he murders everyone and Teen Wolf is forced to end prematurely without any Stydia sex scenes at all!  Oh the horror!

“Well, it was nice while it lasted . . . wasn’t it Lydia?  Looks like you’re the looney tune of your social circle, once again.”

At the school, despite being surrounded by hundreds of students, an entire troop of cops, and a pack of werewolves, Bug Tummy is able to (1) waltz in undetected . . .

.  . . (2) hang out calmly in coach’s office, while Lydia the Banshee, who supposedly senses his near-dead presence, and Aiden the Werewolf with his GLOWING EYES and superior sense of smell, make out inches away from Bug Tummy’s grossly bloody, rather malodorous-looking, body   .  . .

“There’s something different about this room.  But I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

. . . (3) staple his stomach together (Well, at least now we know how he keeps his girlish figure.). . .

“Now, I’m the hottest girl!  Eat that, Scott McCall!”

. . . (4) stop off in the chemistry lab to casually mix a few chemicals, and draw painfully cheesy,  and completely unnecessary Sesame Street-like, clues about his motives on the chalk board (more on that later)

. . . (5) stalk Kira in the library a midst the chaos of a pulled fire alarm, and

. . . (6) escape without anybody ever laying eyes on him at all!

Now, that’s impressive!  So, impressive that I actually think Bug Tummy would make a great Alpha.  I mean, sure, he’s kind of socially awkward, makes weird, sometimes off-putting, facial expressions, has some issues with impulse control, and looks way too old to be a high school student.  But hey, the same could be said about Scott!

Stiles tries to get his dad and the rest of the cops to stick around school and search for Bug Tummy some more.  But Stiles’ dad isn’t biting.  As much as Papa Stilinski is sort of/kind of coming around to the idea that pretty much everything that happens in Beacon Hills is somehow supernaturally related, he’s still not quite ready to buy into the idea that the annoying scream of a pretty red headed teen will solve all his murder mysteries . . .

Parents can be so short-sighted sometimes . . .

With the adults out of the picture, the werewolves of Beacon Hills form their own search party, following their noses, just like Toucan Sam, into the school’s boiler room, in an attempt to literally sniff out evil.  Unfortunately, all these wolves seem to be able to smell is sex . . .

Then, Lydia figures out that getting all the school’s wolves into the boiler might actually have been Bug Tummy’s plan all along . . . to get all the Glowing Eyed kids into one place . . . and THEN BLOW THEM INTO SMITHEREENS!

So, Stiles, our hero .  . .

. . . thinking fast, decides to pull the fire alarm, in order to get all his classmates out of the building before they can be turned into rainbow sprinkles . . .

Bug Tummy’s plan is foiled!  The children have been saved!  All is right in the world!  And Stiles is filled with the spontaneous need to dance . . .

Really, it’s the dancing that gets him busted.  (Should have saved that for your bedroom, Stiles . . .)

As for Scott, while the school and all its wolfy and non-wolfy inhabitants are being silently terrorized, and the apocalypse is becoming increasingly imminent, our hero . . . plots his Master Plan to Save the World from Bug Tummy . . . keeps his pack safe, by shuffling them off to a secret hideaway, where Bug Tummy can’t rip out their Glowing Eyes, and insert them into his abdomen as food for the creatures he has living in it enjoys a sushi dinner?

Scott Gets a Little Culture . . .

I really like Kira’s house.  It’s uber modern, definitely Asian-inspired, has a real estate value of upwards of $2.5 million, and absolutely looks nothing like the cookie cutter, white bread, lower middle to upper middle class homes we’ve come to expect from the suburban neighborhood of Beacon Hills, CA . . .

. . .  which makes me wonder, just how much to teachers get paid to teach at Beacon Hills high.  Maybe they make a lot . . . simply because of the super high mortality rate.

Or perhaps, Kira’s mother is the big wage earner in this family.  After all, HE kept HER name.  And considering that she’s Japanese, and Kira’s dad is Korean, Kira’s kitsune traits are probably inherited from her mommy’s side of the family.

“I wear the foxy pants in this family.”

Hey, maybe she’s an “arms dealer,” like Allison’s dad!  He also seems way richer than a seemingly unemployed werewolf hunter should be  . . .

“It’s expensive to look like this much of a bad ass.”

Anywhoo, Scott tries to use chopsticks, accidentally inhales a mouth full of wasabi, and hilarity ensues, which basically has positively nothing to do with the ongoing plot . . .

“Here Scott, eat my fish.  You’ll like it!”

Elsewhere in Adorable Town . . .

Stiles and Lydia Figure it out . . . Again

Lydia and Stiles are lounging on Stiles bed, wrapping each other’s fingers in balls of red yarn (kinky?),  as they discuss the Stilinski Family Board of Shame . . .

. . .  and what Lydia believes to be her first failure in her short career as a Banshee.  Seeing Lydia experience self-doubt, and insecurity . . . seeing her doubt her powers, and feel guilty about getting Stiles in trouble at school, by convincing him to pull the fire alarm . . .

. . . shows just how far Lydia has gone as a character since Season 1. The Lydia we met back then  .  . . the proud, selfish, arrogant Lydia, who was concerned only with popularity and appearances, would never spend an evening geeking out in bed with Stiles, his yarn, and his detective theories.  She would never feel bad about getting someone else in trouble.   She would never question her own abilities and their consequences, or, for that matter admit to having those abilities and that intelligence at all . . .

I love watching Lydia and Stiles together, because (as clichéd as it is that they always come up with the answers seemingly out of the blue at the last minute),as characters, they definitely bring out the best in one another.  Stiles makes Lydia more humble, more caring, more willing to be her true self.  He helps her untie the red “unsolved” yarn from her fingertips, and makes her feel more “solved.”  More whole.

In turn, Lydia makes Stiles more confident, more mature, and more self- assured in his intelligence, and problem solving abilities . . .  she also reminds him how to read, and gently (without judgment) keeps him from going insane.

So, when Stiles tells Lydia he believes in her, despite her recent setback, I believe him . . . but kind of wonder where her parents are .   . . because, seriously, this girl never goes home.

Somehow, Lydia’s mere presence inspires Stiles to tramp back into school in the middle of the night, break into the chemistry lab . . . magically change into his “This is Only a Dream” Shirt for a split second . . .

http://colethewolf.tumblr.com/post/74036701586/colethewolf-i-dont-know-if-somebody-has

. . . and proceed to solve yet another “Freak of the Week” mystery, with his Lady Love Lydia by his side.

Yes, boys and girls, Engineer Bug Tummy, in addition to his bug cultivating skills and tendency toward invisibility, also apparently, is a master chemist, capable of masking his horrible scent, even to werewolves, as a result of his in-depth, knowledge of the periodic table that he just can’t help but share with the world, even if he is certain it will result in his inevitable capture / killing.

“Silly villain!”

Long story short, Stiles and Lydia find out that Bug Tummy wasn’t inside the school to capture werewolves at all . . . he was only interested in nerdy foxes with multiple tails and an impressive understanding of the concept of Bardo and eating with chopsticks  . .  . only interested in Kira . . .

Back at the Asian Inspired Dojo that is Kira’s Casa . . . .

Stiles and Kira eat pizza, and eye f*&k a bit.

“Should I be offended that you didn’t enjoy the taste of my fish?”

Then, Kira gets kidnapped, and Scott “You’re Going To Hear Me Roar Because I Am the True Alpha” McCall does nothing to stop it  . . . (though, in his defense, he’s sort of/ kind of unconscious at the time).

“If you won’t eat Kira’s fish, I will!”

With the help of Lydia’s big mouth (Ears be damned!) and Stiles’ encouragement . . .

The Scooby Gang finds Kira tied up in some electrical warehouse thingy, where Bug Tummy is seconds away from electrocuting her . . . just because.

P.S.  Bug Tummy is also going to take pictures of Kira while he electrocutes her, using her Nokia phone because. . .  you know . . . product placement.

Villains don’t like iPhones . . .

But Silly Bug Tummy  .  . . he messed with the wrong girl.  I mean, really, of all the girls you decide to electrocute you choose the one that has the kitsune-like ability to ABSORB ELECTRICITY!

“This is SOOO going to help me get laid . . .”

Not too smart, Bug Tummy.  Perhaps, you aren’t the Good Prospective Alpha I thought you would be . . .

And so you’ll die.  Goodbye, Bug Tummy!  May glowing eyed children angels carry you to your much-deserved rest  . . . IN HELL!!!!!!

Meanwhile, Allison and Isaac are in Allison’s house, busily studying the beastiary in hopes of locating something about  the now-obsolete villain of the week.  Isaac cleverly suggests he’s Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, i.e. The Devil . . . also the name of one of my favorite books from high school, coincidentally.

Then Isaac tries to kiss Allison.  And Allison, in order to show Isaac that she is Not That Kind of Girl, takes off her shirt for him . . . wait what?

“I am not the kind of girl who just makes out with her exes’ best friend /roommate /sort of adopted brother!  I have more class than that!  Get naked with him?  Sure.  F*&K him?  Absolutely.  But I will never ever kiss him!  Get that through your wolfy weiner, Isaac LAY-HEEEEE!”

Not amused . . .

Then Allison’s dad walks in, and wonders why his daughter insistently falls in love with canines, and kind find a nice human boy to hump in her bedroom, while her dad is downstairs, plotting the destruction of animal kind.

While Allison’s dad is hilariously scolding his daughter about her choice of suitors . . .

.  . . some weird samurai things are taunting Isaac in her bedroom?  Thus proving, once in for all, that having sex with Allison, or even thinking about having sex with Allison, is not without its consequences . . .

Next week on Teen Wolf, everybody goes to a rave?

Nikki Minaj makes out with Stiles?

And a bunch of other bad stuff happens to our Scooby Gang . . .

Until next time, Werebangers!

Stiles-ception – A (Ridiculously Late) Recap of Teen Wolf’s Season 3B Premiere “Anchors”

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“Is this real? Am I real?  Is this even a real door?  If I repeatedly bang my head on it, will I figure it out?  Ouch . . . ouch . . . ouch, maybe not.”

What’s up, my fellow Werebangers!  I missed you!

How was your New Years?  Did you dance?

Meet any new and interesting people?

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Die in a bath tub, and come back to life, only to realize you’ve somehow forgotten how to read?

(Don’t worry if this happens to be the case.  Most of this blog post will be pictures anyway . . . :))

Wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, worry not!  Your Werebanger Family welcomes you back with open arms.

So, lets get on with this recap, shall we?

[As always, a big werewolfy round of applause for my good pal Andre, who in addition to being the Lean Mean Screencapping Machine who generously provided us with all the awesome pictures you see here, also happens to be a pretty kickass person, in general.]

Sleeping with Stiles . . .

Teen Wolf . . . it’s no longer just a show you watch to see hot guys take their shirts off, flex their muscles, and get all sweaty with one another . . .

(Though that, in and of itself, is a pretty good reason to watch the show.)

This is show is educational!  You learn stuff here!  For example, this week on Teen Wolf, I learned about the Tibetan Buddhist concept of “Bardo,”which from what I gather, is basically a cross between Purgatory, and whatever the f*&k happened on the last season of Lost  . . .

“So you mean to tell me all this time, we thought we were battling Baddies, Bionic Bears, and Black Smoke in a jungle, we were really just sitting around in this lame old church?”

Also, I learned from Stiles all the nifty tricks you can use to tell that your dreaming, while you are actually dreaming .  . . you know, for all those times you find yourself possibly-but-maybe-not asleep, and don’t have on hand Leonardo DiCaprio’s Magical Spinning Top from Inception . . .

We start the episode off in bed with Stiles, which is as good a place as any to start off a series, AM I RIGHT ladies (and men)?

We know immediately that Stiles is dreaming, by the way he’s sweating, rapidly blinking his eyes, moaning amorously, curling his toes under his blanket, and thrusting upward, while he grabs on to his sheets for dear life .  . .

Unfortunately for us fans, it ended up not being one of THOSE kind of dreams.  But we totally see where you were going with this, Jeff Davis, you naughty minx, you .  . .

At the start of the “Dream,” Stiles comes out of the closet . . . er . . . I mean the locker . . .

“I feel so liberated!”

Then, Stiles takes a long slow glance in the mirror to remind fans how buff he’s gotten during the hiatus .  . .

“Someone’s been sneaking Wheaties into my Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs . .  .”

Stiles hears a sound, so he goes to investigate.  This is what he finds . . .

“Don’t you just hate it when an Evil Tree crashes through your classroom, and then tries to eat you?”

I know I do!

Then, Stiles “wakes up” only to learn that he’s slept through his entire courtship with Lydia!  Apparently, they’ve gone from “heat of the moment” first kiss partners, to bed buddies, who sleep together on school nights and massage one other’s arms after nightmares, in the span of less than two episodes . . .

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“Is it Season 5, already?”

This is the moment I usually realize that I’m dreaming . .  . when things are simply too good to be true. . .

Stiles breaks the fourth wall at this point in the narrative, leading us to believe that he realizes he’s still dreaming as well . . .

“I can’t really be this much of a pimp, yet . . . CAN I?”

And while most hot blooded teens would take advantage of their Super Awesome Dream, by say .  . .  taking this unique opportunity to do away with a certain Pesky Virginity Problem .  . .

Stiles, being the tragic hero we know him to be, decides instead to go and CLOSE THE DOOR . .  .

This concept of THE DOOR, is one that presents itself throughout the episode.  Throughout the hour, we see Stiles and Allison, in their dreamlike states opening doors that they shouldn’t, doors that release evil spirits, funky trees, and b*tchy dead aunts into the ether.  We learned last season from Deaton, that “dying and returning to life in a bathtub” opened a seemingly figurative, but possibly literal, door in the characters’ minds, through which some pretty nasty Big Bads can pass through, if they aren’t careful.

Notice how adamant Dream Lydia was against Stiles closing the door to his room / mind.  This reminded me a bit of something Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Inception said about dream characters becoming violent toward anyone or anything that might disrupt the dream.  Perhaps, Dream Lydia didn’t want Stiles to close the door in his dream, because if he did, it would end his Bardo, thereby closing off the possibility of the evil demons connected to the Evil Tree / Nemeton breaking free into the Real World.

That would make Dream Lydia kind of evil.  So maybe it was a good thing Stiles didn’t have sex with her . . .

Then again, Stiles never actually closes the door.  Instead he WALKS THROUGH IT, thereby exposing himself, once again to the Nemeton, and the horrors of sleep paralysis . . . which, some might say, was a worse result than if he simply ignored the door and started humping his lady love. . .

“DAMMIT, YOU MEAN TO TELL ME I COULD HAVE GOTTEN LAID!”

We then see Stiles wake up, go to school and tell Scott all about his theories about waking dreams, and how his, in particular, might be related to the Sacrifice to the Nemeton that the three of them made last season.  Scott grunts, stares at his friend dumbfounded, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever intelligent or helpful to say, as per usual.  Everyone in the class pretends the two boys don’t exist, despite the fact that they are both rather attractive, have great bodies, and are talking very loudly about very weird sh*t .  . .  also as per usual.  Everything seems normal enough.  But Stiles still feels like something is off . . .

And that’s when he wakes up again . . . for real this time . . . maybe . . .

In a sense, Stiles’ intense self awareness and extensive knowledge of dream states functions as both a blessing and a curse for him.  On one hand, Stiles is more likely than any other character on the show to instinctively realize he is dreaming.  Therefore, he would theoretically have the easiest time lucidly navigating his own dream world, and, when necessary, waking himself up.  On the other hand, Stiles’ innate ability to detect dreamlike things in everyday occurrences will undoubtedly cast a pall of strangeness on every aspect of his life, leaving him perpetually uncertain as to whether he is ALWAYS AWAKE or ALWAYS ASLEEP.

This has led some to speculate that Stiles may already be dead (either from the tub, or from the car accident he experienced later that same episode), and that the entire second half of the season is taking place in his (unconscious?) (comatose?) (purgatoried?) mind . . .

In short, the cold open to Season 3B was about twenty times more meta than anything we’ve seen on the show, thus far.  But I liked it.  Unlike most dream sequences in teen shows, which bash you on the head with their symbolism  (Common Example 1: A precocious student is afraid of bombing her SATs.  So, she has a dream that she bombs her SATs, and ends up a homeless bum.  Common Example 2: A woman fears her Bad Boy boyfriend lacks ambition.  So she has a dream that she marries him, and ends up living in a dirty trailer park with 10 kids, married to her Bad Boy boyfriend, who is now a fat, burping, unemployed mess.), Stiles dreams were subtle, confusing, and disjointed.  They didn’t insult viewers’ intelligence, by tying everything up in a nice pretty Bardo Bow.  And that made them seem more like . . . well . . . real dreams . . .

I still wanted to see Stiles get dream laid though . . .

My Shadow Self

As is usually the case on this show,  other characters experience Real Problems, while Scott experiences things that are mildly annoying, but also kind of fun / funny.

“My Shadow Self really needs a manicure.”

“If you think it, it will come . . .”

Allison has 100% turned into Haley Joe Osment’s character from The Sixth Sense . . .

Complete with cold gusts of air coming out of her mouth, every time she encounters the dead . . .

“Oooh, either it’s getting a little nippley in here . . . or I just stumbled into a commercial for breath mints.”

She’s also hallucinating entire trips to the hospital mortuary on her walks to school, and may or may not be suffering from multiple personality disorder  . . .

“Which one of us do you think looks better in this outfit, Me or me?”

To top that off, her hands are shaking constantly, as if she’s suffering from DTs, so she can’t shoot her bow and arrow for sh*t, and her pesky zombie dead aunt, not only can’t seem to leave her alone, but almost made her  kill her best friend, and TOTALLY cockblocked her Awesome Dream Sex with Isaac. . .

“Helllooooo?   Anybody in there?”

“Sup, girl?”

“Hey again.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were avoiding me, Allison?”

“Was it something I said?   Is it because I have zombie breath?”

“Woah, Allison, there are much easier ways to make sure you win prom queen than scalping the competition .  . .”

“Oh Isaac, I’ve wanted this for at least three episodes so long.”

“Hey girl!  Can I get in on this too?  Argent Family Threesome?”

“Worst . . . orgasm . . . EVER!”

So, I’d say that’s all pretty sucky.  Stiles, as we know, can’t tell whether he’s asleep or awake . . . like ALL THE TIME.  He may, in fact, already be dead . . .  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the sole income earner in his family either just got fired from his job by his best friend’s bio dad .  . .

. . . and /or became a serious hoarder.  And to top it off, in the past couple of days, Stiles has officially become a barely functioning illiterate who can’t count to ten . . . .

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So, in what horrible way has Scott been affected by the ritual sacrifice you ask?  Well, his shadow is being sort of a pain in the ass . . .

“My shadow has officially become more attractive than I am.  Now, I know how Peter Pan felt. . .”

“I am SO done competing with this douchebag.  Off he goes!”

And his best friend is crushing on his ex . . .

“Weeee . . .  I’m flying.  Hey Scott, is this what it feels like to have sex with Allison?“

Oh, and he’s also experiencing a massive case of dry eyes / anger management issues!

“Nothing to see here.  This is totally normal.  I treat my friend like he’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame all the time!”

“You wouldn’t like me when I’m horny . . . “

In  other words, it’s nothing a little Visine, and a pep talk from Mommy about how he’ll find love again, couldn’t cure . . .

“You don’t need a girlfriend to keep you from turning into a monster, Scott.  Remember what that nice man Anthony Bates said in Psycho, ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother . . .’ “

Perhaps, that wasn’t the best example.

So, to summarize, Stiles and Allison are going through Hell.  And Scott?  Well, he’s going through puberty . . .

That’s Sign Language for “You’re totally f*&ked.”

Have you ever had one of those dreams, where it’s the end of the semester, and you realize that you totally spaced and forgot to attend one of your classes.  And now,  suddenly, you have to go take a final for a class for which you’ve never even cracked open a book?

Well, imagine that the class was Sign Language 101.  And you arrive to find everyone repeatedly, and angrily motioning toward you in a way that might be the Macarena dance, for all the significance it has to you.

That’s what happens to poor Stiles in this episode.  Fortunately, our trusty old Coach Crackpot is there to wake our hero up from his nightmare.  The problem, of course, is that, while all this was happening, Stiles wasn’t actually sleeping.   He was . . . drawing . . .

But wait . . . check out the shape of Stiles’ incessant scribble of “Wake Ups.”  Does it look like anything to you?  Because it sure as heck looks like an “anchor” to me . . . as in .  . . THE TITLE OF THIS EPISODE .  . .

Here’s a theory.  You know how all the werewolves require a mental “anchor” to keep themselves from wolfing out at inopportune moments.  What if to escape “Bardo,” our heroes also need an anchor to keep them “tied down” to the real living world, which is becoming increasingly hard for them to reach?

Kind of like the “anchors” who first guided our heroes into the Ritual Ice Bath Sacrifice in the first place?  (i.e. Lydia for Stiles, Isaac for Allison, Deaton for Scott, or according to Scott’s mother, Scott for Scott).

About that whole “Bardo” Concept . . .

So, it just occurred to me that I’ve been going about this  recap kind of backwards, in the sense that I’ve been consistently referring to this Bardo Concept, without explaining how this information was actually introduced to our characters . . .

It all started with Lydia, who was taking way too much joy in the fact that she was no longer the token wackadoo of the group . . . i.e. the one who screamed really loudly at really inappropriate times for no reason at all, occasionally drugged her friends with wolfsbane, and had a strange tendency to wander around in the forest naked in the middle of the night .. . (Well, actually, she’s still that person.  But now all her friends are acting just as nuts.)

She also really, really wanted to figure out what the heck was going on with all her friends.

(By the way, you would think that a BANSHEE would be a bit more attuned to the fact that her entire social circle is potentially half-dead.  But whatever . . .)

“Well, you all can’t be THAT dead, because I’m not screaming my head off.  Then, again, if all of this is just a dream in Stiles’ head then . . . at least his subconscious put me in a cute outfit.”

And while Lydia was busy being totally stumped by the situation, someone else had already figured things out.  Meet Kira . . .

She’s the new girl in school.  This is her dad . . . who is a history teacher, and who is inexplicably teaching Kira’s history class, despite the fact that the school is pretty large and likely has at least two other history teachers on the faculty who weren’t murdered by evil Druids . . .

“I really don’t want to be a history teacher.  History teachers never survive supernatural teen shows.  Can’t I teach gym, or woodworking?  How about making me a nice lunch lady?  No one ever kills the lunch lady.  I’d even be willing to wear a hairnet.”

Some have speculated that Kira (or her dad) might be the foxy kitsune who gets into our Scooby Gang’s heads this half of the season, and functions as its trickstery, mental manipulating big bad.  But, for now, all we know about her is that she knows all about Tibetan Buddhism and Bardo, totally believes Scott and Co. are hallucinating and stuff because they are about to croak.  Oh, and Scott thinks she’s a total hottie.  Anywhoo, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of this chick . . .

Speaking of Characters Whose Sole Purpose Seems to Be to Explain Complicated Tidbits of Mythology to the Audience. . .

He pops up just in time to tell the kiddies what we all pretty much figured out from the promos.  Basically, that whole ritual sacrifice thingy, which actually had nothing at all to do with the finale or how Darach Jenny was ultimately defeated has made them Stiles, Scott and Allison, nutzo.  And so they all need to  . . . wait for it . . . close the doors in their brains to keep them from going straight to hell and letting all the evil demons escape into the world, just like they keep threatening to do but never actually do on The Vampire Diaries  . . .

Don’t worry Isaac.  At least you were more helpful than Deaton, this week!

In Seemingly Unrelated News . . .

This guy . . .

 . . . is a total douche, who is trying to take Stiles’ dad’s Sheriff job away, seemingly just because that’s the kind of thing douches do.

Stiles’ dad, of course, wants to keep his job, and randomly decides that solving a REALLY, REALLY cold case involving a missing little girl who IF she was still alive she’s totally still alive would be Stiles’ age now, is precisely the way to do it . . .

Meet, not really dead Malia Tate . . .

Her mother and sister(?) were killed in what may or may not have been a wolf mauling, but her body was never found. Malia Tate looks a bit like a younger version of this lady, Shelly Hennig, who has signed on to be a “Super Secret Important Character on this Show.”

They even have the same side part in their hair!

For reasons that don’t quite make sense to me, Stiles’ dad decides to visit Malia’s slightly strange, and very pissed off, still grieving father, who has a strange obsession with, and seeming hatred, for coyotes  . . .

“Coyotes are evil.  My missing daughter and/or I might be a were-coyote.“

  . . . so that Scott can quite literally sniff around Malia’s room, and see if he can pick up her scent, despite her not having lived in the house for about ten years . . .

She must have been a really smelly girl?

Scott can’t seem to latch on to Malia’s body odor.  But he and Stiles do have a fun little encounter with another smelly creature .. .

“Please let me join your pack.  I’m already house trained.”

“I’m also a very good finder.”

Stiles and Scott narrowly escape the Tate home without being discovered by Creepy Papa Tate.  Later that night, the two of them head off into the night in search of Malia’s dead body.  (Riiiiiight, because this strategy of searching for dead things in the forest has served them both so well in the past . . .)

And while they don’t locate Malia’s corpse, the best friends do come upon one of her baby dolls, which, just so happens to have the best working batteries of any toy I’ve ever seen  . . .

What toy works that well after 10 years?  Even the Chuckie doll  from the Child’s Play series has started to show signs of slowing down, and he’s possessed by an honest-to-goodness serial killer . . .

Later that night, Scott stumbles upon a coyote or wolf (I’m not really good at differentiating between K-9’s) and is inexplicably convinced it’s Malia . . .

It’s important to note that the creature .. .  whatever it is . . .  has blue eyes, which means it has killed innocents (possibly its own family members . . . possibly by accident, during a Full Moon turn).  So, who is it . . . Malia Tate?   Her father?  The Mysterious Kira?  It’s probably too soon to know for sure.

Oh, and for those of you who have been wondering where Derek and Sassy Peter have been all episode . . . the answer will shock you . . .

Poor Derek!  He can’t even make it through one episode without having his manhood burned and denigrated in some way.  But hey, at least he still looks good shirtless . . .

Some thing never change . . .

Next week on Teen Wolf . . .

And if that didn’t whet your appetite, perhaps this will . . .

http://www.mtv.com/shows/teen_wolf/ep-14-sneak-peek/991310/video/#id=1719787

Until next time, Werebangers!  Sweet dreams . . .

Jailbait – A Recap of The Vampire Diaries’ “The Cell”

Cannibalism never looked this good  . . .

Greetings Fangbangers!  This week’s installment of The Vampire Diaries explored the many ways in which humans (and vampires) can be prisoners . . .

“Is it Friday yet?”

They can be literal prisoners, locked in jail cells and deprived of freedom, like Damon, Sexy New Latin Lover Enzo (played by newcomer Michael Malarkey . . . mama like . . . . A LOT), and later Elena, were to those wackjob sadists fondly referred to as “Augustine” . . .

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“On the bright side, conjugal visits just became much more convenient.”

They could be prisoners of their own bodies and mortality, like the supposedly-rapidly-decaying-and-dying-but-still-looks-frustratingly-stunning-sexy-and-wrinkle-free Katherine Pierce . . .

Wait until she learns that humans actually gain weight  . . .

They could be prisoners of their sorry fate and unfortunately evil legacy, like that eternal sad sack, who makes Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh,  look downright cheery,  Aaron Whitmore . . .

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“It’s not like my day could get any worse.”

And they could be prisoners of their own minds, like good ole “my girlfriend dumped me for my brother, and my face twin, locked me in a safe at the bottom of a river, hence all the screaming, hyperventilating and crying I’ve been doing lately,” Stefan . . .

“Dear WebMD, does Aspirin work on Vampires?”

Whatever your personal prison, you didn’t need to have vampire blood running through your brains to relate to at least one of the storylines of “The Cell,” which, as a refreshing change from the uber complex mythology and whiplash fast repeated plot twists of “the Silas Storyline” actually worked pretty well as a standalone episode, with a focus on character motivation and basic interpersonal relationships that we haven’t really seen since the series’ heyday back in Season 2.

So break out your favorite trusty old safe (hopefully, you’ve sanitized it first), choke down your daily blood rations, and turn up the radio on that old classic 50’s tune,  because it’s time to “go a-walking after midnight” with this latest TVD recap . . .

La Casa de Rich and Slimy

No wonder, Damon never had any qualms about offing his ancestor Zach Salvatore back in Season 1 of TVD!  It seems these Salvatores have a pretty long history of familial betrayal . . . one that dates back at least as far as the early 50’s, when Some Random Salvatore used the now infamous Boarding House (where Damon and Stefan have been drinking, sexing up numerous women who look like Nina Dobrev, and brooding for the past five seasons) to lure a very James Dean-y version of Damon into a life of captivity and torture, all for “the good of science” and a bit of cash, of course.

When Damon found out about this betrayal (upon receiving a neck full of vervain for his trouble) he was less than pleased.

And so, he found a rather creative way to seek vengeance on his less-than-trustworthy relative: death-by-whiskey-glass.  Granted, this form of death is not quite as visually appealing, as a good old-fashioned heart-extraction-from-chest-and-subsequent-tossing-of-heart-on-floor-like-it’s-a-piece-of-lint-on-your-shirt, but it will do in a pinch.

“This whiskey tastes funny.  Perhaps, it has something to do with the rim of the glass having just been inside my great, great, great grandson’s carotid artery . . .”

Enter Dr. Whitmore . . .

Psycho sadist by day, douchebag who wears a pocket square by night . . .

He’s thrilled that Death-By-Whiskey resulted in a surprise discount on his Vampire Pin Cushion purchase, but bummed that his test subject is still awake.  Fortunately, a bit more vervain will fix that right up .  . .

Back in  the present day, Damon finds himself once again, a P.O.W. (Prisoner of Whitmore).  Only this time, fashions have changed (he’s wearing a black shirt instead of a white one), and vampire jail is much lonelier without a super sexy guest star in the next cell with which to shoot the breeze.  Fortunately for Damon, company is on the way . . .

“Black is the new black.”

“Sorry all your friends and family died.  But let’s talk about me for a change . . .”

It appears that one of the unfortunate side effects of being on a show where everybody’s sole point of interest and topic of conversation is you, is that you tend to become a wee bit self-absorbed . . .

“But enough about me, let’s talk about me.”

And because she is a victim of her own circumstances, I guess we have to cut Elena a bit of slack for KILLING JESSE one night, and popping up at his MASSIVELY DEPRESSED TO THE POINT OF BEING SUICIDAL former roommate’s dorm room the next morning, and asking him to come frolicking with her in search of her errant boyfriend.

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Someone needs to get her priorities in order.

Fortunately, for Elena, Sad Aaron is so desperate for non-brutally murdered people to befriend, that if he spotted a cockroach on his window sill, he’d probably invite it out for beers, and offer to be its wingman while it tried to pick up chicks . . .

And so he gallantly invites the only person on the show who is a bigger Grim Reaper than he is, over to his family mansion where, unbeknownst to him, his “guardian” is using Elena’s boyfriend to play a live action version of the beloved childhood game “Operation.”  (Just don’t remove his funny bone, Mmm-kay, Doctor Death.  We like our Elder Salvatore Brother sexy AND snarky.)

If you recall, the last time Elena was here, she had to hang out outside, because the owner of the house wasn’t around to invite her in.  This time, she dances around awkwardly, waiting for Aaron to do the polite thing, and let the female bloodsucker cross his threshold.

It’s at this point in the story that we learn (1) Aaron is a Whitmore, which means his dead family like TOTALLY owns the college; (2) Elena’s dad may or may not have been in league with the nefarious Augustines; and (3) Doctor Death became Aaron’s legal guardian, after the death of his last living relative Useless Aunt Jenna Aunt Sarah.

We interrupt this trip down Plot Twist lane, so that Elena can get stabbed in the neck with a vervain syringe . . .

(Personally, I prefer the good old fashioned neck snap for characters who need a “temporary time out,” but I guess this will do, in a pinch.)

Another Fail “Safe” Plan

Back at La Casa de Rich and Awesome, Stefan thinks writing about her problems in a diary will make Katherine want to kill herself less.

(Yeah, Stefan, because that worked SO WELL for you!)

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But Katherine has never really been much of a writer (or a reader) for that matter.   So, she tells Stefan he should stop focusing on Katherine’s suicidal tendencies and start trying to figure out why the same guy who ate his own father without flinching, now goes into girly hysterics every time he pictures an itty bitty box .  . .

I mean, I thought vampires were supposed to like coffins?

Katherine invites her new bestie Caroline over to shock Stefan out of his PTSD, by locking him in a safe, until he’s not afraid of  being there anymore.

She even brought her own trusty safe to use in Stefan’s treatment.  “But don’t worry,” she tells the seriously freaked out younger Salvatore brother.  “I sanitized it.”

Yes, Caroline, because germs have always been a vampire’s worst enemy . .  .

Stefan’s first run-in with the safe doesn’t exactly go well, in the sense that he’s throwing a full-on temper tantrum within minutes of getting inside.  (Can you imagine this guy in a tanning bed?  It would not be pretty.)

Katherine wonders out loud whether Stefan’s problem is not the safe at all, but rather, his pen*s.  This logic inspires in her a rather brilliant idea.  (Katherine not be particularly literary.  And she may never have enrolled in Psych 101, like Caroline.  But if she’s an expert in anything it’s Vampire Pen*s . . .)

“This one time .  . . in Augustine Vampire Jail . . .”

Finding themselves reunited in Vampire Jail with a sturdy wall of bars between them, Elena and Damon find themselves with a bit of time to kill.

And so, Damon decides to regale Elena about his zany prison adventures with a hot European soldier Vamp named Enzo.   You see, this isn’t Damon’s first time at the rodeo.  He’s been a vampire test subject once before.

(By the way, over 50 some-odd years of experimentation with the undead, and these guys are still doing things like testing vampire light sensitivity, and their ability to regenerate limbs?  Any teenager who has read Twilight  could tell you that.  Worst Medical Researchers EVER!)

Damon discusses how Enzo and him developed a friendship through the bars of their personal vampire prison, while chugging down a single shot glass of blood each day to keep themselves from desiccation.  While they took turns being brutally tortured by that icy cyborg Dr. Whitmore (charm cleary runs in this family), the two bonded over lost lady loves (Enzo’s was a benevolent researcher named Maggie), music (“I go a-walking . . . after midnight . . . out in the moonlight . . .lalala”), and their mutual hatred for all things Whitmore.  Time passed, until finally, after one New Years, the vampire bromantics finally devised a plan for their inevitable escape from Torture Town.

The plan involved Damon drinking both his and Enzo’s rations, and secretly growing stronger, over the course of a year, so that when the two were let out for the annual New Year’s party, Damon would be strong enough to free Enzo from the pokey, and the pair could live happily ever after . . .  literally . . . you know . . . because they are immortal and stuff . . .

A whole year, comprised of doing nothing but regularly submitting to torture and drinking shots of red stuff . . . talk about a LOOOOOOOONNNG CON.  (Though, honestly, it seems strange that Enzo wouldn’t have desiccated during that time, seeing as he was drinking nothing for an entire year, and the whole point of the rations was to keep both vampires alive and weak.)

Because Katherine Pierce is just kinky like that . . .

When this box is a rocking, don’t come a-knocking  . . .

Stefan opens his eyes in the Evil Box to find Katherine right next to him, sweating it out with him.  (Geez!  It’s a good thing Stefan isn’t claustrophobic.)  He freaks out, of course, threatens to kill her, gently chokes her, makes a big show of breathing heavily on her neck.  It’s supposed to be scary, but it’s kind of hot, and you can tell both parties are totally turned on by it . . .

Katherine explains to Stefan that his fear of safes is really just a sublimation of the feelings of abandonment he experienced when Elena dumped him for Stefan.  It’s some pretty high brow talk for a girl who’s used to speaking almost entirely in sexual innuendos!  Then, in a voice that’s oddly Elena like, Katherine gently reminds Stefan that she’s there for him.

This has the impact of giving Stefan a major boner, and making him temporarily forget that he’s locked in a death trap of a safe with a dying human blood bag.

 “Wakey, wakey!”

Caroline pops open the safe,  unfortunately cock blocking the hundred plus year-old flames before they have a chance to let the REAL healing begin.  But Stefan isn’t mad at his gal pal.  His PTSD is cured!

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Now if he could just find a remedy for these . . .

A little while later, Katherine confronts Stefan in the study, and lightly teases him about an ugly chair he broke, while in the throes of PTSD.  Stefan admits that he finally has to make a point to move on from Elena.  Katherine is uncharacteristically demure when she admits that sometimes she isn’t quite sure what she’s doing.   They move closer to one another slowly,  like boxers circling each  other, eyes locked, wondering whose going to be the one to make the first jab.  “My Superman” by Santigold plays in the background, reminding both characters that they’ve “got to live.”

Annnnd the, next thing you know they’re sucking face .  . .

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Part of me wishes we actually got to see a bit of the good stuff, rather than merely implying that the two characters were boning, by zooming in on Caroline’s horrified and disgusted face, as her vampire hearing picked up the sound of their sex moans,  while she was leaving a telephone message for the kidnapped Elena.  And yet, I guess there is something to be said for leaving a bit to the imagination.

After all, this “coming together” of Stefan and Katherine was actually much less about sexual tension (though they have it in spades, for sure), and more about them both being precisely what one another needed in that moment.  Stefan needed to recognize that his pain over Elena’s abandonment of him was keeping him metaphorically trapped, emotionally suffocated, and afraid of moving on with his life.  Katherine’s willingness to be there for him, when he needed it most, literally allowed Stefan to breathe inside that safe, and, subsequently feel freer than he had in a long time.

As for Katherine, her mortality and impending death were making her feel weak, old, and frail, sapping her of her usual survival instincts and will to live.   Seeing how much Stefan needed and wanted her, brought Katherine back to herself.  It made her feel, strong, sexy, and virile.  It gave her the desire to fight for her own survival.

Also, let’s face it, these are two people who REALLY like sex,  and haven’t been laid in a few episodes . . . so there’s that . . .

New Year’s Cleave

Back in flashback land, it’s New Year’s Eve and Damon and Enzo are prepped and ready for their great escape.  Everything starts off as planned.  Damon, emboldened by his extra shot of blood each day, breaks his own bones upon minutes of being let out of the cage, heals them, and then proceeds to pop out Dr. Whitmore’s eyeballs, just as Dr. Whitmore did to him early on in the episode.

You know, because no one gets between Damon and his darling baby blues . . . NO ONE.

Then he, takes the keys to the cages from Dr. Whitmore’s pants, frees hot Enzo and dashes off into the sunset.

Just kidding.  That would be the SMART thing to do.  Instead, Damon proceeds to kill all the party guests, knock over a candelabra, and set the entire place on fire.  Then, the bars are all hot, and Damon can’t save Enzo without becoming fried chicken in the process.  So, Damon does what any self-respecting antihero would do, he turns off his emotions, and walks out, leaving his buddy to chargrill.  Catch you later, Hot Enzo . . . who is now literally hot . . . as in BURNING TO DEATH HOT.

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“Cool guys never look back at explosions.”

And so yet another clueless human learns about the existence of vampires is and changed forever . . .

Back in the present day, Doctor Death gives Aaron an impromptu lesson in vampires . . . explains that vampires killed his parents  . . . and gives him a vervain watch and some lame vampire research journals as a belated birthday present.  Traumatized Aaron travels down to vampire jail to find out which member of the Scooby Gang killed his parents and possibly Megan.  He accuses Elena, at first.  WRONG!  (Though Elena DID kill Jesse, Aaron never quite gets around to asking her about that.)

“Et tu, human version of Eeyore?”

Damon admits that while he didn’t kill any of Aaron’s roommates, he did kill Aaron’s parents, and pretty much all of his ancestors, along with a boatload of Augustines.  In a brief flashback, we learn that Damon’s plan for vengeance against the Whitmores had been to kill everyone in their family but one, in each generation, to ensure that he would continue having Whitmore’s to kill for all eternity.  He better hope Aaron’s not sterile, because he just killed his last living relative Sarah, a few months back . . . when Damon and Elena had just started dating.

Ruh-roh . .  . it looks like, while love heals all wounds, it may not be strong enough to satisfy one’s thirst for vengeance . . . just ask Amanda Clark from Revenge.

What’s worse, many fans are speculating that Damon might very well have been the one to cause Elena’s parent’s accident, seeing as he was present moments before the accident occurred, and Elena’s father is currently presumed to have been a member of the Vampire Torture Fraternity.  Is there a Hallmark card out there that reads, “Sorry for maybe killing your parents, and for going on killing spree road trips, when you and I were supposed to be at home having mind blowing sex?  If so, Damon better start shopping for it now . . .

Aaron thanks Damon for his confession, by shooting him in the head.  Nighty night, Damon.

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He wakes up a few moments later to find his girlfriend missing from her cell . . .

Someone needs to get more music on his iPod . . .

When you think about it, it’s a bit ironic that the haunting oldies tune “Walking After Midnight,” of all tunes, was the one that played in the background throughout most of “The Cell,” especially when you consider how little walking our Scooby Gang did during this episode.  I mean, seriously, this might very well have been the least ambulatory episode of TVD of all time!  Everyone seemed to be either, locked up in jail cells, or lying down in safes, strapped down to examination tables, or dumbfoundedly watching others lay around, sit around, or lie around in those places.

How does that old saying go?  Something about idle hands being the devil’s playthings?

Well, the same thing could possibly be said about idles minds and mouths, if Enzo (Welcome back, Enzo!  We just knew you were too damn good looking and charismatic to be a one-off flashback character on this show.) and his creepy crooning of what may very well be the ONLY song he’s been listening to nonstop since 1953, while strapped down next to Poor!Elena on an examination table, waiting to get his weiner chopped off or some such nonsense in the name of pseudo-science-as-an-excuse-for torture.  Let’s all invest in an iTunes gift card for this guy for Christmas, what do you say?

That said,  it does appear that Doctor Death at least took the time to get Enzo a modern day haircut, and update his wardrobe.  (Though, to be honest, I was kind of partial to his greaser duds.  They were sexy.)  This, of course, begs the question: why bother to play dress up with a guy you only let out once a year to be your dancing monkey at parties?  Could Enzo be THE Augustine Vampire to which Doctor Death has been referring all this time?  The one who has become allegiant to the same society that tortured him for over half a century?   The one that killed sweet Megan and her adorable glasses?

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Only time will tell . . .

Next week, on The Vampire Diaries mid-season finale, Sad Sack Aaron learns that it’s hard out there for a relatively wimpy human on a show full of vampires.  Just ask Matt . . .

Also, next week, Katherine dabbles in some cardio . . .

See ya then, Fangbangers!

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