The complications grow as it becomes harder to care.
What They Say:
Damnatio Memoriae – Even without the support of his pack, Scott considers what the Dread Doctors’ success means for Beacon Hills.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While Teen Wolf didn’t assuage my big fears with its opening episode of the back half of the fifth season, they did enough right to keep me for the rest of the season to see how it all shakes out. Keeping the cast trimmed down helped, focusing on Scott and Stiles with their issues was a plus, and giving a sense of starting to draw the core group back together was what was needed. It also didn’t hurt that the Dread Doctors were kept minimal overall, as was Theo and all that unfolded from that in the first half of the season, because it all just had a hard time working. I’m still not sure what to make of the whole hellhound thing, but the show has expanded in ways that I still think came too soon and too quickly to really feel like it works. I really miss the heavier werewolf focus of the earlier seasons.
The opening for this episode is one that works well in a kind of basic way but has that feeling of going on too long and spending more time with Hayden’s sister in these few minutes than she has all season. When she’s driving Hayden to work and has to detour for a call in the dark of night, it doesn’t take long for it to turn into something dangerous, though at least Liam is there to help. Or rather, to be helped by her as they end up showing off some pretty impressive abilities while avoiding a pretty dangerous and powerful beast. There are good bits to it in how it looks and plays out, but the same problem is there we’ve had all season. As much as I do actually like Hayden, there’s been little to her all season and Liam continues to be something of a drag on most events.
With Scott, he’s doing his best to figure things out with the last Chimera as there are a few options for it but also a lot of bodies to work through with all that’s happened. It doesn’t help that Parrish is just a grim addition early on for coming to some basic ideas and reinforcing what they already know, but it also puts Scott in that mental position of just figuring out as much as he can on his own. Though there was what felt like a bit of a push to get people back together and really start moving forward again in the previous episode, he’s still largely trying to figure it all out on his own in order to keep everyone safe. Which is certainly admirable, but after all this time he’s supposed to have figured out how a pack actually works. It’s just problematic that he keeps working this angle since it’s far too familiar at this point.
He does at least try to go to Malia for help, but since she’s getting ready for her own dark deeds in an effort to find the Desert Wolf. This sets up things a bit more for what’s going to happen further down the season, including filling us in at long last on where Deaton is. You feel bad for Scott in that he’s finally able to start asking for help, from the only person that he really can at this stage, and she has to refuse him. We do at least know that things are going to get better for him eventually since Stiles has a strong heart to heart with his dad about what’s been going on with his own struggles, and that all circles back to him reconnecting with Scott since he’s someone that can really understand the difficulties that they face with what their lives are like.
Lydia’s story continues to progress slowly. So slowly, in fact, that she’s turned from becoming my favorite character in the first season to one whose name I can barely remember now. And whose powers are simply too open-ended and vague to really get a handle on. She simply isn’t getting good material to work with and is in such a foggy state that it doesn’t connect in any way, even if it does play to some traditional horror elements with what it introduces. Not that the series needs to keep adding new things to the mix.
When the show does finally shift in the second half to Scott and Stiles working together to investigate the big feral creature that caused trouble at the start, it works fairly well even with the kind of awkwardness that exists between them. You really want more of this but instead we keep getting more of the whole Liam subplot and all the drama associated there, which while connected to everything going on and the fallout from Theo’s own little machinations, it simply doesn’t work in the slightest. While I liked Liam at the start as he had a kind of fun about him in contrast to the more serious minded Scott and Stiles after all they had seen, he’s really faltered along the way and feels like there’s no true consistency with him outside of being afraid and incapable of doing things while alternating that with being lovestruck over Hayden.
In Summary:
While I felt like the show was finding its legs and standing a bit again with its return in the previous episode, this one again goes back to what’s dogged so much of the first half of the season in its meandering. There’s too much going on here that’s beyond the core cast, and with the uninteresting cast, in order to make them more integral. Liam and Hayden really can’t carry their scenes and it just turns into a drag on the pacing, especially when you get far more engaging material in watching Scott and Stiles working together. Teen Wolf continues to feel very unfocused as it has so much going on but nowhere near enough to make those subplots feel like they’re worthy of time being spent on them. And Hayden is no substitute for quality time with Malia or Kira. The lack of female presence here outside of Hayden really doesn’t help it either.
Grade: C-
