Tuesday, June 25, 2013

'Teen Wolf' 3.04 "Unleashed" Review

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Anytime a show has to deal with bringing in new characters, expanding the relationships of its core crew, and balancing new storylines there are difficulties in doing so smoothly. Four episodes in and ‘Unleashed’ had a few more issues with handling concepts such starting new ships for known characters. Last week, Derek saved Scott and co’s new teacher Ms. Blake from a rabid werewolf thrashing. Now he’s showing up before school in her classroom checking on her well-being (good), trying to impress her with his knowledge of the metaphorical nature of The Crucible (she’s an English teacher Derek you’re not impressing her), and Ms. Blake responded in kind with suspicion and nervous twitchiness.


The problem with creating a pairing out of this situation is that it feels so random. We barely know anything about Ms. Blake outside of the fact she’s a hot young teacher with a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.


Not to mention, practically speaking, someone like Derek especially should not be getting close in any way with someone who could be put into danger again. It’s almost as though the writers figured since they were ‘domesticating’ Derek to a point this year—what with his new loft being a place someone could actually live in without fear of tetanus—he should also be given a girlfriend. For no real reason other than it was a box to check on a list of ‘normal’ attributes for a handsome man in his twenties.


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This unfortunately isn’t the only problematic pairing that occurred in this episode. Isaac and Allison started being a little more flirty with one another than we’ve seen them be before.  I’m not opposed to either having a love interest in the midst of the life-threatening drama, but the fact is that a young man with a history of being a victim of abuse is being put with a woman who brutally assaulted him last season. Even though Stiles tried to encourage the idea of laughing off a little maiming between friends and acquaintances early in the season, if the genders were reversed people would flip out that a young woman that was abused at home was being paired with a man that once tried to kill her within the roles of hunter/hunted. It’s also eye-rolling in the same way that Delena being such a thing after Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder happened to be dating was. For some people it affects the acting and both Crystal Reed and Daniel Sharman would slip out of character for a moment and throw the scene off.


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Outside of the random new love interest, Sharman’s Isaac Lahey is having quite the year…of pain and suffering. Tonight was no different sadly as in one scene he was kicked out of Derek’s place. I know that Derek can really be a crappy Alpha at times but his throwing that bottle at Isaac’s head (even though he was trying to get Isaac to leave for his own future safety) was one of the worst ways he’s ever handled a problem. And for what, so Cora the failwolf can stick around instead? I know that Isaac was in more immediate danger by being Derek’s beta but Cora’s about as unimpressive as the Alpha pack twins. I only get why she’s even around from a pure storytelling basis of trying to expand Derek’s roots and his family that he thought was mostly all dead.
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Just because a character’s conceptual purpose works on paper it certainly doesn’t mean it works in practice. I haven’t meant to bitch about the Alpha twins in every review this year but the show keeps giving me such ample reason to do so. They serve the function of being built-in (random) potential love interests for two well-loved characters and they’re a believable threat to have hanging around our teenage heroes on a daily basis.  Other than that, Aidan and Ethan aren’t worth all the screen-time they’ve gotten. They have bland personalities when they aren’t just growling at whoever’s in front of them. Hopefully next week we’ll get a little more advancement of their respective developments with Lydia and Danny.


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One of the best parts about this episode was how much Danny was in it. He stole nearly every scene he was in as well but I am looking forward to getting some time with the character outside of the occasional quip here and there. It’s partly why I haven’t just written the potential of the twins off entirely as it’s well-known in the fandom that Danny will date one of them soon and to see his character gain a relationship will hopefully mean that Keahu Kahuanui gets something a little more interesting to work with on-screen.


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Even though the twins haven’t made much of an impression, the same cannot be said of Kali and Deucalion. Cheesy faux Mortal Kombat style VS. fight scenes aside, Kali took Derek down hard with some serious flair. Her interactions with Deucalion, or ‘Duke’ as she casually refers to him, are a real highlight of the year so far. Gideon Emery is well-known primarily as a voice-over actor in several video games. He brings that vocal presence with him during Duke’s big villain speech (a speech that could have benefited just fine without the overwrought lightning/thunder combo behind him). Now we have another interesting addition to the werewolf canon of the show. One becomes part of the Alpha crew by killing their pack and not just for kicks but so they can absorb the were powers of their betas. It seems to provide one hell of a rush for them to do so too from what Deucalion and Kali both implied when discussing it to a very captive audience of an impaled Derek Hale. Say that out loud, it’s fun I guarantee it. This seems to happen frequently where Derek is weighed, he is measured and he is found wanting at least until the end of the season or until his uncle Peter strolls back into the scene. He was nowhere to be found in this episode so let the theories fly about that fact.


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Over with the humans, Stiles may not have gotten Doctor Deaton to ‘fess up with the hows and whys of his consistent knowledge when bad things go down in Beacon Hills but he did push the sacrifice storyline forward nicely. It’s one of the best qualities about Stiles, he’s more proactive than reactionary so he can always be counted on to actively pursue answers even without Scott around him. Plus he’s pretty damn good at coming up with the thematic elements of the latest round of sacrifices especially when he works together with Lydia and her 170 IQ. The idea of more than one set of sacrifices and with different concepts to why each person is chosen makes it a very suitable threat for the series plus it makes it a fun mystery to play along with while you try to beat the characters to figuring out why the next person died.

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Now that I’ve railed against bland Alpha twins, gushed over my love of Danny and the two top Alphas as well as complained about Derek’s bad choices this episode I get to use this last bit of space to mourn a character lost in the episode. I don’t mean Kyle, no one knows that guy I mean the underrated bastard that was Mr. Harris. Since the start of the series, Mr. Harris was always there. First with a mean word, a sharp insult, eager to pick away at Scott’s self-esteem and I’m pretty sure he wanted to cause physical harm to Stiles more than once. When people would ask who my favorite characters were from Teen Wolf, I would mention Mr. Harris without fail and now Jeff Davis has taken him from me and his four other fans. What was so intriguing about how he went down was that he left a major clue behind as to who or what is behind the sacrifice rituals and he even seemed to be involved with that person in some way. No one will terrorize and demean the students of Beacon Hills High School in quite the same way. RIP you totally entertaining prick.

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