http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TalesFromTheDarksideS4E16TheFamilyReunion
Family Reunion
A family is attacked by an unknown creature during a trip to Ireland and the result causes their son Bobby to transform into a werewolf. Perry, the father, is forced to keep Bobby locked up until he finds a cure. Meanwhile, Bobby's mother Janice enlists the help of a social worker to get her son back from Perry by any means necessary.
Tropes
- Affably Evil: Between Bobby's bratty attitude and his mother's manipulation, the two of them are monsters on every conceivable level. Though admittedly, the ending indicates that the relationship between mother and son is genuinely affectionate in its own feral way.
- Bittersweet Ending: On the bitter end, the family's situation is in the air, concerning how Perry, Bobby and Janice will manage being made up of a human and two killer werewolves. On the sweet side, Bobby and Janice lovingly reunite after months apart, and share a joyful howl to mark the occasion.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Bobby has a negative character arc that leads him to become this. He starts out rather compliant and peaceful, but towards the end, becomes disrespectful towards his father and has no regard for the human lives he slaughters, other than to prove his wolf-hood.
- Establishing Character Moment: After Bobby has a bad dream, his father Perry brings his son a brunch of hamburger and soda to feed him. This is meant to drive home that despite Janice's claims to the social worker, her husband is not the heartless, abusive ogre she paints him as.
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: Explored three ways. Perry wants to shelter Bobby and cure him of his lycanthropy so he's not a threat to society, but his approach is rather controlling, to the point where it borders on aggressive. Bobby just wants to be free and embrace his werewolf heritage, but he neglects the fact that his werewolf side kills people. Janice genuinely loves her son and wants him back. The problem is, she embellishes her husband as an abusive monster, lies to a social worker's face and sheds crocodile tears in order to achieve it.
- Manipulative Bitch: Or, in Janice's case, Manipulative Werewolf. She has no problem spinning tales for a social worker about how her well-meaning husband Perry has kidnapped their son, locked him up and potentially starves him. The poor social worker eats it right up.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The social worker was only trying to help Janice get her boy back in what seemed like a simple case of a brutish father kidnapping their son and violating his wife's custodial rights. It's only towards the end that she realizes Perry was in the right all along, and in the end is knocked out (or perhaps even killed) by a werewolf Janice in the process.
- Parents as People: Both of Bobby's parents have shades of this. Perry wants to keep his son from killing people and somehow cure his lycanthropy, but is going about it in a controlling fashion. Janice just wants her son back, but is willing to lie to the social worker about her husband being cruel to Bobby just to see her child again.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Implied. The first time Bobby transforms whilst chained up, Bobby is clearly tearful at the aspect of what's to come. But later, Bobby tells his dad how he used to not like his transformation into a werewolf, though lately has come to accept and even embrace his transformation. And when he learns he killed someone during his latest transformation, he doesn't even mind he's killed someone and is practically proud of it, much to his dad's surprise. This indicates that whatever kind of kid he previously was, Bobby has drastically changed a great deal into something... monstrous.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Perry goes to great lengths to keep his son from harming anyone while turned into a werewolf, from chaining him up during a full moon to boarding up the bedroom windows despite his son's protests.
