Reviews Series / Teen Wolf

The most glaring hole is the tortuously convoluted path to what amounted to what appeared to be a very simplistic plan on Deucalion's part. Recruit Scott, deal with Jennifer. Easy.

But instead this all meanders around aimlessly through the season. Did Deucalion never even tell the other Alphas which one Jennifer was? Because they held her prisoner to force Derek to fight Kali (and she was not at her fullest power yet). Couldn't they have killed before she had gotten through virgins, much less warriors and healers? Or was waiting for her to reach maximum power a source of entertainment for Deucalion?

Why the digression with Derek, if the goal was never to recruit him anyway? Deucalion sucks as a marketing strategist. Or any kind of strategist given that he timed the Final Battle with Jennifer to conveniently coincide with a lunar eclipse that would render all the werewolves, including him, powerless, while she would still have Functional Magic at her disposal.

Nice Job Fixing It Villain!

The end result is an Idiot Plot that consists of lots of awesome action scenes, but does not bear careful scrutiny. I am reminded of the words of the character Cher, from the movie Clueless:

Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.

Tai: What's a monet?

Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

Aside from making sure that Derek remains a perpetual victim, and increasing the ratio of hot, white, shirt-hating males to other characters, there was not a lot of point to great deal of what happened this season.

Also, is Beacon Hills like some kind of post-apocalyptic survivalist community? Because the city (it cannot reasonably be called a "town" anymore) has seemingly endless square footage of abandoned commercial/industrial real estate.

You have such a better handle on formatting on this site! I'm so jealous :p

I didn't even think about them holding Jennifer hostage! Did Kali not realize who she was? Wow, fail.

The villains this season have been pathetic.

To be fair, one of the first character who was killed off insultingly was Ennis, a white dude. At least we learned to hate Kali... Still, the patterns of dead females and people of color is... sad. But we're getting asians next season so yay for that.

I have to assume that Jennifer altered her form somewhat so that she would not be glaringly recognizable to Kali. The problem is that I have to assume that, because the show is a little vague on the matter. It also seems weird that, even if she was in disguise, that Deucalion was not pouring more effort into figuring out who she was, since she was such a significant threat.

General Failure!

Indeed, one would expect that since he had no interest in Derek apparently, and that he wanted to recruit Scott, he would have done better to present himself more positively to Scott, rather than as an obvious antagonist. After all, he was clever enough to apply the Honey Trap to the matter of Danny and Lydia (even though Ethan and Aiden both fell In Love With The Mark because of his Voldemort-like inability to comprehend the possibility that this might happen.

Of course, Jeff Davis himself insists that Jennifer was in love with Derek. Apparently she underestimated her allure to a confirmed hero like him. Or was just really pathetic due to insecurity issues over looking (and for some reason dressing) like one of the Cenobites from Franchise/Hellraiser. It's never easy to be the ugly duckling at the prom...

We're not handing out many points for Ennis death partly because he was an average-looking white dude! He did not have the same Plot Armor that being a Mr Fanservice white dude confers on this show.

Thanks for the compliment. I am gradually getting the hang of the tags for this site.

Did Deucalion know she was Julia all along? If so, why didn't he tell Kali? If not, when did they figure it out? Agh it makes my brain hurt!

Deucalion is just such a fail.

There is just no way that Jennifer was in love with Derek. *rolls eyes at the stupidity*

I interpreted Jen's preoccupation with her looks as her struggle to find a new identity - and, when you think about it, it would suck to look like that all the time. You wouldn't be able to talk to people. Being alone for that long a time would make me a bitter little bitch. (Did we ever get an explaination as to why she ended up looking like a halloween costume instead of just a slashed up human?) Now I'm wondering why it took her six years to strike back at the alphas. Seriously, why did she wait for them to come to Beacon Hills? I guess it might have had to do with the currents in the earth or whatever, but still, you would think she wouldn't sit around letting them get more powerful and obtain more members. She could have attacked them from the shadows without the conspicuous human sacrifice - fed them all wolfsbane or something.

And now I want to know why, if the alpha pack is so dangerous, hunters never took them out. Just... screw this season and its logic (or lack thereof).

I thought Ennis was pretty good looking. Anyway, your racism argument falls out the window if you don't consider less attractive - but still white - people to count which sounds a bit wrong to me. Also, I know a lot of people think Boyd's hot, so that's clearly not the issue. (As a lesbian, I just miss Erica. Kali was pretty hot too, but I don't have a thing for feet.)

A lot of it seems to have to do with marketing. The majority of the hardcore fans are teenage girls, so it makes sense that if a character is attractive to them, the show'd be less likely to kill them, even if it doesn't end up with the best diversity. Still don't know why they killed Boyd... Pisses me off :( Did his actor want to leave? I'd be fine if that's the case, but otherwise... It's pathetic, frankly.

I hold that as long as Allison and Lydia remain good (ish) rolemodels, I won't worry too much about young impressionable girls getting bad messages from the show. Allison may have had her moments of murderousness, but hey, it's about on par with how dark Derek gets sometimes, and she has changed her ways. The only thing I've ever had beef with about Lydia is her making out with Scott and her little-bit-creepy comment about 'fresh men' at the beginning of this season (though I don't think she was serious).

If they handle the asian element of next season well, I think I'll be appeased, though I kinda want them to introduce the idea of Scott being part Latino. That would be awesome.

Also, I feel like I might need to watch last episode again, but didn't Deaton say Allison, Scott and Stiles would be 'surrogate sacrifices'? I took that to mean that the parents would get magically saved from the situation they were in. I don't remember Deaton saying anything about them traveling back in time and seeing the tree.

Well, since Jennifer seemed to be having angst over being a Cenobite (complete with the outfit), maybe Derek (handsome as he is) was as important to her as the beautiful form she was putting so much energy into maintaining.

As I mentioned, I wonder more about why Deucalion waited until Jennifer had reached the peak of her powers, and then confronted her on the night of a lunar eclipse! Even had Scott not used the flash grenades, they were all seconds away from losing their powers. Worst. Battle. Plan. Ever.

The hunters are Knight Templar characters at best, so it is not exactly a Good Versus Good situation. But you may notice that they prefer to attack the less violent werewolves despite their vaunted Code. My impression is that like real world gay bashers, they like easier-to-kill prey. Truly dangerous packs may be avoided since only the bravest hunters want to take the risk of facing them.

No offense, but my racism argument still holds. If you look at history, it is possible to be racists towards other races and to members of their own. For example, the Nazis hated all non-Germanic peoples, even other Caucasians like the Slavic peoples, who look nearly the same as they do! Nobody is limited to only one form of prejudice. On TW it sometimes feels as if the prejudice chain runs along the lines of non-whites>>>women>>>people-who-are-not-beautiful-generally. Scott gets a pass because his Latino heritage is very vague, and not strongly in evidence based on his name or accent. Danny has been a Twofer Token Minority, and even so is little more than a glorified extra despite having been on the show since the beginning. Although a fan favorite, he was quickly surpassed by Isaac in terms of screentime and character development, and noticeably Isaac is a white, straight, handsome, male.

I'm not even sure if Jeff realizes he's doing it.

Deaton is the world's least competent druid. So, okay, he lives in Beacon Hills and, given his vocation, ought to know about the telluric currents and the Nematon. These are the kinds of details that normal occultists pay a lot of attention to. But instead three of our heroes had to go through a 16-hour Near Death Experience just to find its location. The whole ritual in no other way contributed to stopping Jennifer or saving their parents, which was the supposed point of doing it in the first place. But because by this point the writing had gotten so sloppy that Canon Discontinuity even between two episodes meant to be aired a week apart was possible, that little detail was seemingly forgotten.