teen wolf 03x08 "visionary" recap
This season of Teen Wolf has not ceased to disappoint me, and after last week's killing of Boyd (which was, right next to killing off Erica, the worst move this show has ever made and that fandom will hopefully never forgive), both writing, acting and plot have reached a new low. This is not spoiler free!
Instead of dealing with Boyd's death from last episode which Jeff Davis somehow succeeded to make not about Boyd at all, but about guilt and pain for Derek, this episode focussed on another death Derek involuntarily caused and that accidentally killing Boyd probably reminds him of now; the death of his first girlfriend Paige. When I saw the preview, I actually thought mystery girl would be Jennifer Blake, somehow giving her some kind of perspective and backstory as well, but no. Paige is just another - and I don't say this to be disrespectful - white special snowflake girl who plays the violin and likes studying better than having friends. Derek falls for her instantly and what both Peter and Gerard refer to as "teenage romance" follows until she is bitten by one of the Alphas from the Alpha pack; her body rejects the bite, she suffers unbearable pain and begs Derek to kill her, which he does.
Apparently this was the point where his eye turned blue because of the coldness of his heart or something and he became "the way he is". I'd always thought falling in love with a hunter, being betrayed by her, seeing his family burn to death in their home, spending his life on the run and finally losing the closest person that remained to him, Laura, would be enough to do that.
The plot hardly made sense and for being supposed to be the "Derek flashback episode" there wasn't much of Derek actually, at all. The flashback is narrated by Peter and Gerard, individually, both of whom aren't really qualified to tell the story anyway - as pointed out later, Gerard is a "unreliable narrator" which means half of what he said is probably false anyway; just great.
The Young Derek actor is the blandest I've ever seen. I can't say anything else; he's terrible and brings zero perspective or character development or facial expressions to his performance; he stares around "meaningfully" and "pained" or "awed" most of the time. There's NOTHING interesting about the performance. Nothing.
But all of that doesn't matter; and I refuse to care about Derek's mischaracterization as long as Jeff Davis continues this racist and sexist fuckery. When Erica died, we hadn't even seen her for episodes, and it was Derek who carried her body, devestated. Not Boyd, not even Isaac. Derek. Boyd got to tell how she died later but never to really voice his pain, he got more involvement with the other characters which was just revealed to be a plot device to have him killed later that same episode. It was a pointless death, it was a cruel death, and top of everything else, Boyd spent his last minutes trying to lift guilt off Derek's shoulders, telling him that "it had been worth it". Bullshit.
Those were teenagers who had no idea what business they were getting themselves into by becoming werewolves. It was Derek who turned them and it was Derek's fault they both died. But to the show, that guilt, that fault only matters in terms of giving Derek an arc, of making the deaths of these two wonderful young people about HIM, not about them.
I hate this season. I hate this season so much.
Instead of dealing with Boyd's death from last episode which Jeff Davis somehow succeeded to make not about Boyd at all, but about guilt and pain for Derek, this episode focussed on another death Derek involuntarily caused and that accidentally killing Boyd probably reminds him of now; the death of his first girlfriend Paige. When I saw the preview, I actually thought mystery girl would be Jennifer Blake, somehow giving her some kind of perspective and backstory as well, but no. Paige is just another - and I don't say this to be disrespectful - white special snowflake girl who plays the violin and likes studying better than having friends. Derek falls for her instantly and what both Peter and Gerard refer to as "teenage romance" follows until she is bitten by one of the Alphas from the Alpha pack; her body rejects the bite, she suffers unbearable pain and begs Derek to kill her, which he does.
Apparently this was the point where his eye turned blue because of the coldness of his heart or something and he became "the way he is". I'd always thought falling in love with a hunter, being betrayed by her, seeing his family burn to death in their home, spending his life on the run and finally losing the closest person that remained to him, Laura, would be enough to do that.
The plot hardly made sense and for being supposed to be the "Derek flashback episode" there wasn't much of Derek actually, at all. The flashback is narrated by Peter and Gerard, individually, both of whom aren't really qualified to tell the story anyway - as pointed out later, Gerard is a "unreliable narrator" which means half of what he said is probably false anyway; just great.
The Young Derek actor is the blandest I've ever seen. I can't say anything else; he's terrible and brings zero perspective or character development or facial expressions to his performance; he stares around "meaningfully" and "pained" or "awed" most of the time. There's NOTHING interesting about the performance. Nothing.
But all of that doesn't matter; and I refuse to care about Derek's mischaracterization as long as Jeff Davis continues this racist and sexist fuckery. When Erica died, we hadn't even seen her for episodes, and it was Derek who carried her body, devestated. Not Boyd, not even Isaac. Derek. Boyd got to tell how she died later but never to really voice his pain, he got more involvement with the other characters which was just revealed to be a plot device to have him killed later that same episode. It was a pointless death, it was a cruel death, and top of everything else, Boyd spent his last minutes trying to lift guilt off Derek's shoulders, telling him that "it had been worth it". Bullshit.
Those were teenagers who had no idea what business they were getting themselves into by becoming werewolves. It was Derek who turned them and it was Derek's fault they both died. But to the show, that guilt, that fault only matters in terms of giving Derek an arc, of making the deaths of these two wonderful young people about HIM, not about them.
I hate this season. I hate this season so much.