Teen Wolf Recap 8/13/12 Season Finale “Master Plan”

On this week’s season finale of Teen Wolf, Scott proves that he’s more than a pretty face thanks to a brilliant plan to take down Gerard. Allison continues trying to kill all the things with little success. Peter grows a gross goatee. Gerard goes balls-out crazy, as members of the Argent family are wont to do. And everyone spends all episode in a giant glass case of emotion, crying like they’re watching a marathon of Beaches. To take the Beachesmetaphor to its logical conclusion, obviouslyStiles is the wind beneath all of our wings.

The finale capped off a truly excellent sophomore season of MTV’s surprisingly fun and astoundingly good teen werewolf drama. With a name like Teen Wolfit would be easy to write the show off as just fluffy summer fare, but that would be a mistake. The series knows how to have fun (and especially how to pander to its female demographic) but it also weaves a tight story with truly well-crafted performances. The whole cast is really gelling together in a way that wasn’t even apparent in the first season.

Crystal Reed has especially stepped up to the plate this season. Whether Allison was lovestruck, helping Scooby Doo crimes or shooting people multiple times with arrows for no reason, Reed really committed to everything. Allison has certainly been through the ringer this season, but the finale left her in a hopeful place for the future. Hopefully this doesn’t involve multiple stabbings anymore, but with the Argent family it’s hard to tell what constitutes “healthy” behavior.

The finale also finally solved both the Gerard problem and the Kanima drama while leaving open multiple story avenues for season three. Since the third season will run for twice the length of the first two, the show is going to need all the story it can get! Certainly, there are no complaints here if that story involves more of the hilarious Uncle Peter, whose eye rolls and one-liners considerably lightened up this plot and emotion-heavy episode.

You know it’s going to be an emotional episode when Teen Wolf starts with a touching moment between Scott and the Coach. Usually our favorite Coach, fond of cupcakes and Independence Day speeches, is rattling off weird stuff like he’s high on at least seven different kinds of speed. This time, however, he’s getting heartfelt when he tells Scott he’s needed on the team. So he needs to get his grades up.

It’s funny how I completely forgot that Scott is failing all his classes in the midst of this craziness. This might be the most realistic supernatural teen on TV. I always wonder how teens on these supernatural shows (or even most normal teen dramas) manage to graduate if they never seem to go to class. If there was a class based just around locker room shirtlessness though, Scott and Jackson would be honor students.

Soon it’s right back into the business of the episode. Erica and Boyd are tied up down in the Argent Basement of Beating and Electrocuting Teenagers, being beaten and electrocuted. Stiles is added to the mix, where he says one old joke too many and ends up on the nasty end of a Gerard smack down.

Allison is on board with all of these shenanigans because she has gone totally insane and thinks torturing people is awesome now. Her dad is staring at her in shock, wondering at the monster he’s created and snapping her crossbows so she can’t shoot people a million times anymore. But Allison is like “joke’s on you sucka, I have a bunch of tiny knives!” Then she and Gerard giggle in a corner about how fun torture is and decide who to kill next while leaving Argent out, like the totally homicidal mean girls they are.

While all of this is going on, Scott is shocked to learn Uncle Peter is back and 100 percent less crispy than before. “I’m back! And I grew this molester mustache so you’d remember I was evil instead of just hot! How does it look?” Uncle Peter says. “Like you want to lure me into a van to see some puppies, so mission accomplished former dead alpha!” Scott replies. Isaac looks around in confusion and then just gives up, because these people are exhausting.

—Read the full recap including all the action and all the feels on HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf Recap 8/6/12 “Battlefield”

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, the big lacrosse game gets deadly while Allison runs around shooting everything that moves in Beacon Hills. At the game Stiles finally gets a moment in the spotlight, which of course means he ends up kidnapped. Peter visits Derek in the Hale Crispy Fried Mansion of Tough Love to tell him how to deal with the Kanima. And Scott and Isaac fall in love with each other some more on the lacrosse field.

As the penultimate episode of this spectacular season of Teen Wolf, this episode set a lot of balls into motion. The Argents are clearly in charge and acting more dangerously than ever before. We finally discovered Gerard’s motives, although they were fairly obvious the whole time. As soon as Gerard came back for Kate’s funeral, it was pretty apparent he was there to avenge his murdered (and murderous) daughter. This week we only received confirmation, although we still don’t know the purpose of his ever-present pills.

As per usual in this season, the battle lines are constantly being drawn and redrawn. No wonder Scott always looks so confused. One minute Derek and the pack are evil, the next they’re best bros. One minute he’s doodling hearts on Allison’s window, the next minute she’s pumping some teen wolves full of arrows. The characters are always standing on shifting sands and each episode brings with it new alliances. Yet all these reformations make sense with where the characters are emotionally, which is a real testament to the writing of the show.

Next week’s finale will see the battle between the Argents, led by pill popping Grandpa and Allison “shoot all the things” Argent. We will undoubtedly see an end to the Kanima storyline that’s woven its way throughout the entire season, probably thanks to the power of love. And perhaps we’ll get some answers to our questions about Peter, the vet, and the mysterious guidance counselor. But I wouldn’t bet on it. After all, Teen Wolf has an expanded third season it’ll need storylines to fill.

This week the show starts with Stiles in the guidance counselor’s office, playing with his stick. Lacrosse stick that is. (I’m sorry, that’s the last terrible pun about Stiles’ package I’ll make. Probably.) He’s telling the counselor, and by extension the audience, about the fallout from last week’s action packed murder-fest.

Stiles’ father is now Sheriff again, probably because he’s the only police officer left alive in Beacon Hills. Allison and Scott aren’t really talking. Scott’s mom is still trying to process that her son is a teen wolf and there’s no way to deal with those stupid sideburns now. Lydia is fine, because now that she’s resurrected that hot dude stalking her from beneath the floorboards it’s time to go shopping at show sponsor MACYS for lipgloss. Oh and the latent Argent crazy in Allison’s DNA has finally manifested itself and she’s started to go on father-daughter wolf hunting trips.

But the most important thing is that there is going to be a lacrosse game! It’s the big one! Remember in the first season whenTeen Wolf was trying to act like lacrosse was a sport that anyone outside high school or really rich country clubs cared about?

Meanwhile, Boyd and Erica hear some howling and come to the conclusion that it’s time to bounce and join a new pack. Derek tries to remind them of all the good times they had as werewolves together. “Remember that one time I tried to get you guys to help me kill one of your classmates? Or that other time I chained you up with torture devices? Come on guys, how could you leave all this?”

Boyd and Erica look at each other, hold hands, and then skip off into the sunset to find their new pack. In the Hale Crispy Fried Mansion of Manpain, Derek tries to hold in his tears while mentally composing a sepia-toned montage of all the good teen wolf times but it’s basically a ‘footage not found’ situation.

—Read the full recap including all the playoff action and kidnappings at HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf “Fury” Recap 7/30/2012

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, chaos reigns supreme as everything terrible happens all at once. Having learned Matt was the Kanima master in last week’s episode, we finally get a glimpse into his unhinged mind. And oh man is that mind unhinged! Matt is like every horror movie villain rolled into one. If he had a mustache he would have just spent the entire episode twirling it while laughing manically.

This season, every episode of Teen Wolf has raised the tension while also giving us insights into the characters. It didn’t seem like last week’s wolfsbane drugging party could be outdone, yet this episode was non-stop action the whole time. From the moment Matt showed up with a gun about ten minutes into the episode, it was clear this outing wasn’t going to be filler. The show wisely realizes the drama and suspense that can unfold from trapping the characters in a small space and watching them fight it out.

This isn’t to say that we didn’t also get a great deal of character development. Allison fully embraced her badass destiny with the help of some manipulation from Grandpa Gerard. Scott’s mother finally realized her son has been running around town as a teen wolf. I can’t wait until Scott runs away from home to become a waitress in a small town just like Buffy did when her mom found out. And last, but certainly not least, Stiles and Derek finally got that hug they’ve both been craving.

One of the many things I really appreciate about Teen Wolf, besides how fun and surprisingly meaty it is given the subject matter, is how well the show understands its audience. This show knows people want to see shirtlessness within the first ten minutes (thanks gratuitous dream shot of Derek!). It has clearly also cottoned to the fact that a large contingent of the online community is obsessed with the hilarious back-and-forth Derek and Stiles have. Throwing a paralyzed Stiles on top of Derek was basically a gift to the fanbase. Here you go, Teen Wolf magnanimously said tonight, have some pandering.

This week the episode began back in the not-so-distant past. Matt gives Jackson his camera; sure he’s going to use it to make a sex tape. So what does he do? He breaks into the camera to stream the video and watch a shirtless Jackson sleep like an enormous creeper.

Instead, he sees Jackson turn into the Kanima and realizes Jackson killed Isaac’s dad for him. Matt puts up his hand and Jackson puts up his scaly Kanima hand, and the two fall in love and live murderously ever after. And that, kids, was how I met your Kanima!

—Read the full recap including all the Sterek, shirtlessness and Allison badassery at HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf Recap 7/23/12 “Party Guessed”

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, it’s Lydia’s party and she’ll drug everyone if she wants to. The diabolical and extra crispy Peter Hale finally unveils his true purpose for Lydia, which involves underage drinking and fairy dust. Even dead and underneath some floorboards, Peter Hale is such a drama queen.

Meanwhile, everyone hallucinated their greatest fear at a party full of awesome pool dunking extras and drag queens. We find out once and for all who the Kanima’s master is, although the why and how are still mysteries. And we say a fond, terrified farewell to Mama Argent.

This episode of Teen Wolf was so dense and packed with action that a sequence where Derek screwed a torture device onto Erica’s face while she screamed in pain was actually episode filler. This whole season the show has subtly been getting more involved, more complex, and just plain more awesome. This week’s episode took that to a whole new level.

In the middle of the reveal of the season-long Kanima master mystery and the Peter Hale Extra Crispy Vengeance plan, the episode still managed to pack in more character building and emotional arcs. More than understanding that every episode is best begun with nudity, Teen Wolf understands that action cannot take the place of character development.  Thus we learn more about almost every character tonight, including their deepest fears.

—Read the full recap including all the shocking relevations at HaveUHeard.net HERE!

Teen Wolf “Raving” Recap 7/16/2012

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, everyone went to a rave where some got drugged (unsurprising) and others murdered (more surprising) and a vaporizer has never been so scary. It was a big, dramatic, action packed episode in which the Argents got scarier and crazier than usual. Allison’s therapy bills are going to be through the roof, considering her family tries to murder her boyfriend on a fairly consistent basis.

But hey, at least they have a weapon of choice: the car! Last season, Allison found out about Scott’s true wolfy nature when Papa Argent tried to run him over with a car. This week, it’s Mama Argent wielding first the car and then the vaporizer of death. Why must Scott die? Because Mama Argent has finally seen proof with her own crazy eyes that Allison and Scott are still together

We’ve seen a lot of freaky, disturbing things on Teen Wolf this season. A snake literally popped out of Jackson’s eye! Somehow though, Mama Argent’s evil eyes were scarier than snakes bursting out of people’s faces. Such is the power of Mama Argent’s crazy Nicolas Cage face. In a family that does father-daughter bonding time at the morgue, Mama Argent still strikes me as the most unhinged of the group.

After the hit and kidnap, Mama Argent fills a vaporizer full of wolfsbane in order to kill Scott and make it look like an asthma attack. Unfortunately, Mama Argent falls victim to the oldest super villain trope in the book: she starts monologuing.

She calls Scott stupid for being a lone wolf omega which is the exact moment Scott remembers that he actually has a pack now. A surly, attractive, impressively eyebrow’d pack who just wants to be bros.

Derek rushes to the rescue and his brief skirmish with Mama Argent leads to the most shocking moment of the episode. As she falls into Papa Argent’s arms (did we always know his name was Chris?) it’s revealed she has been bitten. Good God, the only way Mama Argent could possibly be more terrifying is if she was also a murderous supernatural creature. Hide your wife and hide your kids Beacon Hills, because Mama Argent is going to sharpen some pencils and then probably kill everyone.

In somehow less terrifying portions of the episode, Jackson is still wandering around as a walking meat puppet with chiseled cheekbones. The Kanima seems to have full control of him now, even when he’s in his normal form. I can tell it’s not really Jackson holding the reins because he doesn’t take his shirt off once this episode.

—Read the full recap including more information about the Kanima at HaveUHeard.net HERE!

Teen Wolf Recap 7/9/12 “Restraint”

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, the Kanima takes over Jackson like a meat puppet to make him eat snakes, menace people with nudity, and write creepy messages. Meanwhile Lydia also has an invisible friend who lures her into abandoned buildings to whisper sweet, crispy nothings in her ear. This week the show was basically the possession variety hour.

It was a fast-moving episode, putting aside the fact-finding mission from the week before and really committing to the action. The season is starting to pick up speed, and the battle lines are being drawn. Especially now that Scott has joined up with Derek’s team to capture Jackson. When push comes to shove, will Allison and Scott ends up on the same side? Or will Allison end up tied up in Weird Camera Guy’s trunk, headed for the border? Only time will tell.

Things aren’t looking quite so rosy for Jackson either. As the episode begins, Scott and Stiles are hit with a restraining order keeping them 50 feet away from Jackson. Stiles tries to play off their kidnapping as a joke, because if there’s one thing people always find hilarious its teen kidnapping. Scott’s mother finally decides to step up her parenting to the “hey, I have a kid!?” level and grounds Scott. Worse yet, she bars Scott from seeing Stiles. This could lead to a Romeo and Juliet kind of suicide pact, so I’m not sure she knows what she just did.

She does, however, decide post kidnapping that it might be time to check in on her only child and see what he’s been up too. Kidnapping shirtless male classmates? Check. Hanging out at gay bars with reptile creatures? Check. Teen wolfing out? Check. Getting sexy with Allison? Now hold the phone!

I love that of all the things Scott has done recently, it’s the condoms that really send his mother over the edge, not the fact that he just kidnapped a classmate, chained him shirtless in a police van and left him in the woods. One is a normal teenage behavior and the other is the behavior of a young Ted Budy. Guess which she is more concerned about?

—Read the full recap including all the shirtless shower fights on HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf “Frenemy” Recap 7/2/2012

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, Scott tries to figure out how to deal with Jackson while the Argent family puts cameras all over town, making Beacon Hill into a more murderous Big Brother. Thankfully, Allison and Scott manage to find the only place in town without cameras in order to declare their love to each other, sexy-style. Unfortunately for them, this is also the moment Jackson scales out and scampers off into the night to incriminate them for all their shirtless kidnapping escapades.

There’s a lot to love about this week’s episode, which managed to be one of my favorites in this already strong second season. It felt like this week they really balanced all the elements this show can do well and balanced them expertly. The episode had humor and character building while also adding in some mythology for good measure. I feel like we know a lot more about the Kanima than we did last week, while simultaneously learning more about Jackson in the process.

This show must also be one of the gayest shows on television, even beating out most of the programming on the Logo Channel, which is awesome. One of the highlights for me was when Stiles got upset because Scott was getting more drinks from attractive dudes than he was. Then later he is downright offended when his dad dismissed out of hand his ability to be gay based entirely on his fashion sense.

I like that Teen Wolf, which as a show on MTV is aimed at a younger audience, is showing gay teens as commonplace. No one freaks out that Scott and Stiles are at a gay bar. Jackson, the requisite jerky jock of the show is best friends with Danny, the openly gay athlete. He even teases him about having a crush on the photographer guy. This isn’t made into a big deal, because it isn’t a big deal. It’s nice to see a show that, unlike Glee, presents gay teens as just normal teens that happen to be gay, not after school specials or “teaching moments”.

There’s something else we can thank my favorite character for this week: shirtlessness! Of course gay bars would be filled with shirtless, hot men. We’ve already established the whole town of Beacon Hills is almost exclusively staffed by background dancers from Magic Mike.  Our shirtless count this week was off the charts, with all the flesh on display at the bar. From our main cast we see Danny, Scott and Jackson all in undress. If there was an Emmy for Most Shirtless Performer, I’m pretty sure Colton Haynes (Jackson) would have that category on lock.

—Read the full recap, including more on shirtlessness and theories on the Kanima at HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf “Venomous” Recap

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, we finally find out the identity of the Kanima. Props to the show for not dragging out this identity issue all season, as they did with the Alpha reveal last year. But before we get to that piece of information, our favorite gang of misfits must band together to protect an increasingly freaked-out Lydia.

Eventually it becomes Team Scott versus Team Derek in the fight for Lydia’s life. Team Derek initially seems to have the advantage. They have unhinged Isaac, super skank Erica, human wall Boyd and Derek, whose power is magnificent eyebrows. Scott only has Allison and her tiny bow, Stiles and his impressive ability to talk really fast and Jackson and his killer cheekbones. It doesn’t seem like a very fair fight.

Like David and Goliath, however, you should never count out the little guy. Despite the fact that Scott and the gang seem overpowered, they manage to win the day. Even Derek is impressed, calling Scott the Alpha of his own pack. Which is ridiculous, because we all know Allison wears the pants in that relationship. Of course, they never had the right Kanima contender anyway. A fact they realize when Lydia looks at them in confusion while above her the creature from the roofie lagoon scampers away. Whoops!

The episode starts with Danny and Jackson working out in the weight room, late at night, for some reason. No, this is not the intro to some gay porn; this is just an excuse for the show to demonstrate Jackson’s new hearing abilities. Still, I have to wonder about the things Jackson and Danny do to hang out. “Yo bro, wanna go to the locker room at midnight and totally pump some iron, heterosexual-style?!”

—Read the full recap including the Kanima reveal at HaveUHeard.net HERE!!

Teen Wolf “Abomination” Recap

On this week’s episode of Teen Wolf, everyone is working out their trust issues while trying to survive the creature from the roofie lagoon. Stiles nearly drowns Derek in a pool while attempting to save them from the swamp monster. It makes those trust falls people do at corporate retreats look pretty tame in comparison. It’s like a trust drowning!  Meanwhile Scott gets stabbed by Grandpa Argent, after the 100^th awkward Argent family dinner he’s attended. Never trust anyone in a newsboy cap, unless they are an actual Newsie.

Grandpa doesn’t trust Allison, which is fair because she is putting into place a heist to steal his 800-year-old cookbook. Who keeps their recipes in a leather-bound, tied journal instead of an actual cookbook anyway? That thing looked like something out of Game of Thronesnot Martha Stewart Living. No wonder Allison and Scott thought it was a bestiary. (Which is a book of mystical creatures, unlike what Allison and Scott were thinking.) But at least Scott got to enjoy the delicious two-day labor of love Grandpa cooked before getting stabbed in the rock-hard wolf abs. Grandpa is crazy, but he’s not a monster.

In case you missed that the episode was all about trust, several characters yelled at each other about trust about every five minutes. “This is the theme! It’s trust! Have you gotten that yet!” everyone shouts. “God Grandpa, I said I liked the pageboy hat. Yes, you look just like what I imagine Christian Bale will look like in five million years. Why don’t you trust my fashion advice? Is it because of my lipstick?” Allison sadly never replied.

When all the characters weren’t shouting about the completely obvious theme, however, this episode was by far the creepiest outing of the season. It’s easy to lose the horror element of the show when you’re marveling over the fact that even the mechanics in Beacon Hills look like Abercrombie and Fitch models. Rest in peace hot mechanic! I can’t wait to see what other professions are staffed exclusively by hot men in Beacon Hills. I bet a trip to the DMV would be like watching the trailer for Magic Mike.

—Read the full recap including some burning questions and the “Kanima” of it all at HaveUHeard.net HERE!

Teen Wolf “Shape Shifted” Recap 6/4/12

On the second part of the Teen Wolf season two premiere, a new teen wolf is introduced as Allison and Scott continue to fight the odds against their love story. Ah young love. One moment you’re talking about your grandfather in the middle of the woods and the next moment you’re chaining your beloved into a freezer. I think we’ve all been there. Anyone? Bueller?

A couple that could really commiserate with the weird things Scott and Allison consider romantic is ironically Allison’s own parents. On the Argents date night, they kidnap and torture the school principal so they can install Grandpa Argent in the post. I can’t imagine what the Argents do on their anniversary. Kill a hobo with a hammer?

I’m not going to lie though; I would totally watch a Teen Wolf spinoff centered on the Argents called “Date Night” where the Argents just dressed up in their best clothes and kidnap people. Allison’s mother is especially scary. Like take all the fright I get from the CGI-like uncanny valley of looking at her dad’s face and then multiple that by a thousand, and that’s how scary her mom is. I think I love her.

Meanwhile arguably the most important aspect of part two of Teen Wolf’s opener is meeting Isaac, the new wolf in town. Isaac, if you remember, was the cute boy digging graves in the middle of the night last week. I’m going to move to Beacon Hill if even the gravediggers look like Abercombie and Fitch models.

The episode starts with Isaac’s father terrorizing him after a bad grade, even throwing a glass vase at him. I was ridiculously glad when swamp thing ate his dad about five seconds later. Isaac explains to Derek that he didn’t kill his father and Derek’s incredible eyebrows are concerned.

The next day at school, Stiles and Scott discuss the full moon and werewolves loudly in the locker room because everyone in Beacon Hill has extensive hearing damage. It’s good to see you locker room, my old friend. Back in season one, when the budget of this show was five dollars and a roll of duct tape, about 90 percent of the show occurred in the locker room.

—Read the full recap including more about new wolf Isaac at HaveUHeard.net HERE!!