Teen Baby WolfIf my eyes were to glow like a werewolves on Teen Wolf I'd want them to be purple or green -- my signature colors. But, since werewolf eyes seem to be mood driven, right now they'd be ice blue. After the TV highs of last week when we got Orange is the New Black (so good!) on Netflix, a decent Emmy nomination list with a little something for everyone and fun to play with, Sunday and Monday were brutal: True Blood began to truly suck again despite the vague sense that it was limping back towards former mojo after the debacle of Season 5 (please stake this show!), Bunheads was cancelled just as it was really hitting its stride (those last few episodes were giant leaps forward for a show that was clearly only just starting to hit its stride) and Teen Wolf...? well my guilty pleasure that I've kept telling people not to feel guilty about, delivered its single worst episode. And made me feel guilty for watching it.
I was so bored and annoyed I felt like the eye-gouging scene was basically projection. And what's with the sparkler effect on punctured lupine eyes? Last week I joked that Teen Wolf goes everyone but to high school these days but this episode was a disaster, accomplishing a truly bizarre thing no TV series should want to accomplish: it had an entire episode devoted to backstory exposition starring actors who are tertiary characters or playing younger versions of the characters in which NONE of the show's central players got more than a few minutes of air time. No Lydia and very little Allison, Scott, Derek or Stiles? No thanks!
Do you agree that flashback / backstory episodes are The Worst? To me it nearly always signals creative trouble. Even shows as consistently excellent as my two all time favorites (Mad Men and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) tend to trip up when they leave their main actors behind or put them in bad wigs to tell us some story from days of yore.
Monday, July 29, 2013 at 10:51PM 
