Opening Scott angst an extra recapping – with worry about
his asthma returning, the chimera and everyone feeling bleak and worried. All
with his own worry about the fact he can’t fix it. Everyone is worried and
pre-occupied (looking at Malia and Stiles and Parrish – all keeping secrets).
Scott feels especially concerned about the fact they haven’t told the Sherriff
about Parrish’s body snatching – and they haven’t told Parrish either.
Lydia and Stiles are out looking for the Nemeton and the
bodies around it – but they don’t know where it is. The Sheriff is desperately
looking for other possible chimera out there using medical screening – but Hayden
and Corey seem to be ok. Both Kira and Deaton are still absent.
Scott is recapping all this to Theo – and how utterly inadequate
he feels.
Theo goes to see his Dread Doctor allies/masters/whatever
and they are injecting themselves in their withered, heavily scarred flesh
which plumps them up to new life. Theo wants them to let Hayden alive –
apparently they promised him a pack. The Dread Doctors are pretty indifferent
to his wishes and demands and are suitably menacing about their refusal.
Liam and Hayden are a rather nauseatingly sweet couple
now. But she’s bleeding mercury. Bad sign.
Scott continues to worry at school and even Liam is
hiding stuff from him ahead of the full moon – Liam is edgy and not all that willing
to take Scott’s help. More angst for Scott.
Stiles and Lydia are looking for the Nemeton and failing –
Lydia keeps wanting Stiles to talk to Parrish but he refuses because, unknown
to her, he killed Donovan and is still having issues with that. Lydia overrules
– they’re telling Parrish.
Theo reminds Stiles what they will find if Lydia does
find the Nemeton but also thinks that maybe Scott will be more ok with the idea
of killing for self-defence. Stiles is really not dealing well with this.
Sherriff Stilinski has a new plan to find the Dread
Doctors – by looking for their failures with UV light which will show up the
mercury they bleed. How he’s going to tell his officers they’re looking for
people with UV light I don’t know.
He goes looking through the library with a UV light and
finds that there was mercury spilled there – and he remembers Clarke telling
him about Donovan and Stiles in the library. Which is when Theo decides to tell
something big about Stiles to Scott before sirens interrupt them.
It’s an ambulance – come to pick up Corey who was testing
his new super-strength with Mason and is now spewing mercury everywhere. Scott
panics and freezes before Theo prompts him to go help and try to protect Corey
at the hospital since the Dread Doctors will come to kill him. Theo and Scott
drive to the hospital– and Theo tells Scott that Stiles killed Donovan after
Scott pushes him to continue with his interrupted revelation. Well, sort of
revelation – because he says Stiles beat Donovan to death and Theo had to drag
him off the body and while he calls it self-defence, it really really doesn’t
sound like self-defence.
At the hospital they find Corey is running amok and he’s
acquired chameleon powers. Electrics acting up also points to the arrival of
the Dread Doctors Corey uses his powers to hide from them… but it doesn’t last
long and he is easily killed. Scott and Theo find the body – and realise they
have to find Hayden.
In class, Malia sees another classmate, Beth dripping mercury.
She leaves and Malia tries to follow and help but is stopped by the teacher,
Natalie Martin (Lydia’s mother). Malia has no time for Natalie’s ignorance of
the supernatural and flashes glowing blue eyes at Natalie; Natalie pretty much
confirms she does know about the supernatural (by not being slightly surprised
by glowing eyes) but is determined to avoid it – telling her that they all need
to focus on their school work.
Malia follows Beth anyway and gets thrown into a locker
for her trouble. Malia’s not having that – but still can’t stop the Dread
Doctors from breaking Beth’s neck. Malia goes into shock before Stiles finds
her – she tells him she can’t handle this like Scott, she can’t handle another
body
The Sherriff arrives and speaks to Theo – wanting to talk
to him about Donovan the Chimera – but this time Theo admits to killing Donovan
to save himself and protect Stiles. This time he actually tells the truth of
what happened including the accidental impalement, on this time he replaces
Stiles with himself. He’s all tearful and the sheriff is all comforting. Awwwww
– Theo puts on his evil face
Hayden has already left the school and run off with Liam
to escape the doctors. They grab a stash of Hayden’s money from the bar and
plan to go on the run though Hayden does worry about her sister, Clarke. She’s
also worried about going on a killing spree but Liam brushes it off… and the
Doctors arrive.
Liam is knocked aside – and Scott arrives. Fight time. Baby
Wolf does nothing and even Scott doesn’t do much more. Theo also arrives and is
similarly beaten down (the Doctor says something to him I just cannot
understand in the process)
Liam rushes to help Hayden – but she is injected by one of
the Doctors, her eyes going silver. Liam rushes to her – but she seems to be
ok. Liam is still worried so they take her to Deaton’s clinic. Even though he’s
not there. On the journey she seems to get all woozy while Theo points out she’s
not a real werewolf. Of course Liam realises they can make her one (because Theo’s
manipulations are subtle like that) – or, well, Scott can since he’s Alpha
Lydia drives with Parrish to find the Nemeton, honing in
on the tree stump without him even knowing where he’s going. At this point
Stiles also sends Lydia a message to point out that Chimera are dying all over
the place so she better watch out in case Parrish has another body snatching
moment. She decides the best way to kick in his fiery powers is to spar with him
(uh, he has flipped over a car Lydia, not a good plan) – which works and he
finds the Nemeton (and has a glowy eye moment).
Parrish is now convinced that yes he is stealing bodies and covering up bodies which worries him a lot since it kind of wars with his job (especially since it comes with jeep flipping). But Lydia wonders if covering up the supernatural is all part of his woo-woo. Parrish isn’t all that reassured because he dreams of hundreds of bodies at the Nemeton, so learning his dreams are real is not good at all.
At the police station Parrish locks himself up and the
Sherriff becomes even more confused. The Sherriff tries to let him out but
there are two new bodies and Parrish is worried about being let out, he’s too
dangerous.
Scott runs into Stiles, in the rain… and they have a confrontation
about Donavon’s death with highly ominous music. It’s dramatic and tragic and terrible
– all of it overheard by Theo. Of course Scott doesn’t know what really
happened so he thinks Stiles killed Donovan to protect his dad – and says
Stiles had a choice. Stiles lashes back that he’s not as perfect and doesn’t
have all the special True Alphaness Scott has. Scott still thinks it wasn’t
self-defence – and doesn’t believe Stiles when he says he had no choice. Stiles
begs him to say he believed him… but Scott won’t and backs away from him.
Stiles asks how he can fix this…. Scott doesn’t answer and talks about Malia and Lydia instead. Ouch…. So much ouch.
Scott goes in to find Hayden dying – and Liam begs Scott
to bite her. And Scott says no.
Scott and his asthma dances on the problematic. On the
one hand I can see it as not so much the asthma itself that troubles Scott –
though certainly suffering terrifying asthma attacks after so long of not
needing an inhaler would be terrible experience. But, since his asthma was
magically woo-wooed away by becoming a werewolf (as so often happens with
disability in the genre), it returning takes him back to a time when he was
very much not in control of his life, was failing at school, sports and
generally not the in command, in control person he is now. The problem is,
while all of that can be inferred, it isn’t presented expressly. Instead what
we have is the presentation of a character basically declaring how utterly weak
and helpless and incapable he is… because he has asthma and has to use an
inhaler.
It would work better to be overt because it would link
well with what Malia said – they’re losing, people are dying at a rapid rate,
just about everyone is carrying a massive secret that is hampering them all –
they are losing and the despair over that is really well done. The whole theme
of this season has been falling apart – them failing, their relationships
degrading and everything coming to pieces.
Especially with that confrontation at the end – Stiles lashing out in his guilt AND being the only normal human in the group feeling the expectations of those around him
Remember I had a rant a few episodes ago about how Teen Wolf made a big thing about theirtwo new major gay characters this season and then just killed them off? WellCorey came back. For a bit part in a couple of episodes. Then died. See, this
is why I didn’t retract my rant. At least mason is still getting his 90 seconds
of screen time per episode (which, depressingly, is a step up from previous
seasons LGBT inclusion… but only because the bar was pretty low).
Also flagging that Scott is worried about Deaton and Kira’s
absence doesn’t actually make up for the fact they are actually absent.
Dropping POC in the plot box is a habit this show has had for a while – Deaton disappears
for long stretches, Mason and Danny rarely appeared for any meaningful length
of time, Braeden vanished for whole seasons – Scott is the only one who
consistently remains.
While I’m not a fan of Hayden, I think this show needs
some more named, female, regular characters who aren’t being put on the bus so
I’d quite like her to live. Of course, it also needs to do hell of a lot more
with the actual female characters that are there as well… Lydia and Kira and
Malia and Melissa have been sorely underused. I suppose if Hayden does survive
there’s little indication she will be treated differently (and, to be honest, I’d
much rather have these other characters have more presence and involvement).
I still think Parrish is a phoenix. And Lydia sparring
with combat skills gives me some hope for her involvement in future as
something other than the victim who screams
