Despite having to work with the wrong ingredients, ‘Status Asthmaticus’ ended up being a pretty entertaining, albeit messy finale.
As the penultimate episode of the summer half of Teen Wolf’s fifth season, ‘Lies of Omission’ is almost all setup for some supposedly exciting confrontations in next week’s finale. It played with some of the bigger themes of the season thus far, namely the in-fighting between Scott’s friends and allies, which makes sense considering it’s what has been fuelling the majority of the character arcs that have we’ve seen for the past nine weeks. Next week should be when things get really interesting, but this episode just felt like one big tease.
I feel like we’ve hit the point where the various plot threads introduced early in a standard season of Teen Wolf should start to come together. That hasn’t happened yet, but maybe there are a few reasons for that.
Reliance on the weaker aspects of the show’s current dynamic is really throwing this season of Teen Wolf off its game. There’s so much potential, and certain parts of this season are very strong, but I still feel that I’m being forced into caring about characters that do nothing for me, or bring nothing new to the table.
This was exactly the type of episode we needed at this point; one that finally gave us an idea of what we’re up against, while also raising the personal stakes.
Now that this season’s big bad, or what we assume to be this season’s big bad, have finally made themselves known, season five is starting to hit its stride.
Even though ‘Dreamcatchers’ struggled on a few minor fronts, it was still the strongest episode of season five so far.
There appears to be an imbalance amongst the cast this season, but ‘Parasomnia’ improves over the scattered premiere in terms of focus and plot.
It was bookended by two exciting sequences, but ‘Creatures of the Night’ failed to kick start Teen Wolf’s fifth season in the way it should have.
Part of me went away from this finale feeling disappointed; initially I thought that a lot of this season felt like it was of very little consequence in the end. After a bit of thought I’m happier with it, and I can see that it definitely finished this season with a few changes.
This episode was jarring at first. We were thrown so far from the season’s initial narrative that it took a while for me to get used to where we were going to end up by season’s end.
‘Monstrous’ started out as a standard end of season bridge episode, taking the story to where it needs to go next. Though it served that purpose, it did it by completely changing the story so far.
This was typical late-season, expositiony fun.
Teen Wolf always does right by its villains. Each of them usually have some redeeming qualities, or a varying degree of past wrong doing in order to justify their actions. Meredith seems, so far, like the most sympathetic of them. We’ll have to wait and see how they sell the idea of a timid, weird, introverted head case as the brains behind the benefactor.
A good portion of ‘Time of Death’ is dedicated to how absolutely ridiculous this week’s plan is, almost as stupid as the impromptu trip to Mexico in the premiere. A lot of the series revolves around these kids making questionable choices and risky bets in situations that are, at best, a little out of the ordinary, and this episode dealt with the consequences and fallout from that extremely well.
Teen Wolf is continuing to ground this season by keeping the normality of the packs’ teenage lives a constant recurrence. This week a nasty virus outbreak took place at the high school, the morning of the PSATs. It sounds silly at first, but it’s actually clever to keep those little things as regular as possible, less we forget they’re still only kids.
One of the many parts of Teen Wolf that’s grown since it began is how well shot the series actually is. So many scenes showcase how atmospheric it can be, if given the right direction and photography. That’s one of the things that stood out a lot about ‘Orphaned’.
This season is really playing to Teen Wolf’s angsty strengths. Maybe it’s the injection of these new freshmen who are really pushing the teenage rebel bar, or the fact that the show seems really grounded by high school events, but I think it works incredibly well, especially since this is a show about kids being thrust into a crazy situation.
Last week was all about introducing new characters and defining their roles in the show, ‘The Benefactor’ felt like it was trying to re-establish the role of existing characters, and where they stand in light of all the changes that have been happening in Beacon Hills.
There’s been a slight disconnect so far this season, and it had me worried for the past couple of weeks. For that reason ‘Muted’ is easily the strongest so far. It felt like the show was brought home after a long vacation, and everything is the same, except totally different.
Some of this episode was hard to take.
Some parts were even a little silly, even by Teen Wolf standards; a secret vault that happens to be underneath the high school? Really? It was all a bit too convenient, a bit too circumstantial.
