Teen Wolf 3.13: Anchors

Finding out that a show you love is continuing to grow in popularity is less of a blessing and more a curse. Desperate to keep their newfound audience, the writers start to panic and draw out the unnecessary, scared to change anything too much. The result is a series that’s nothing but false developments and recycled storylines. Thankfully Teen Wolf isn’t that kind of a series. The show seemingly smashed its own ratings records with this winter premiere, and it’s so satisfying that it happened at a time when Teen Wolf pulled off one of its strongest episodes.

What I loved so much about ‘Anchors’ was how well it represented Scott, Stiles and Allison. Though each of them are going through something similar, with all the nightmarish visions, all of it seems tailored to where each of them are right now, and the things that have affected them most.

Scott, naturally, would be afraid of his new power as alpha, as he has to relive the struggle of controlling the wolf. I loved that his mom was the one who helped him get it together, after he snapped at his deadbeat, douche bag father. How great is it that she told him to be his own anchor. And that speech of hers about falling in love more than once was pretty great, too. It’s so true to a young person’s life that you think your first love is the be all and end all, but that’s not strictly true. It can happen more than once, and we can bet that it will most likely happen with new girl Kira.

I’m not sure if Allison is experiencing that with Isaac or not, but it’s nice to see her moving on and not going through a cliché pining period over Scott. As much as I love them together, I like that we’re watching them flourishing apart.

Amidst all the steamy wolf dreams, Allison’s visions of her late aunt were pretty creepy. I read a rave review from another site that talked about how well shot this series can be, and it’s hard to find fault with that. Even early on Teen Wolf never faltered when it tackled old school teen horror, and now it’s only gotten more confident on that front.

That same confidence was all over Stiles’ nightmares. That dream within a dream maze that opened the episode was the best representation of how fascinating and wacky Teen Wolf can be when it wants to be. The inner shipper in me was sort of hoping that maybe Stiles and Lydia had gotten together during the hiatus, but the end result was still incredibly entertaining.

With this whole creepy vision, and inner darkness stuff I think there’s a huge risk that Teen Wolf could become a little convoluted, but this premiere stuck to its guns, and always anchored things on the characters that we’ve really grown to love. Even though it’s layered on new mysteries and even threw a signature bonkers twist on top, I still feel like ‘Anchors’ respected its viewers, but still kept us guessing coming out of it. It’s nice that this far into the series Teen Wolf can still hit all the right notes.

9/10

Plus

How great was that final scene? So over the top and so Teen Wolf.

I’m not sure where this whole mystery of the murdered family, and the now werewolf/coyote child is gonna go, but I like what I’ve seen so far. And is that family dog more than a normal dog or is the father more than a normal father?

He Said, She Said

Melissa: “You two supernatural teenage boys don’t test my entirely unsupernatural level of patience.”

Stiles: “Can you at least try to be helpful, please?”
Isaac: “For half of my childhood I was locked in a freezer so being helpful is kind of a new thing for me.”

Melissa: “You fall in love more than once. It’ll happen again, and it’ll be just as amazing and extraordinary as the first time, and maybe just as painful.”

Also posted at Doux Reviews.