Many thanks to Leah for once again sharing her thoughts on Teen Wolf with all of us!

As a quick heads-up before I start: As you probably know if you watched Teen Wolf this week, this episode dealt with heavy, potentially triggering subject matter. My review will discuss some of this, as I will talk about the suicide attempts that were made by each of the characters in this episode, though I will focus on the new information we learned about them through their hallucinations more than recounting the actions of the direct attempts themselves. Please take care of yourself and judge if discussions of the events in this episode will be triggering and/or emotionally distressing to you before reading.

Title Motel California

What Happened? Jennifer Blake helps a severely wounded Derek back to his apartment, where they form a connection. Scott and the rest of the group are stuck spending the night at a creepy motel, which holds the record for being the motel with the most suicides in California. At the motel, Scott, Boyd, Isaac, and Ethan all begin to have horrifying hallucinations, and Lydia hears the last moments of people who have died at the motel.

Favorite Quotes
“I don’t like this place.”
“I don’t think the people who own this place like this place. It’s just for a night.”
“A lot can happen in one night.” (Lydia and Allison)

“Alright, so I have four.”
“Four? Seriously, you have four suspects?”
“Yeah. Seriously—ten. Well, nine, technically, I guess; I had Derek on there twice.” (Stiles and Scott)

“Scott, just listen to me okay. You’re not no one. You’re someone. Scott, you’re my best friend; I need you. Scott, you’re my brother. Alright, so…if you’re gonna do this, then you’re just gonna have to take me with you.” (Stiles)

My Thoughts First, I want to talk about our B-plot for this episode. We have Jennifer Blake helping Derek back to his apartment, where he heals a bit, they talk, and then they have sex. Personally I like Jennifer Blake—from the very little bit we’ve seen of her so far, she’s funny and at times sort of endearingly awkward, she obviously cares about her students (protecting them from the crows, telling Scott she doesn’t want to see his grades drop this year), and is seemingly sweet, or at least a good enough person to help Derek when he is dying on the ground in front of her.

However, the romance between her and Derek feels off somehow—their connection has felt rushed and has been given the appearance of more emotional depth than I feel the two truly have with each other, and for Derek “I don’t trust anyone” Hale to be trusting someone so much when he knows so very little about her seems quite unusual. All of which leads me to wonder if it is supposed to truly be a romance at all, or whether their scenes this episode were merely two people seeking comfort in each other, seeking an escape from the world around them. They even acknowledge in the scenes at Derek’s loft that they are basically strangers, and the lyrics of the part of the song that is playing over the scene when they first kiss seems to indicate that perhaps that scenario is what is truly occurring: Give me touch / cause I’ve been missing it / I’m dreaming of strangers / kissing me in the night / just so I / can feel something. Either way, I feel like something is going on with Jennifer Blake that we don’t know about yet.

I have a lot of feelings about all of the motel scenes this episode, but I’ll try not to spew them all over you. I’ll start by saying how much I appreciated seeing Stiles, Lydia, and Allison working together as a team to save the werewolves. We saw that these three are clever, brave, and work together very well. I especially am enjoying seeing Stiles and Lydia’s friendship grow to this level, where they work well together—for example, Stiles made the realization about the heat taking the werewolves out of their wolfsbane-induced state, and Lydia remembered the bus’s flares—and where they have enough trust and respect for each other that they can be truly honest, as Stiles was when he told Lydia that he thought she might be involved with the deaths because of the similarities with Peter in Season 2.

Isaac broke my heart (bravo, Daniel Sharman), though we didn’t learn much new information about his character in his scenes. The person we learned the most about from our pack was Boyd. Boyd’s nightmarish hallucinations told us how, when he was little, he was ice-skating with his sister Alicia and somehow she disappeared. It’s not quite clear whether she was kidnapped, killed, or if something else happened to her, but it is clear that Boyd blames himself for losing her, and that guilt is what drives him to his attempt to commit suicide.

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I hope everyone who celebrated the holiday had a great Fourth of July yesterday! Today, it’s Teen Wolf recap time courtesy of the lovely Leah.

Title Frayed

What Happened? Scott, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia discuss recent events on the way to a cross-country meet while trying to keep a fight from breaking out between Ethan, Boyd, and Isaac, and also figuring out how to get Scott’s wound to heal. As they travel, Scott remembers the events of the past day or two, in which Derek, Scott, Isaac, Boyd, and Cora (with some well-timed help from Allison) took on the Alpha Pack in the first true, all-out fight, in which both Derek and Ennis seemingly fell to their deaths. Meanwhile, we discover that Kali, Aiden, and Morrell have taken Ennis to Deaton, hoping that he can save him. We end the episode with Derek surprising Ms. Blake with his dramatic bloody handprint on her car and her kneeling over his still-breathing body in the high school parking lot.

Favorite Quotes
“That depends. Are you planning on following the bus, or are you planning on mounting it at some point?” (Lydia)

“Why is the default plan always murder? Just once, can’t someone try to come up with something that doesn’t involve killing everyone?”
“You never get tired of being so blandly moral do you?” (Scott and Peter)

“Come on, Scott, put those away. I’d have to be blind, deaf, and quadriplegic for you to be an actual threat.” (Deucalion)

My Thoughts In a way, this episode was one major, connected narrative, in that it told us the events of the past day or two surrounding the Alpha Pack in a creative way through the use of out-of-order time jumps (by showing us bits and pieces of Scott’s memories). Our focus this episode was on the first major confrontation with the Alpha Pack.

First, I want to focus on one of Teen Wolf’s awesome ladies, Allison. In this episode, we see Scott talking to Allison about her staying out of the way of the fighting. Scott has a good point in that Allison would undoubtedly lose to the Alphas in any sort of close-quarters fight. However, she does have a good advantage from a distance with her bow and arrow, and I love that she comes back at the end of the episode and basically saves the whole pack from the Alphas with her archery skills. I also very much enjoyed that at the end of the episode Scott acknowledged that he was wrong and that Allison was essential to the fight; there was no ego at work, just pure appreciation for her skills, and it was really wonderful to see (especially from a male character towards a female character). I have a feeling Allison will be an important part of the fight against the Alpha Pack in the future, and I can’t wait to see her continue being awesome!

I also think one of the important moments in this episode was Allison’s talk with her father about whether they should be involved in the struggle in Beacon Hills. Chris talked about their path as being a situation called “threading the needle”—finding a safe path between two opposing forces. This theme of trying to live in harmony with two worlds has been one that Allison and her father have dealt with this season, and is prevalent throughout the show—it has been a common theme for Scott, especially in the first season when he was trying to find a cure, and for Allison when she’s been trying to navigate being from a hunter family and being in a relationship with Scott at the same time. I think this will be something that Chris will struggle with more than Allison. She isn’t the type of person to stand back and watch while her friends die, even if it puts herself in great danger, and I believe she’ll join in and help Scott and the others when she can. Chris, however, has less of an emotional stake involved in the fighting, as he doesn’t know the teenagers very well except for his daughter, and staying out of the conflict will likely have a bigger draw for him than it does for Allison. I believe that in the end, Chris’s love for his daughter and his desire to do what is right (even though he’s definitely a bit shaky on his moral code) will win out in the end, and he’ll become a reluctant but reliable ally for our group.

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It’s time once again for Leah to share her thoughts on the latest episode of Teen Wolf!

Title Unleashed

What Happened? Scott, Isaac, and Allison deal with the Alpha Pack twins (Ethan and Aiden) when they start to cause trouble at school. Derek and Cora are paid a visit by Deucalion, Kali, and Ennis, who tell Derek that they want him to join them by killing his own pack and thus becoming a more powerful Alpha. Stiles and Lydia continue to investigate the recent murders along with the help of Deaton, and they realize the killings are the work of a druid who has gone down the wrong path.

Favorite Quotes
“I was gonna see if you were okay.”
“Physically or emotionally? Though, I guess that presupposes I was emotionally okay before any of this, and, according to my therapist, that—that’s been debatable for a long time.” (Derek and Ms. Blake)

“Ethan—I always forget—how many bones in the human body?”
“I don’t know; let’s count.”
[Scott arrives and punches Ethan]
“That’s one.” (Aiden, Ethan, and Scott)

“Seriously dude, human sacrifices?”
“Scott, your eyes turn into yellow glowsticks, okay, hair literally grows from your cheeks and then will immediately disappear, and if I were to stab you right now it would just magically heal, but you’re telling me that you’re having trouble grasping human sacrifices?” (Scott and Stiles)

“Okay, good. So look, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that maybe the murders come in threes; ancient people love things in threes, right? So maybe first it’s three virgins, and then I don’t know, maybe it’s three people who own little dogs.”
“I own a little dog. I am not getting rid of my dog.”
“Just think about getting rid of your little dog.”
“Nope.” (Stiles and Lydia)

My Thoughts The episode this week was pretty emotional for me, as well as being full of important plot details that of course generated a lot of questions, so it took me a little more time to process. In this episode, we took a big step towards understanding what exactly is going on in Beacon Hills and what our characters are up against.

In “Unleashed,” we saw Derek (and Cora) receive a visit from Deucalion, and it looks like the main purpose was to traumatize the two while trying to persuade Derek to join their pack. (Or maybe they were just trying to traumatize me—I kept yelling “Ewww eww eww why?” at my TV screen every time I saw a bit of a close-up of that pole through Derek’s chest. It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen on TV. Thanks a lot, MTV. I still love you anyways.)

In order to join the Alpha Pack, however, Derek would have to kill all of his current pack, which each of the alphas currently in the Alpha Pack have already done. In killing their betas, they gained more power since that action results in the addition of the power of the one they killed to their own power. Killing the whole pack gives the Alpha the power of all of his pack combined. This, of course, means that the Alpha Pack is not only dangerous because they’re all Alphas, but because they are all alphas with extra power—super-alphas, I suppose. And according to his speech (which not only caused lightning but also cracked his own sunglasses) Deucalion is the most powerful alpha: “The Demon Wolf.” We’ll see if that comes to mean something significant, or if it’s just our current main antagonist being extremely dramatic. Teen Wolf certainly enjoys its dramatic villains (Gerard, anyone?), and I love them as well.

Another main plotline in this episode was the conflict between Allison, Scott, Isaac, and the Alpha Twins, Ethan and Aiden. I’m really excited for Scott, Isaac, and Allison to become a tag-team of awesomeness, because that scene where they set up Aiden with the motorcycle in the school hallway was genius, hilarious, and one of my favorite scenes of the season so far. The twins’ Alpha form continues to be both disgusting and very cool to me, and I think their sheer power combined with the ability we saw this episode to have at least some strategy in irritating Isaac means that they’ll be difficult to deal with for the rest of the season. The scene with Isaac and Allison locked in the closet quickly turned from cute to heart-wrenching and scary, and I love that both Scott and Allison knew enough not to blame Isaac for his loss of control. In general this episode made me feel ALL the emotions for Isaac, poor kid. He’s quickly becoming one of my favorite characters.

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Today, the lovely Leah is back to share her thoughts on the latest episode of Teen Wolf!

Title Fireflies

What Happened? Derek, Scott, and Isaac chase after Boyd and Cora in an attempt to stop them from hurting innocent people, and, when it becomes clear that they need help, they go to the one person in town they know has experience with trapping werewolves: Chris Argent. Meanwhile, Lydia discovers a body at a nearby pool, and after learning more from Melissa McCall about all the recent attacks, Stiles figures out what all the victims had in common, leading him to the discovery that someone is using Beacon Hills as a resource for their human sacrifices.

Favorite Quotes
“You called the police before you called me?”
“I’m supposed to call you first when I find a dead body?”
“Yes!” (Stiles and Lydia)

“We need help.”
“We have Isaac now.”
“I mean real help.” (Scott and Derek, with Isaac right next to them)

“And—just curious—is there a reason the gun is still pointed at me?”
“Well, there’s probably still some part of me that wants to shoot you.”
“I get that.” (Scott and Chris)

“Let him be the hero of his morally black and white world. The real survivors, you and I, we live in shades of gray.” (Peter)

“What kind of werewolf strangles someone? You know, that’s not very werewolfy.” (Stiles)

My Thoughts This week our main plot was following Derek, Isaac, and Scott as they tried to catch Boyd and Cora before they hurt anyone. I really enjoyed seeing them work together as a team, especially the continuation of Derek and Scott working together instead of the antagonistic relationship they had last season. Also, Isaac and Derek’s interactions in the car while waiting for Scott were hilarious. Isaac is getting to show more and more snark, which I very much appreciate, and I’m hoping these first few episodes are indicative of him having lots of screen time this season!

Receiving help from Chris Argent was not surprising, as we all knew that Chris and Allison were likely going to be back in the hunting game sooner rather than later, despite their agreement to stay out of it. However, it was quite interesting to get to hear more of the techniques used by hunters to trap werewolves. If nothing else, it created a very interesting group dynamic (and a fun scene between Chris and Scott in the parking lot).

They manage to trap Cora and Boyd in the high school where, of course, there is one teacher left in the building. Why in the world Ms. Blake was still at the school grading papers at what must have been somewhere around four or five in the morning (the sun comes up while they’re there!) I have no idea, and why she goes to get a ream of paper from the supply room when she appears to be grading tests I don’t know either. While this was perhaps the most unrealistic part of the episode, I can mostly ignore it with a “because of plot and character reasons” handwave. I’m much more interested in seeing how Ms. Blake reacts to learning about the wide world of werewolves present in her new town, and I’m sure we’ll see more of her reaction in the next episode!

Meanwhile, Lydia and Stiles this week had some detective work to do. Lydia stumbles upon a body at the pool, and we quickly realize she’s going through more horrible mind games, as she had no idea she was going to the pool until she arrived. I really can’t wait to see where they take whatever is happening with her character and watch her be amazing once she has the knowledge of what her powers are. For now, I’m just hoping she finds a way to start figuring out what exactly is going on with her, and, if it’s Peter, find a way to get revenge on him for messing with her mind not just once, but twice. I’m hesitant to believe that it’s actually Peter pulling the strings this time though, as I feel like whatever’s going on with Lydia appears to be something slightly different than last season. Whatever it is, I hope we find out more soon.

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Title Chaos Rising

What Happened? Derek, Isaac, Scott, Stiles, and Peter try to figure out where Boyd and Erica are being kept and how to save them, while Allison researches the symbol that is formed by the bruises on her and Lydia’s arms. Their efforts lead them all to a closed down bank in Beacon Hills, where a showdown occurs that will change things for everyone.

Favorite Quotes
“What do you think you’re gonna do, Derek, you gonna punch through the wall?”
“Yes, Stiles, I’m gonna punch through the wall.”
“Okay, big guy, let’s see it, let’s see that fist. Big old fist. Make it, come on. Get it out there, don’t be scared. Big bad wolf, yeah, look at that.” (Stiles and Derek)

“Do I have to remind you what we’re up against here? A pack of alphas, all of them killers. And if that’s not enough to scare your testicles back into your stomach, try to remember that two of them combine bodies to form one giant alpha.”
“Can someone kill him again please?” (Peter and Stiles)

“I can’t take waiting around like this, you know, it’s nerve-wracking. My nerves are wracked, they’re severely wracked. Wracked.”
“I could beat you unconscious and wake you when it’s over?” (Stiles and Peter)

“Why did they wait for the full moon, huh? Why not just kill them whenever they want to.”
“Maybe they think it’s poetic.”
“They already had three full moons to be poetic.”
“And here you’ve only had one full hour to be so annoying…” (Stiles and Peter)

“They’re the lions. They’re the starved lions and you and Derek just stepped into the colosseum.” (Peter to Scott re: Boyd and Cora)

My Thoughts Wow, was this an intense episode! I really, really enjoyed it. It brought not only the intensity and tension that Teen Wolf is so good at, but it also brought the sass and the funny moments as well as some big twists.

The first main plotline was that of Derek, Scott, Stiles, Peter, and Deaton trying to help Isaac access the memories hidden from him by his encounter with the Alpha Pack, and then all of them (except Deaton and Isaac, who is probably recovering) coming up with a plan to get Erica and Boyd back.

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This summer, the lovely Leah will be sharing her thoughts on this season of Teen Wolf with us.

Hi everyone! It is finally the start of summer shows season and I could not be more excited for Teen Wolf to be back on my TV screen! I am delighted to say that this summer I’ll be covering Teen Wolf Season 3 here on Nerdy Girl Notes, with some occasional help from the wonderful Heather, and I can’t wait to hear all your thoughts as we go through this undoubtedly crazy journey that will be Season 3! As we’ve seen from the opening episode, this might hurt, indeed.

Sorry for the delay this week – I had my last week of college finals ever starting Monday, and so I’ve been quite busy focusing on school, but for the rest of the season (barring any unforeseen issues) I should have the recap up on the Tuesday or Wednesday following the episode’s airing! And now, let’s talk about the premiere!

Title Tattoo

What Happened? A mysterious girl is in Beacon Hills and appears have quite a bit of knowledge about not only our favorite werewolves and their friends, but also the Alpha Pack, as we see her fighting with the Alpha Pack, helping Isaac, and attempting to reach Scott to tell him something. Meanwhile, animals are starting to go crazy around town while the Alpha Pack begins to cause more trouble for everyone. Scott seeks Derek’s help in getting a tattoo, and Derek tells Scott and Stiles what he knows about the Alpha Pack that’s in town – that they can only mean one thing: trouble.

Favorite Lines
“And seriously, an American werewolf in London? Like that’s not going to be a disaster.” (Lydia, talking about Jackson – A reference to the movie “An American Werewolf in London.”)

“Do you have any other emergency werewolf contacts?” (Melissa McCall to Isaac)

“Since the amnesiac in 215 can’t tell us anything, I need the girl with the modified military stun gun in 216 to answer a few questions.” (Sheriff Stilinski)

“Prada bit me.”
“Your dog?”
“No, my designer handbag. Yes, my dog.” (Lydia and Stiles)

“I know you’re afraid of him.”
“Of a teenage boy?”
“Of the man he’ll become.”
“I’m aware of a certain potential threat. But then someone once taught me a very smart way to eliminate threats: get someone else to do it for you.” (“The Girl” and Deucalion)

My Thoughts I thought this was quite an enjoyable episode, and as usual with an episode of Teen Wolf, gave us more questions than answers.

“The Girl”

For me, she is the most interesting new character so far. She clearly knows a lot about this town and about our favorite characters – she knew that Allison, at least, knows Scott well enough to likely know where he was – and she appears to be familiar with not only Scott, Derek, and their friends, but also with the Alpha Pack. I don’t know whether she is time-travelling somehow, or can see the future through magic, or something else we don’t know about yet, but her obvious knowledge of the group surrounding Scott and “the man he’ll [Scott] become,” as well as the bruises she left on Lydia and Allison’s arms, tells me that this girl is definitely more than just human. I hope that she is not actually dead and that we get to see more of her, and I hope she gets a name soon!

Meet the Alpha Pack

We got our first look at the Alpha Pack this episode, and they were suitably menacing! We have seen that the pack appears to be made up of five members, and that they have a leader, Deucalion. I love that Deucalion is blind! (Or at least he appears to be.) I can’t describe how awesome I think it is that the show has the leader of the Alpha Pack having a disability and still being incredibly terrifying. The Alpha Pack will definitely be a formidable opponent for our characters this season as they seem to have not only strength, but strategy and smarts as well.

Sidenote: I think I could listen to Gideon Emery (who plays Deucalion) talk all day in that voice and I’d be happy.

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