Teen Wolf: “Anchors” Review

LOL! Stiles what are you doing in the center of this picture? You don’t go there silly.

Oh yes, Teen Wolf is back and this year I’m dedicating myself to reviewing it. So from now on we will be doing weekly reviews of Teen Wolf! Be prepared to lose your minds! 

The premiere of season 3B was actually pretty good. I have some complaints, but overall it was extremely enjoyable.

Spoilers below the cut!

The premiere started off with showing how Stiles in particular is being affected by the sacrifice that he, Scott, and Allison made to save their parents.

Seriously, someone get Stiles a totem so he can tell if he’s in a dream or not.

Stiles is trapped in his dreams and literally has to scream himself awake. Except for some of the more obviously dramatic dream sequences, this was pretty indicative of someone with PTSD. And having known someone who went through PTSD, I had some trouble viewing those segments. They weren’t bad or poorly done or anything, but if you have gone through PTSD or know someone who has, just be forewarned that those scenes may be tough on you.

But the scenes were very well shot and well acted. Dylan O’Brien’s acting skill really shines through in these more serious scenes that he hasn’t gotten as often in past seasons.

Now you might be wondering, why the hell am I talking about Stiles first? Isn’t Scott the main character? Well, apparently, not this season, which leads me to one of my biggest complaints and worries. There has been a lot of debate in recent months about whether the show is an ensemble show or a show focused on Scott. Tyler Posey has even mentioned that it’s an ensemble show and that Stiles is the one taking center stage this season. I’m not thrilled about this. Scott is literally the title character. He is the teen wolf. Nobody can argue that. Just let him be the lead character and be the badass alpha he was meant to be.

Now that being said, while I am nervous about this season I’m not upset with this episode, which I felt still kept Scott as the focus. Though we do learn about the problems that both Stiles and Allison are dealing with, Scott remained the center of the story.

While Stiles can’t tell dreams from reality and seems to have lost his ability to read (as one does in dreams), Scott is dealing with trying to control his transformations now that he is an Alpha, which is something I am pretty sure is in Scott’s head like it is for Stiles and Allison (who I’ll talk about more later). The scene where Scott sees his shadow looking like a giant werewolf monster comes off as a hallucination. I think a lot of Scott’s plot this season is going to revolve around him being afraid of becoming an alpha like Peter, someone who has gone mad with power. Scott is worried he can’t control himself, which is ironically the reason he can’t control himself. In this episode, Scott’s lack of control is tied to his lack of an anchor now that he isn’t with Allison, who was his previous anchor. Mama McCall, being the smart cookie that she is, tells Scott that love, especially in high school, comes and goes, and that he should be his own anchor. This gives Scott the strength to take control of his shift, at least temporarily, and pretty much marks Mama McCall as the hero of this episode.

Fans’s feelings about Agent McCall.

Scott is also dealing with family drama. Agent McCall, aka Papa McCall, came back to Beacon Hills at the end of season 3A and has decided to stick around. Scott has made it very clear that Agent McCall is not welcome, but that doesn’t stop his dad still being around. The current source of drama is that Agent McCall is trying to impeach Papa Stilinski from his job as sheriff. I don’t even know if an FBI agent can do that. It seems a little weird, but okay, whatever, Teen Wolf. While I’m inclined to hate Agent McCall, because anyone who hurts Mama McCall is clearly a bad person (see: Peter Hale), I do think he is going to add a lot to the plot and really help develop Scott’s character more. So I am looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, Allison is also being haunted by her dead aunt Kate. Allison, similar to Stiles, is having some intense hallucinations causing her to not know what is going on or where she is all the time. Lydia, my queen, has been trying to help her through this, but with Allison’s visions getting worse, Lydia is put in danger when Allison almost kills her with one of her arrows. Despite that, just a few scenes later, Lydia is seen spending the night at Allison’s, still trying to take care of her. Of all the things I have been enjoying in season three it has definitely been that more time and focus has been given to Allison and Lydia’s friendship. The girls are really looking out for each other this season. That’s something I appreciate seeing on TV.

Allison is also starting to develop a relationship with Isaac, which is where we get to the source of my complaints for this episode (and the show in general). Isaac is a character that I personally think is treated horribly. Despite every character knowing that Isaac was verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by his father, they all seem to not even attempt to treat the abuse victim with any manner of care. Scott, who seemed fine with Isaac and Allison’s budding relationship, is suddenly not okay with it. In an extremely out of character moment for Scott, any time Isaac mentions liking Allison, Scott throws him into a wall. It’s played for laughs but it’s not funny when people respond to an abuse victim by abusing them. On top of this, at one point during the episode Isaac mentions how his dad locked him in a freezer and Stiles responds, “Okay, dude, are we still milking that?” Seriously, what the hell?! Shut the fuck up, Stiles. You don’t talk to an abuse victim that way. Furthermore, this is only season three, Isaac just got out of his abusive environment this season (because yeah, I do count how Derek treated him as abuse). I really think that the writers want to address the fact that Isaac was abused, which they have done a little of in season 3A, but it’s like they don’t want to really deal with all that being a victim of abuse entails, so they are trying to play off what happened to Isaac for laughs. And that is really fucked up.

This leads us to our new lady character this season, Kira. So far Kira has won my heart. She seems funny, interesting, and it’s clear she will play a large role in the story. My only real problem is not with Kira herself, but with the writing. The show is starting to rely more on Asian mythology, and of course just when they are about to do that an Asian character conveniently appears to explain Asian mythology to them. I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it runs into tropey racist territory because it others people of color. It’s fine to incorporate Asian mythology, but by only having Asian people in the show so they can explain said mythology makes people of color seem like magical beings with some strange exotic culture. On top of that, many of the previews seem to show Kira fighting with a katana and even… ninjas. So I’m really worried things are going to get really racist and stereotypical real fast.

Kira is head-desking because of Asian stereotypes.

Overall though, I was pleased with this episode, even if it wasn’t perfect. Looking forward to next week.