I wish I'd decided to do episode-by-episode recaps of Teen Wolf this season. If I had, I'd have come here after the second episode and gushed about how much I loved it. Instead, I'm apparently only popping my head in to talk about episodes I hated. Like the season three premiere and last night's episode, "Frayed."
My chief complaint about last night's episode is that employing flashbacks the way they did only served to make it needlessly discombobulated and confusing. The sole purpose of the wacky timeline appears to have been to let the audience spend an entire episode thinking Derek was dead. Not the first time they've led us on like that - remember in season one when Peter was all Alpha'd up and stuck his arm clean through Derek's torso before tossing him into a heap and leaving him there all dead-seeming at the end of "Heart Monitor"? Scott, Stiles and the viewers then spent all of "Night School" under the impression that Derek was a corpse.
The death fake-out is trotted out a couple of times a season (if not a couple of times an episode) on Teen Wolf which is fine. It's maybe a little lazy and it definitely loses emotional heft the more they use it but whatever, it's fine. It's less fine when they resort to cheesy gimmicks to drag it out as long as possible at the expense of making an episode enjoyable or even comprehensible. Maybe if the flashbacks had happened in order, they'd have annoyed me less but they were all over the place. Essentially, we first flashed back to Tuesday afternoon, then flashed back to Wednesday morning, then flashed back to Monday evening, then flashed back to Thursday morning before flashing back to Tuesday evening again. All. Over. The damn. Place.
In one of our first flashbacks, Scott announced to Derek, Peter, Boyd and Isaac that the Alphas' hideout is in the penthouse of the building the Argents now live in (which Derek & The Boys already knew anyway). Ten minutes later we flashed back to the full convo Scott had with Deucalion in the elevator during which the only important thing we learn is that the Alphas are staying in the penthouse of the building the Argents now live in. It's like flashing back to a flashback we already flashed back to. That kind of hacky bullshit editing should come with Dramamine.
Meanwhile in the present, we're cruising down the road with a bus full of werewolves plus Stiles and Danny, with everyone under the impression that Derek and Ennis (who? I know, I don't care either) are dead and let me tell you, the extent to which most everyone does not seem to give a flying fuck is astonishing. I am more broken up about my coworker's mother-in-law's recent passing than Isaac and Stiles were about Derek's death. Boyd didn't seem sad but he at least he had the courtesy to be a little ragey about it. Scott wasn't sad though he did feel guilty but that's just because he's better than everyone else on the show.
Wacky timelines and temporary deaths aside, this show's over-reliance on the Alpha Pack is really impeding my ability to connect with or enjoy the season as a whole. They're just always around. They're fighting, they're chasing, they're teasing, they're speechifying, they're flirting, they're riding every fucking elevator in town. They're ubiquitous. Jeff Davis needs to go watch Jaws and take a note - what's really scary is what you don't see. I am one billion times more interested in the sacrifices than I am in whatever stupid shit Alphalpha and The Rascals are getting up to. As this episode came to an end my first thought was "well, at least we only have seven more episodes until this Alpha Pack nonsense is over." Because there's no way Teen Wolf would bring Alphalpha or even a single Rascal back for the second half of the season, right? RIGHT?
I've avoided dipping my toe into the Teen Wolf shipping pool thus far but here's where I have to wade in to say that I actually like the addition of Jennifer Blake and I think her character has been used better than any other new cast member this season. I had high hopes for how Cora could help us get to know more about Derek but she's mostly been written as a first season Derek with boobs thus far and we've been there, we're past it. Jennifer Blake on the other hand, after appearing in only a handful of scenes, has allowed us to see a side of Derek we haven't really seen before. We are able to see that not only does he care about people (which he's always been reluctant to admit or display), but he likes people. He's interested in interacting with some of them. He might even want to spend time talking or connecting with someone about something that doesn't involve claws and evisceration. He has layers. He's a real boy! I ship Sterek as much as I've ever shipped anything in my life, but I ship it like I shipped Damon and Alaric on TVD; I would like to see them make out because I always want to see cute boys make out, but mostly I want to see them be allies and reluctant friends. If a Sterek relationship becomes canon someday, I'll dance and cheer and cry real tears of joy; if it doesn't, that's fine too because I have fanfic and an imagination. In the meantime, I want both Stiles and Derek to have love interests because love interests mean kissing and shirt removal and when hot people make out with their tops off on TV, we all win.
My point is that adding new characters is great if it's done in a way that serves to give the characters we already have depth or to advance the story but not when all they do is take up space. The Rascals are taking up a lot of space and getting us nowhere.
Lest you think I hated everything about "Frayed," I'll mention that there were three scenes I really enjoyed - Scott and Allison in her room, the planning confab at Derek's loft, and Stiles dealing with an insane Coach Finstock. I even rather liked the scenes between Allison and Lydia in the car and when Allison, Lydia, and Stiles were discussing Scott's injuries in the rest stop bathroom. But it's no coincidence that the scenes I liked were all scenes between established characters. They were all scenes where people we already know and care about were dealing with shit. I'm not saying the new characters should all go away, but I think we should spend a lot less time with newbies and a lot more time with people I'm invested in so that I can muster up some interest in what's going on.
Seems to me like Teen Wolf is hitting it's "sophomore slump" a season late and that's fine. Most shows have slumps and I've stuck around through a lot of them so I'll be here through 3A while they work out a shitty Big Bad and I'll look forward to a few bright spot episodes in an otherwise depressing, muddled season. But I sure as hell hope 3B is an improvement over this mess.
To say I've been looking forward to Teen Wolf's return to my television is a massive understatement. I've counted down the days (well, I've followed the show's official Twitter account while they counted down the days but I probably would have done it myself if math weren't so hard); I've fiendishly devoured every spoiler, hint, and set photo; and I've read a lot (a LOT) of fanfic. The lead up to last night felt like the week before summer vacation.
Then, after interminable months of waiting it was here. The season three premiere. And it was...fine, I guess. I mean, I've spent considerable time trying to convince most people I know that Teen Wolf is not the stupid, cheeseball show they think it is and if any of those people decided to jump in and watch last night's episode they will never believe another thing I tell them ever again, but I guess having any sort of credibility is overrated anyway.
If you're wondering what my beef with the episode was, I can only assume you either didn't watch it, don't care much about continuity, or that you're a huge Scott McCall fan in which case you are going to hate me so you might want to see yourself out now because oh my God I do not have a single fuck to give about Scott McCall.
Scott McCall is like a lot of main characters on television in that the show really wants you to think he's the "hero" and therefore brave, selfless, and generally perfect in every way so they tell you that by routinely having other characters just say it outright. What they don't do is have the character behave selflessly or heroically. Based on how he behaves I found Scott dumb, petulant, whiny, smug, childish and selfish through the entirety of the first two seasons. And as season 3 kicked off I have not changed my opinion in the slightest.
Scott's apparently spent the three months since we last saw him in summer school. So he's "smart" now. Which we know because he reads while doing one-arm pull-ups and way over-using the word ephemeral. What he hasn't done is ask Derek any questions about the disappearance of Boyd and Erica. Or try to find Boyd and Erica. Or think about people who are not Allison. He's celebrating his return to school with a tattoo that somehow symbolizes how proud he is of himself for managing to live without dating or seeing Allison for the past three months. While she was out of the country. Which is exactly like celebrating your restraint when you refrain from eating junk food while in a coma. So he gets the tattoo but his super werewolf healing absorbs the ink and the tattoo disappears.
Then a kamakazi deer plows into Lydia's car while she's with Allison and a murder of crows crashes into a classroom and Isaac is almost stolen from the hospital by a particularly ugly alpha who then beats the shit out of Scott until Derek shows up to save him (again. Some more). Once Derek and Scott have gotten Isaac out of the hospital and safely back to The House That MRSA Built to heal him up good and proper, Stiles shows up and is like "oh good, speaking of strange shit BIRDS!" Derek thanks Scott genuinely for helping him rescue Isaac and then politely asks him to leave but Scott's like "wait, there's all this terrible stuff happening to everyone with the almost getting killed and the missing for months and the When Animals Attack shit so can we just be serious for a minute? How did you make your tattoo stay on your skin?"
That's right, kids! In the midst of the creepiest shit since one of his friends turned into a giant murderous lizard, Scott's main concern is getting his important, symbolic tattoo. Selfless, heroic and deep like a puddle to the bitter end, our Scotty.
But while I could go on and on and on (and on and on and on) about how relying on Scott to carry an episode's story, plot and emotional core drastically reduces my enjoyment every time, this time he wasn't even the worst thing about the ep. What bothered me most was that the episode was overly ambitious. They were trying to do way too much to establish the arc for the first half of the season and they sacrificed character, coherence and continuity turning this ep into a muddled mess.
Last season Scott could smell a newly turned Isaac in a locker room full of teenage boys, last night he couldn't sniff out Deucalion's wolfitude when they were alone in an elevator and Deucalion was copping a damn feel.
The new teacher is fine but was maybe given too much screen time because she had literally nothing important to contribute to the story and we still had 300,000 other new characters to meet.
Melissa McCall was a bright spot in the episode. Now that she's in the know about werewolves and kanima and other things that go bump in the night, she is able to help the hopeless in a number of ways and it is awesome. But you know who doesn't know and therefore can't help? The Sheriff. That remains not at all awesome. Let the Sheriff know what's up, god damn it! Ahem. This is probably my single biggest gripe with Teen Wolf in general because it seems to me the only benefit gained from not sharing information is the convenience of plot devices. Once your friends lives are threatened, tell them what is up. When you have information about what kind of extra werewolves could be in town and feeling murdery, call a meeting and tell everyone. And when you routinely get up to shit that involves destruction of property, dead bodies, and an array of broken laws, having a Sheriff at the ready to cover for you is a VERY GOOD IDEA!
Last but definitely most irritating, introducing seven new characters in one episode was stupid and unnecessary. New teacher? Fine. Mysterious girl rescuing Isaac and dropping cryptic clues about what's to come? Sure. One or two of the Alpha Pack weres? Ok. But Teach, Mystique, and all five members of the AP Crew? Huge waste. We know there will be several alphas but meeting one or two per episode would have given them some time to create several semi-fleshed out characters rather than just a gaggle of random baddies.
Whether it was a consequence of introducing too many people in too short a time or they were just really pleased with particular visuals, they made a couple of the AP Crew the werewolf equivalent of the dusted-in-the-tease vamps that littered the cemeteries of Sunnydale on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. While actual characters had human features that morphed into monstrous visages, the nameless BtVS stake fodder were in perma-vamp face - because unimportant characters don't get to morph. A couple of the AP Crew members - Ennis and Kali - seem to lack the ability to retract their claws. Seems a rather moronic move to hang out in an operating room with your claws popped through surgical gloves, or wander the halls of a hospital dressed as a nurse with bare feet and long black talons as toenails but that's exactly what Ennis and Kali were doing. No one in the world would fail to notice that shit which is why it comes off as just plain lazy TV making.
The twins got rather a lot of screen time and a frankly ridiculous full-alpha transformation but they didn't say a damn thing and I already want them to go away. When I heard that one of the twins would be getting involved with Danny and therefore Danny's role in the show would be expanded, I was optimistic but so far I just can't imagine that the twins will become at all interesting no matter who they get naked and have sex with. I guess I'll withhold full judgment until at least one of them has a line but as introductions go, this one was botched and yawn-inducing.
The only member of the AP Crew who didn't disappoint was Deucalion and I suspect that's partly because he was given the most to do and partly because Gideon Emery is pretty fantastic.
They have at least 12 episodes to tell this story so I can't fathom why they were in such a fucking rush to force all the baddies, the "what's gone on since we saw you last" exposition, and the introduction and possible immediate death of a character I was actually totally digging into the 20 minutes of this episode that weren't entirely about Scott's inane fucking tattoo.
I'm still looking forward to the season and I think the story they're setting up has a lot of potential to be fantastic, I just think the setup was a mess.
And fine, I'll just say it - not bothering to show Derek even once until the epsiode is half over is a HUGE mistake. Get it together, Teen Wolf.
Yesterday I tried to explain to a friend what Copper is about and found myself with too many ways to describe it.
It's a period piece. Cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages, President Abraham Lincoln, hoop skirts, crazy facial hair (mutton chops for everyone!), and hats, hats, HATS.
It's a political drama. Set in New York in 1864, it's about the post-Civil War social and political climate in America. White people who are pissed about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Black people trying to make lives for themselves after slavery. Rich people looking to increase their power by owning all of Manhattan. Angry, bitter Confederate sympathizers who want to burn it all to the ground.
It's a police procedural. CSI: Five Points. A crime is committed and Detective Kevin Corcoran works with his partners Francis and Andrew to gather clues and evidence. Corcoran's friend Dr. Matthew Freeman, a black man who fought alongside Corcoran in the war, acts as medical examiner and forensic scientist. Cases get solved.
It's a psychological thriller. It isn't what the people on this show have done (though what they have done is straight-up traumatizing), it's what they might do. You don't see the horrible shit coming until it is happening right in front of you and you're powerless to look away. And when I tell you that one of the characters on this show is the scariest person on television by a country mile, that is not hyperbole. There is a scene where someone sits up in bed - that's it, just sits up in bed - that will make your blood run cold.
It's a love story. What drives Corcoran is love. The love he has for his daughter drives him to find her killer. The love he has for his wife drives him to track her down. The love he has for Annie drives him to keep her safe. The love Corcoran, Freeman and Morehouse have for each other is the purest, sweetest, most bromantic love in the land. Ok, that's all pretty accurate but really the love story is between me and all of the characters who are my TV boyfriends/girlfriends. Which character I love most depends entirely on which character is on the screen at that moment.
The quick and easy synopsis of the show is this: Detective Kevin Corcoran comes home from 4 years in the Civil War to New York's Five Points neighborhood to find that his daughter has been killed and his wife has disappeared. That's the set-up of the show. That's where it starts and before the first season ends at least a thousand awful, unbelievable, unnerving, and engrossing things have happened and watching it all unfold is one hell of a ride.
You should all watch Copper because it's interesting, well-acted, and well-written. Because it will keep you guessing and disturb you in big ways, small ways, good ways, and bad ways. Because I want to talk to everyone about how damaged Corcoran is; how incredibly engaging I find Morehouse's particular brand of not-evil evil genius; what a great, strong character Eva is; the nightmares I'll be having about Annie for the rest of my life; everything about Dr. Freeman. Because I need more people to understand why I've been shaking my head and muttering "oh, Francis" for two days. Because I have so many feelings about the show that I was inspired to write a blog post for the first time in six months. Because it's really very good and I think you'll like it.
There were two reasons I stopped recapping The Vampire Diaries last season - the first is that I got a lot busier at work which made me less anxious to spend my free time trying to be witty. Being witty is exhausting. The second is that I wasn't enjoying the show enough to spend several hours rewatching and dissecting it. There were still episodes I outright loved last year but on the whole I found the third season by turns boring and irritating.
I loved the shit out of the way it ended though and I was looking forward to how a vamped Elena would spice things up and inject some much-needed badassery into the snoozy proceedings. The fourth season got off to a pretty good start and when everyone - literally EVERYONE - got a chance to be a badass in "Memorial" I thought the show had really gotten back to what made me love it in the first place.
But then things took a turn for the...well, whatever the opposite of badass is. Vamped Elena isn't fun and the continued fight over which Salvatore brother loves her more and is better at being her knight in shining armour is not interesting.
It isn't interesting when one character is all, "I got this" while eveyrone else on the show has to sit around like helpless, ignorant, baddy-fodder with their thumbs up their asses. Or when Damon and Stefan threaten to kill each other over a girl. Or when Stefan and Damon treat Elena like a helpless kitten they must protect. It really isn't interesting when Elena whines.
You know what would be interesting? If TVD were never about how Elena needed to be saved, rescued, protected, looked after, tended to or otherwise treated as a damsel in distress. If every single person on the show didn't prioritize what's best for Elena above literally everything else. If it weren't always about which Salvatore knows better what's best for her.
I'd find it very interesting if everyone on the show got a chance to be a badass. To fight, to scheme, to be smart, to work together and know what the fuck was going on, and to save themselves and each other. If the Salvatores cared enough about Elena to let her take care of herself and make her own choices and be a strong, adult woman and then respected the choices she made rather than ignoring her decisions and substituting their own poor judgement instead.
I'd be very interested in a lot less whining.
I'd be interested in our whole Gang of Misfit Danger Magnets being looped into this "cure" business and then kicking back over several drinks in the Salvatore library to discuss how this is probably just like The Sun and Moon Curse and asking snarkily if anyone's checked the silverware drawers for the sword that holds the key to busting this secret wide open. And then, if they decide they're willing to risk their lives on the chance that this cure exists, they do it because EVERY ONE OF THE FUCKING VAMPIRES whats a chance to be human again and not because poor little Elena got the fuzzy end of the vampire lolly pop and who gives a shit how vampirism has screwed up anyone else's plans.
Nothing would interest me more than Elena putting on her big-girl pants and telling Stefan to take his chauvinism, his condescension, his sanctimony and his misplaced savior complex and worry about himself because she's got this. Then telling Damon to focus his energies on not threatening to kill everyone she loves instead of making sex eyes at her all the time. I'd watch those scenes on repeat forever just to erase the memory of her pathetic hissyfit over killing Connor. The Vamp Elena I'd like to see is the one who puts her game face on and is ready to protect herself and the people she loves at all costs and refuses to apologize for the casualties when she's pushed too far. Human Elena had it in her, why doesn't Vamp Elena?
I hope the show starts to be a little less about the complicated plot and how the characters' personalities can be stamped down to fit into the narrative and a little more about how a group of badass people can handle their shit if they're given half a chance because I'd hate to fall completely out of love with this show.
If you make a romantic comedy set in high school, I will watch it. And unless it's either offensive or sleep-inducing, I will almost certainly like it. Which is to say, you should not be surprised when I tell you that I really liked The First Time.
This movie was practically tailor-made to appeal to me. Cute, romantic boy played by the dreamy Dylan O'Brien meets adorable, hyper-verbose girl played by Britt Robertson with whom he has instant and amazing chemistry. They do cute things, they are cute together, a metric fucking ton of cuteness ensues. They fall in love. We all go home wishing for a Dylan O'Brien of our very own.
The movie begins on Friday night when Dave (O'Brien) and Aubrey (Robertson) meet at a party. He's harboring a hopeless crush on a girl who just wants to be his friend and she's dating an enormous douchenozel. They strike up an instant, flirty friendship that turns into dating which leads to sex all in the course of a single weekend.
It's been a while since I was a teenager but I don't think anyone ever really forgets what being a teenager felt like. How every little thing seemed a million times better and worse than it ever did before or will again. How you can not know a person one minute and feel desperately in love with them the next. How having sex for the first time can seem like a really good idea when your parents aren't home and he's kissing your neck but a huge mistake when it's weird and fast and maybe a little embarrassing.
What the movie does really well is convey this teenage awkwardness while still being sweet and funny. There were moments of perfectly accurate teenage awfulness that caused me to cringe and want to die but in a good, almost nostalgic way. And there were moments that were movie-perfect where the boy says just the right thing at just the right time the way boys never really do because life isn't like the movies. Plus a likable girl, a very cute boy, and Lamarcus Tinker. What more could you possibly want in a movie?
I would see this movie again in a minute. In fact, I think I'll go see this movie again tonight. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys romantic comedies, movies set in high school, cute boys, charming relationships, and happy endings.
And seriously guys, all of Dylan O'Brien's shirts are directly from heaven.
Sometimes when I watch a pilot I know right away that I'm going to love the show. Veronica Mars, The West Wing, Alias, My So-Called Life, and Friday Night Lights had perfect pilot episodes. A lot of shows do. But sometimes I watch a pilot (or even just part of a pilot) and decide right away that the show is not for me only to come back to it weeks, months or years later and find out that I could not have been more wrong. Teen Wolf and Nikita are two recent instances of this phenomenon that come to mind. Then there are the times that I watch a pilot and I honestly don't know how to feel about it. This is the category Partners falls into.
I'm not a person who has an aversion to the single camera sitcom format on its face - I adore The Big Bang Theory and my great love of Melissa and Joey is my secret shame - but I'm also not a person who'd voluntarily watch most of the "broad" single camera comedies currently on TV. A lot of money would need to change hands before I'd sit through an entire episode of Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly, that Tim Allen show ABC foisted on America last year, etc. So I came into Partners with a clean slate, wanting to like it.
I didn't like it. Hardly any of the jokes (maybe even none of the jokes) were funny and several of them got call backs to remind me how not funny they were the first time by making them even less funny the second time. Brandon Routh's Wyatt could have easily been played by a cardboard cut-out of Brandon Routh and...well, now that I think about it, maybe Wyatt was being played by a cardboard cut-out of Brandon Routh. That would explain some things. The tone was manic and shrill and the editing was weird.
But I also didn't hate it because I'm not sure that the pilot is a fair representation of what the show will ultimately become. When Cougartown first aired I thought it was kind of meh. It wasn't unfunny but it wasn't great and it was just one joke. A few episodes later that wasn't the joke anymore and the show was hilarious. Partners is just one joke right now but David Krumholtz, Michael Urie and Sophia Bush are all really likable actors capable of being funny so I'm willing to give it a few episodes to shed that one joke and spread out into something genuine and funny. Something worthy of the actors who are in it.
And who knows, maybe the real Brandon Routh will show up in a subsequent episode and his cardboard cut-out will go make "I have a heart on" jokes outside of a WeHo Starbucks where he belongs.
Open Gate - This is Tyler Hoechlin's face:
Now that you understand why I watched Open Gate, let's talk about how this movie, which is classified as a "thriller," is the most boring thing I've ever done with two hours of my life.
It's the story of a guy who doesn't test well and is therefore underemployed and treated like a loser by his loved ones. While working as a rodeo clown he observes some strange scars on the bulls. Then he finds mysterious tire tracks at the edge of his girlfriend's property. Roughly 2/3 of a movie later he discovers that it all adds up to drug trafficking. I don't know what the elapsed time in the movie was but it felt like it took him 6 months to put two and two together. Math is hard.
Once he figures it out the action really cranks up and...nothing happens. Well, that's not exactly true. His brother gets shot but we don't see it, someone dies of natural causes, then a drug trafficker gets shot in the out-of-focus background. But the movie is so boring that even when something happens it feels like nothing happens.
The thing is, I'm almost certain that the entire point of the movie is that this is Tyler Hoechlin's face:
And I can't really argue with that. I too would make a movie about only that. Just like I'd watch one for two boring hours.
Bachelorette - I watched Bridesmaids several months after it came out and I was disappointed because I had heard too many things about how great it was and so I had too many expectations. It wasn't that the movie was bad it's that it couldn't life up to what I expected from it. Bachelorette is what I expected Bridesmaids to be and I kind of loved it.
It was bawdy and raunchy and brash and silly. The performances were believable, interesting and ridiculous; the pacing was brisk without being rushed; the story was slim but not slight; the dialogue was real and crisp. It was a good movie that I'd absolutely watch again and again.
L!fe Happens - Krysten Ritter is adorable and fun which is basically what her movie is. She's a wild-child who gets knocked up after some not-so-safe casual sex and ends up a single mom with questionable parenting skills.
It's a generally decent story that gets a bit bogged down in the middle with too much focus on Kate Bosworth's Deena. Rachel Bilson is squandered as the dim-witted and well-meaning Laura. I would have given Geoff Stults more to do but I have quite a crush on him so there's rarely enough of him for my taste. If you're looking for a light, funny, adult girl's comedy with a heart this is a decent choice.
Last week I finished watching Battlestar Glactica for the first time. As I came to the end of the final season I had the following thoughts, in order: 1) Helo is perfect. 2) I'm glad that I blogged my love for the show midway through season 3 so any problems I have with the final season didn't prevent me from gushing about how much I loved it. 3) I'm glad I waited to watch this show when I could do it marathon-style instead of having it dragged out like special torture for weeks and months and years. 4) Tahmoh Penikett is so dreamy. Since the day I started watching BSG I have a lot of thoughts about Tahmoh Penikett. For this I am decidedly not sorry.
Anyway, my point is that while I loved BSG completely, I didn't love the last season as much as I loved everything that came before it. There was a sense of urgency and claustrophobia in the first 3 seasons that seemed to be missing from most of the final season. The show stopped being about the relentlessness of war and started being about everyone going cuckoo bananas.
It made a certain kind of sense for the tone to change but up to that point, everything had been so tight, so important, and so much in the service of surviving that there was no time to navel gaze or ponder - decisions had to be made now; action had to be taken without the luxury of contemplation. Sometimes haste caused them to make the wrong call but such are the risks in times of crisis. Then, near the end of the third season the pace was suddenly less relentless and by the 4th season they were adrift, meandering, and gazing at their navels with all their might while we waited, not for the next strike or in the war, but for the answer to a riddle.
And it turns out I didn't even care that much about the riddle. I wanted them all to find a place to set up a new civilization and live on the ground instead of in the fleet. I wanted the Final Five and the not-annoying cylons to finally defeat the irrational aggressors and learn to live side-by-side in peace. I really wanted the family Agathon to get a happily ever after and for Helo to take his shirt off (one track mind). I did not care why the cylons started the war against humanity, who the final cylon was, where in the span of history this story was taking place, or why everyone thought Hera held the answer to...everything.
Thank the Gods I didn't care about that stuff because the answers to most of it weren't all that satisfying anyway. If...no, when I watch this show again, I think I'll pretend it all ends 45 minutes sooner than it really does. I won't have to see anyone disappear improbably in a field and the apparitions of poshly dressed crazy people won't put a bow on it all.
However unsatisfying I found the end, or the lead up to it, does not tarnish or diminish my love for the show itself. It may be the most well-executed, genuinely entertaining allegory or work of social commentary I've ever seen.
And seriously, Helo is perfect.
Savages - Sometimes a movie is an absolute blast to watch because it's a great movie and sometimes a movie is a blast to watch because it's a great bad movie. Savages was a great bad movie.
Actually, there are many things about the movie that are very good. The acting in general was strong and I thought Salma Hayek, Benicia Del Toro and even John Travolta (I know!) were outstanding. Frankly, I'd watch an entire movie where Salma Hayek's Elena ate lamb chops and dropped wisdom. The directing was Oliver Stone-y but not distractingly so (until the end, anyway). It's brutal and heinous without being cartoony (except the one time they actually make the violence into a cartoon but that was funny so it's ok). Where this movie took a turn for the terrible was in the writing.
The plot was fine. I mean, it relied heavily on the audience rooting for two complete idiots and a simpering twit but it was plausible enough that the idiots and their twit would indeed fall head first into an assload of cash because Ben (Aaron Johnson) had a green thumb, Chon (Taylor Kitsch) was in a position to procure some pot seeds, and O (Blake Lively) looks amazing in wet, gauzy dresses. And if you can believe that these characters could be the most lucrative pot dealers in California, then you can likewise believe that a Mexican drug lord would want to become actively involved in their business.
Believing that said Mexican drug lord would be more interested in having the two idiots work with/for her than in just taking over their product and client base requires a much heftier suspension of disbelief but whatever. The plot is the plot and it's fine. It is all secondary to the insanely ridiculous dialogue which is what made this movie unintentionally HILARIOUS.
The movie is heavily narrated throughout by our simpering twit and the shit she says is so over the top it isn't even in the same galaxy as the top anymore. It would be impossible for me to list all of the crazy that's spouted in the movie but suffice to say, it kicks off with this gem in minute 2 of the movie: "I have orgasms, he has wargasms." You guys, WARGASMS!
The end was a hot mess of mind-fuckery that went from being exactly right to exactly stupid in an instant. Whether that's a product of the writing or the directing I'm not sure because I never read the book on which the movie is based but either way it was an ending that made the entire movie feel like a waste of everyone's time.
I can't necessarily recommend this movie as something worth watching on its merits but if, like me, you enjoy unintentionally funny movies with great performances and at least one scene of a wig being dramatically ripped off, this movie is for you.
Magic Mike - When I start to talk about whether or not Magic Mike was a good movie I always think of the old adage "sex is like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good." This movie could be bad but it had a bunch of hot guys stripping so it was always going to be pretty good.
What I'm saying is that it didn't need to be good but it tried to be good anyway and I appreciate that about it. I don't think it succeeded on all the levels it attempted but it succeeded on enough of them to be entertaining. For the most part the cast was taking their work seriously but not themselves and it resulted in some genuinely fantastic performances. When people tell you that Matthew McConaughey should get an Oscar nod for his role as strip club owner Dallas, they aren't being cute.
McConaughey wasn't winking at the audience. He wasn't just collecting a paycheck nor was he playing to the cheap seats. When Dallas is teaching The Kid how to work it on stage, writhing around in front of that mirror or pressed up against Alex Pettyfer, whispering his wisdom in The Kid's ear, being big but playing it small in a spendex belly shirt and short shorts it never once looked like he was suppressing a giggle. He wasn't laughing at the movie, at his character, at the scene, at the audience or at himself. McConaughey was being serious just as Dallas was being serious. He was a revelation.
Channing Tatum held his own next to McConaughey and I was pleased to discover that Tatum has more in his acting repertoire than lip pursing and jaw clenching. Unfortunately neither Pettyfer nor Cody Horn brought anything to their roles at all. Their mutual lack of expression or affect did serve to make them believable siblings though, so I guess there's that.
On the whole it was a fun movie to watch and absolutely worth seeing again. As much for the laughs, performances, and multitude of things happening in the background of any given scene as for the asses.
People Like Us - In the interest of full disclosure, I love Chris Pine. I've recently become slightly obsessed with him and I am now physically incapable of having any kind of objective opinion about his movies because I love him too much.
Which is to say, I really liked People Like Us. It wasn't perfect but it was interesting and realistic and uncomfortable in a good way.
It's the story of Sam (Chris Pine) who's in financial and legal trouble when he finds out that his estranged father has died and just when he thinks the large sum of money that his father left will be the answer to his problems he discovers that the money is for a sister he never knew he had and his dad would like him to deliver it and see that she and her son are taken care of.
He tracks down his sister, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), and gets to know her and her son but doesn't give her the money or tell her who he is which leads to a lot of moments that felt really squirmy as you could tell that Frankie may be falling for Sam without knowing he was her brother. Part of me wished they'd gone a different way with that because, ew. But when it was all said and done it played out in an emotionally satisfying and cinematically appropriate way.
Chris Pine is amazing and his face is perfect. I TOLD you I can't be objective!
Brave - I'm not sure I can say anything about this movie that hasn't already been said by everyone. It was a bit like two separate movies pasted together. It was a gorgeously impressive feat that looked unbelievably realistic. And it was really nice to see a Disney movie where the central relationship had nothing to do with romance but rather was between a mother and daughter.
I liked this movie very much and would recommend it to anyone with kids old enough not to be afraid of the scary bear scenes.
I have no strong predisposition toward the scifi genre of television and movies. I liked the original Star Wars trilogy well enough, there are at least 2 original Star Trek movies I like, and I loved the JJ Abrams reboot but as a whole, the genre isn't something I seek out. Which is probably why I never watched Battlestar Galactica when it aired. I heard plenty of good things about it and I took them all at face value. I believed it was a good show, I just didn't have room in my already very full TV schedule to watch something that didn't pique my interest on premise alone. I always figured I would catch up with the show eventually.
When my twitter friend Cathy (@bluedaisy16) began watching for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I decided my time had come as well. As I learned a few months ago with Dance Academy, watching a show for the first time is fun but it's markedly more enjoyable to share the first-timers' journey with others. So once again a small group of us took to Twitter to share our BSG expirience (my fellow viewers: @bluedaisy16, @onlymystory, @melanoma27, and our veteran host who joined in for a rewatch, @heroine_tv). To date, I am half way through the third season and I am in love.
The show is as good as people had promised, but what no one prepared me for was that it is more than a good show. It's a haunting show. Let me try to explain what I mean by that.
On the surface, this it's about a war in space. Androids have decided that they hate the humans who created them and are determined to eradicate them from existence. After an unexpected initial attack, the relatively meager number (less than 50,000) of remaining humans fight for their survival and the survival of the human race. Beneath the surface, there are hard questions about religion, faith, politics, human nature, morality and love.
Battlestar Galactica poses the question: in a nuclear holocaust, who would you be? Would you be a survivor? Would you crawl inside yourself and go mad in your own cowardice, like Baltar? Would you allow yourself to be saved, like the 40,000+ colonial citizens? Would you eschew your own fears to step up and lead people because they need a leader like, President Roslin? Would you save people because they need saving like, Adama and Apollo? Would you throw yourself into danger and heroics only to tempt fate in the face of certain death because there's nothing to lose, like Starbuck? Would you be the sort of hero who sacrificed yourself for others because it was the right and moral thing to do, like Helo?
And that is the tip of an exceptionally large iceberg. Is it right to make allowances for someone to treat people poorly because that person was treated poorly by others in their past (Starbuck)? Are our personalities and our destinies determined by nature or nurture (Boomer, Athena, Caprica Six)? In a war, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few as President Roslin had to decide when she was faced with the question of whether or not to allow a woman to abort her child in the face of human extinction?
I was particularly moved by a moral quandary in the third season that involved the use of biological weapons. When the humans are presented with an opportunity to wipe out their enemies with a biological weapon, Helo stands up as the lone voice of decent. Yes, the cylons tried - are still trying - to decimate the human race, but if we commit the same genocide (or, as I call it, cylonocide) we're no better than they are. How will we face ourselves if we lose our humanity and is it worth winning when that is the cost? This is one of the issues that doesn't seem to have a right answer. Helo is right MORALLY, but is the continued existence of the human race worth morally bankrupting a small handfull of souls?
Battlestar Galactica is messy and ugly and hard to face. It poses a lot of questions and offers few answers. It gets inside of your head, inside of your heart. That's what makes it awful, beautiful, haunting.
It's been a while since I stopped in here to talk about what I think of what I've been watching. Let's catch up.
Battleship - I honestly don't know why this movie didn't do better at the box office. I suppose maybe it came out too close to Avengers which was a better movie and which most people chose to see 3, 4 or 10 times instead of seeing anything else. But Battleship is a really decent summer blockbuster movie.
Taylor Kitsch is believable as a fuck-up-turned-hero and while the supporting cast is a mixed bag (yay Jesse Plemons, John Tui, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano; boo Brookly Decker and Rihanna but mostly Rihanna), for a movie based on a board game, they pulled the connection off pretty brilliantly. They found a way to incorporate the grid from the game as well as to keep the fight between a small number of ships and the aliens instead of a full-scale war.
My one problem with the movie is that it's too long by at least 30 minutes. The movie begins with a fairly long sequence of events designed to inform the viewer that Taylor Kitsch is a fuck-up who is so persistent and charming that he manages to win over the daughter of an Admiral and is forced to join the Navy by his brother who's sick of supporting his (hot) loser ass. But if they'd cut out the entire chicken burrito business and started with the soccer game we would have known all of the same things and saved ourselves 15 minutes. Later in the movie there is a long sequence where these spinning alien destructo thingies are fired out of the giant ship and proceed to make a fucking mess out of Hawaii as they take out a Naval base, highways, buildings and generally anything that isn't people. The entire thing was unnecessary as we'd be treated to the spinning destructos doing the exact same business to the USS John Paul Jones toward the end of the movie anyway. With those two cuts alone the movie would have been 20 minutes shorter, lost nothing and played a little crisper.
Length aside, I recommend this as a fun, pretty, explosion-heavy way to spend a couple hours of your life.
Prometheus - Judging this as a singular movie I would say it's well put-together, well acted and decent. But judging it in comparison to its predecessors in the Alien franchise (of which I have only seen Alien and Aliens) it doesn't fare as well.
Ridley Scott's original Alien is a great movie but, in my opinion, it was vastly improved upon by James Cameron when he made Aliens which was compelling, claustrophobic, exciting, scary and loaded to the gills with a "fuck yeah, Ripley!" intensity that kept me on the edge of my seat start to finish. Prometheus is quieter, slower, more build-up, less fight and the result is a movie that looks amazing but didn't stick with me at all. Michael Fassbender was outstanding as David but very few of the other characters got any sort of development and I didn't care about any of them, except maybe the pilot but that's just because Idris Elba can get it.
After watching this movie, all I wanted to do was go home and watch Aliens again to get that "FUCK YEAH, RIPLEY!" feeling that I'd been hoping for going into Prometheus.
This Means War - Why this movie didn't get better reviews is beyond me. It's fun and silly and the chemistry between all three leads is great. In particular I thought Chris Pine and Tom Hardy had AMAZING chemistry with each other. So much chemistry in fact that I think they should be required by law to do 10 movies a year together. And to show how reasonable I can be, they would only have to make out with each other in 1/2 of them.
Since first watching this on demand a couple of weeks ago, I have purchased this movie on DVD and watched if 4 more times. I love it to bits and think you should all watch it immediately.
Saving Hope - Would I be watching this series if Daniel Gillies wasn't on it? No, I would not. Is Daniel Gillies a good enough reason to watch this series? Yes, he is. I don't really care about the ghost in the halls, Erica Durance's relationship or grief issues, the constant lens flares, and the medical cases of the week. But Daniel Gillies looks like he looks and talks like he talks and last week he took off his shirt and had sex in an empty exam room so this show can be as boring as it wants to be and I'll still watch.
Bunheads - Amy Sherman-Palladino has a very distinct style and Gilmore Girls was a perfect representation of that style. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Lauren Graham was what made ASP's dialogue brilliant or that Sutton Foster can't pull it off because neither is true. Lauren Graham is amazing but she wasn't the only thing that made Gilmore Girls a great show. Sutton Foster is a terrific actress and I believe she can handle dialogue written by anyone. The problem is that everything everyone in Bunheads says sounds like something ASP wrote for Lorelai Gilmore but Lorelai Gilmore is nowhere to be found. Bunheads sounds and feels like Gilmore Girls rebooted into Bizzaroland.
I loved Gilmore Girls and I miss it but I don't want to watch another thing that sounds like or tries to be Gilmore Girls. I want to watch another show that has the same wit and heart and feeling that Gilmore Girls had but is a different thing entirely. Bunheads isn't a terrible show but it isn't Gilmore Girls.
It also isn't Dance Academy which is a whole other problem. I've watched a show about ballet students that ended up being perfect and watching this show where the bitchy girl is no Abigail, the free-spirit is no Kat, there's no Sammy at all, and the neurotic girl is no Tara (how disappointing must the situation be if "she's no Tara" is a BAD thing?), just makes me wish that I could Eternally Sunshine myself and rewatch Dance Academy for the first time.
The show is about the dance TEACHER here so I get that it's different but the differentness doesn't negate the inferiority of it. Bunheads isn't a bad show but it's not a great show and as long as it's so similar to shows that were great, I will compare it and it will not measure up.
When Teen Wolf first premiered on MTV last summer, I watched the first 15 minutes and immediately gave it a big, fat, "NOPE!" I can't remember exactly what I took such an instant dislike to. I suspect it was Tyler Posey's inability to have a facial expression. But when my Twitter friend Cathy (@bluedaisy16) compared Scott and Stiles to Joey and Chandler last week, I decided it was time I give the show more than 15 minutes to win me over.
As usual, the main character is the least compelling person on the show. You would think that a kid navigating high school and life as a newly minted werewolf would be interesting but...Tyler Posey. I'm never quite sure what emotion he's trying to convey because his face always looks the same. Which is to say he always looks like he just found a piece of steak between two of his molars and he's trying to remember the last time he ate steak. I have it on good authority (I asked my teenage cousins) that what Posey lacks in acting talent, he more than makes up for in having a face/body that appeals to 15 year old girls so, there's that. Fortunately for me, Scott doesn't need to be interesting or likable because most of the other people on the show are kind of fantastic.
If you haven't watched Teen Wolf, I encourage you to do so. All 12 episodes of the first season are available on Netflix instant and there are a lot worse ways to spend 12 hours of your life. If you have seen the show, let's recap season one shall we?
Scott McCall is your basic high school also-ran. He's on the lacrosse team as a bench warmer, a mediocre student with one friend and maybe some child-of-divorce issues. Oh, and he really wants us to know up front that he's "severely asthmatic" but that matters less to the story than what brand of shampoo he uses so whatever. Scott's best friend is Stiles and Stiles has the inside track on when weird shit goes down in town because his dad is the sheriff. When someone finds half a girl in the woods, Stiles and Scott sneak out to see if they can beat the authorities to the other half, because they're teenage boys and therefore gross.
Instead of finding half a girl, they find trouble in the form of a werewolf that bites Scott. So now Scott is a werewolf and he really doesn't deal with or even comprehend it, like, at all. Stiles, on the other hand, is all the fuck over it because Stiles is smarter and better than Scott in every way. Oh, except for lacrosse because Scott's new lycanthropy has turned him into a star lacrosse player and you can bet your sweet ass that team captain and all-around BMOC Jackson is not amused.
Scott meets and instantly falls in love with new girl Allison who conveniently falls for him as well. I mean, of course she does because her family are werewolf hunters so naturally she's going to get all schmoopy over the first werebeasty she meets just to complicate things. This is why you need to let your kids in on the big family secrets early, folks. That's the only way to avoid the awkward "sorry honey, but I have to kill your boyfriend" conversation.
Meanwhile, Scott and Stiles meet Derek, a heaping helping of hot, mysterious weregoodness who really can't believe that he's stuck with Scott as his only werefriend. Derek drops some knowledge on Scott - some people are born into the lycan life and others have lycanthropy thrust upon them. The thruster is called "The Alpha" and he's a real pain in the ass. The Alpha needs his betas to join the pack to help him reach his full potential as a power player in the dog-eat-dog world of werepolitics. Derek isn't up for being Alpha's little lap dog so he'd like Scott's help in tracking this jerk down and killing him. Derek clearly isn't used to having to explain shit to morons because he has no patience for Scott and is fucking TERRIBLE at sharing useful information. That's ok though, because he looks like this:
Stiles does not care for Derek's attitude and secretiveness so he teaches his BFF how to be a better wolf all by himself and, he is pretty great at it considering he's not a wolf himself. But the full moon turns Scott into an unbearable douche.
Allison's aunt Kate comes to town and the woman is 10 pounds of psychotic crazy in a 5 pound bag. Derek is hot on the heels of Ol' Alpha when Kate shoots him in the arm with some kind of magic bullet that infects him with werecancer or something. Derek heads to the school to find Scott. He tries to ask Jackson for help locating his little buddy but they have a breakdown in communication that results in Derek embedding his claws in the back of Jackson's neck. It happens. Scott goes to a super awkward dinner at Allison's house where he slips into the guest room, creeps through Kate's unmentionables and finds a mystery bullet that holds the cure to Derek's mysterious wereillness. And none too soon because Derek was about to force Stiles to SAW OFF HIS ARM. It was completely traumatizing in a really fun way. Turns out that the bullet was full of wolfsbane and the cure was to...add more wolfsbane. Yeah, I don't know.
With the werecancer in the rear view, Derek sets his sights on identifying the Alpha and he thinks it's Scott's boss, the local vet. In all fairness to Derek, the vet does give off a ridiculously creeptastic vibe. Derek kidnaps the vet and meets up with Scott and Stiles and then the vet disappears just as Alpha makes an appearance (dun dun dun!). Derek gets stabbed in the back and vomits about 3 gallons of black blood out of his mouth leading Scott and Stiles to believe he is dead. They lock themselves in the high school at night where they're later joined by Allison, Jackson and Jackson's girlfriend Lydia.
Jackson and the girls are like, "wtf?" and Scott says that Derek is loose in the school and on a murdering rampage. Stiles is all, "uh...nuh uh." But Scott just thinks that since Derek is dead, it's easier to blame him and his penetrating eyes for all the bad stuff than to try and explain the giant man-mutt who's out to make them all kibble. Scott tries to save everyone but instead the Alpha finds him and forces Scott to wolf out with, like, the power of his manly roar. The roar also causes Jackson's neck wound to flare up. He gets a screaming migraine, and crumbles to the ground where Stiles gets a good look at the claw marks and is like, "oh shit, not again!" Sheriff Dad arrives and rescues the kids and finds the vet who's all, "I just, you know, got away." Then Scott tells Stiles that the Alpha doesn't want to kill his friends, he wants SCOTT to kill all his friends and now that the Alpha has given him the tingles, he kind of wants to. Allison doesn't appreciate the way Scott just left them all for dead in the school so she dumps him.
Post-break up, Scott is the worst. He's pouty and annoying and a huge jerk to Stiles. Scott makes out with Lydia even though he knows Stiles has been in love with her since he was in diapers. Lydia makes bad choices. Jackson finally goes to see a doctor about the wounds on his neck that haven't healed in weeks and have also been giving him vivid and crazy nightmares. The doc tells him he has aconite poisoning which is a thing you get from ingesting wolfsbane. The lesson here is that when Derek is suffering from wolfsbane-induced werecancer, he should wear protection over his claws before he sticks them into people. I guess it's really more like wereHIV.
Whatever, the point is that Jackson has now put 2 and 2 together and figured out that Scott is a werewolf. Jackson feels like being popular, athletic, attractive and rich aren't enough. He'd also like to be able to run really fast, shed and have accidents on the carpet when he gets excited. So he insists that Scott find the Alpha and get him turned into a wolf with a quickness.
Derek returns from the dead a wanted man so he hides out at Stiles house which makes no sense at all unless you consider that Derek and Stiles are kind of the best characters on the show so they should obviously be in as many scenes as possible together. Then Danny, the other best character on the show, comes over to do homework and Stiles accidentally stumbles on the fact that a shirtless Derek is a really good carrot to dangle when you want your gay lab partner to help you out with some minor law breaking. I can't really convey exactly how perfect the scene is but I did watch it 27 times.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, so Stiles uses Derek's body to get information because Stiles knows what's up and then Stiles and Derek go to the hospital where Stiles does some investigatin' and Derek waits in the car because he's a wanted murderer and stuff. Derek is on the phone with Stiles and he's all, "while you're there, will you stop in and say hi to my uncle?" Stiles would do anything for his new bestie but the uncle is gone and Derek smells something fishy. Turns out the Alpha is Derek's uncle who...ok, wait. I forgot to tell you about the fire. Six years ago there was a fire at Derek's house and most of his family died. They were all werewolves except I guess there were some kids in the basement who weren't. Or would be but weren't yet? I'm fuzzy on the particulars. Anyway, this fire killed everyone in the house except Derek's uncle who somehow got out but not before half of his face was burned. Derek and his sister weren't home so they remained alive and beautiful. That is until Derek's sister was RIPPED IN HALF and then Uncle Burn Victim bit Scott and became Uncle Alpha.
Derek is pissed. Uncle Alpha explains that he's been, like, real mad about his fugue state and his melted face and stuff. So he was just sitting there for 6 years thinking about how unfair life is and then this whole Alpha thing happened and he took the opportunity to get a little revenge on the people responsible for The Fire. So he killed the insurance adjuster and the...person who sold the matches? Whatever, all the people he killed were, in some small way, connected to the fire. Except none of them were the person who actually SET the fire because that was Aunt Kate. Derek feels like Uncle Alpha is talking some sense with this whole "kill the bad people" thing so he takes Jackson hostage, as you do.
Scott goes out to Derek's place to save Jackson who is like, "no, don't save me! Let him nibble my ear, er, I mean bite me and turn me into a werewolf." You guys, I kind of think Jackson has a crush on Derek. I'm just saying. But Scott has this whole history of kind of hating Derek on account of how Derek keeps saving his bacon and Scott is really super stupid. So they fight and then the hunters arrive and open fire and Derek sacrifices himself so Scott can get away. Scott scurries off, the hunters capture Derek and everyone just leaves Jackson laying around the filthy, decrepit house to get a staph infection in his still-not-completely-healed neck wound.
Kate holds Derek hostage, trussed up in the basement with his shirt off and electrodes attached to his side where they won't obscure our view of his magnificent torso too much. Kate is all kinds of crazy but I have to hand it to her, when she chains a hot, half naked dude up for a little torture, she takes the opportunity to lick his fucking abs like any right-thinking person in her position should. Just ask Jackson and Danny. Anyway, like all bad guys, her torture consists mostly of talking a whole bunch to her victim. She starts with the exposition and then tells him what her big plans are. Seems that she and Derek used to date and he fell in love with her (talk about your poor life choices) and she used his feelings for her to gain access to his family whom she set on fire. Now she wants to kill all werewolves everywhere even though it's against the strict code of conduct for hunters which says they can only kill werewolves who've killed innocent people. Do you think there's an official oath they have to take?
All this time Kate and her brother, Chris Argent (played by JR Bourne who can get it, btw), kept trying to figure out who the other werewolf was. They thought it was Jackson then Stiles then Jackson again. Finally they put Scott in a position where he had to...jump really high to save himself and that caused him to wolf out and Allison saw and oh the tragedy of true love and fate and blah blah blah.
While out on the lacrosse field, Alpha attacks Lydia and Stiles is like "I'll trade ya, leave her alone and I'll help you track down Derek." Alpha's a smart dude and he knows that the sensible trade is always going to be Stiles and Derek for everyone else on the show. Stiles calls Jackson who takes Lydia to the hospital and through all these circumstances Alpha, Scott, Allison, Derek, Argent and Kate all end up out at Derek's house. Kate tries to get Allison to kill Derek and Scott but then Argent steps in and is like, "slow your roll, little sister." But too late because Alpha does not like how his plan is falling apart so he rips Kate's throat out and before he can break his promise to be nice to all the people who didn't barbecue him, Stiles and Jackson speed up and fire bomb Alpha. As he lays dying in front of the house, Derek is filled with a white hot rage so he slashes his uncle's throat and I guess killing the Alpha turns you into the Alpha which, ok, fine, whatever. Derek's eyes glow red, DUN.
After Allison and Scott have made up and made out and everyone else has gone home, Jackson shows up at Derek's house and begs the new Alpha to love him. Or maybe to turn him. Either way, Derek gets quite a twinkle in his red eyes before we cut away to black for the season.
When it's all said and done I kind of love the show. It's campy and ridiculous and lot of fun. But I think it would be even better if it were called, like, Putting Up With All The Shit and were mostly about Stiles.
