The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Teen Wolf Season 3A

Teen Wolf season 3 just finished it’s summer run and if nothing else, it gave us a lot to talk about and an immense amount of entertainment during the summer. Now that the dust has seemingly settled, I took a bit of time to reread all of my recaps and listen to all of my Demon Wolfcasts to cohere my thoughts into one place. I tried to take a balanced approach, given that I am reviewing half a season. So without further ado, here’s the good, bad and ugly for Teen Wolf Season 3A!

Note: I put the bad and ugly sections first so we could end on a happy note 😉

The Bad

-The ambition. Sometimes a show gets too big for it’s britches and I think that’s what happened to Teen Wolf, at least in this first half. The show got really bogged down as it headed to the end and the central battle of Jen vs. the alpha pack in all honesty had nothing to do with the central characters. Everything about this season seems focused outward as opposed to inward on the characters and near the season it just felt like everything was being squished in to finish the arc.

-Love Themes. I love Dino Meneghin’s music for this show but good God if I never hear another love theme on this show it would be too soon. Him and Jeff are a lethal combination when it comes to them and they just need to pull back a bit.

-Ships sailing with less than enough plot/effort. This show is about as subtle as a Lee Daniels movie when it comes to telegraphing relationships and this point might just be a product of being a fan but I can’t help but feel like this show always wants you to accept a relationship without putting in the work. Like I know Danny is a supporting character but you blinked and Dethan was together. What? Where was the beginning of that relationship? Even Lydia got some office sex. Doomed suffered from this cause in two scenes and some music we were supposed to be on board. It felt like they were trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole. What happened to genuine character beats and development? Like I hate Alisaac but even they had a full arc.

-Doomed. Surprised this isn’t in the ugly section? I find my ire towards this storyline dying down now that the season is finished and I get where they were going with the story. That doesn’t change the fact that for a good 8 episodes this was the most forced plot in the season and their interactions ruined many an episode. Jennifer felt like another in a long line of bad decisions Derek made AND just another in a list of things people blamed on him. Though I understand why they did it, Jen could have been just as effective a villain without the love interest angle and it really hurt the show.

-The Q&As. Not directly related to the quality of the show but I honestly think that these Q&As hurt the experience of the show. Jeff Davis really can’t win from them and as the season went down in quality they were bruising, if hilariously awkward affairs.

-Peter. Now first let me say I LOVE how they write Peter so consistently morally ambiguous, but aside from a few one liners here and there he really wasn’t a factor at all in this half. Furthermore, the last scene in each of the final two episodes showed that he was/is indeed up to something, much of his desire hasn’t just been kept under wraps, it hasn’t been there at all. Also that last scene with him was terrible.

-Deucalion. What a waste of a villain. We had to wait until ep 12 to see him turn into the Demon Wolf, still ultimately don’t know his purpose, and he was given the weakest of weak send offs in the finale. We never got let in on his vision and the show suffered for it.

-Alisaac. I’m sorry but you’re gonna have to do a wee bit more to convince me that this should happen other than putting together two people who used to fuck in real life. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Allison, after being driven to the brink of craziness, dumping her first love Scott would decide to get with not just her ex’s new BFF but a werewolf to boot! And why in the world would Isaac even attempt a relationship with his new BFF/possible alpha’s ex and some chick who stabbed him repeatedly? I get the attraction but