Horror, Urban Fantasy, and Teen Wolf’s S5

[rhysiana]

(Moving this piece of meta over because I'm about to write another thing that links to it and I don't want the original to disappear into Tumblr's collapsing void.)

I spent entirely too many hours this week forcing myself through the rest of S5 of Teen Wolf (mostly in the vain hope that it would give more context for the whole science teacher storyline in S6; spoiler: it doesn’t), which I had given up on 3-4 episodes in back when I originally binged the rest of the show, and in an attempt to salvage at least something from this experience, I started trying to analyze just why that particular season just DID NOT work for me.

What it comes down to, I think, is that this was the season where the show crossed the line from urban fantasy to horror. I was reading urban fantasy back when it was still shelved under horror (Tanya Huff’s Blood series in particular), so I know the line can be thin, but there are some key distinctions.

I tried to find another essay that would handily put into words what the main differences between these genres are, but shockingly there don’t appear to be any. The best succinct thing I found was a discussion thread on LibraryThing that boiled it down to this:

I’ll just share that for the past few months my guideline has been, “Is the paranormal force/creature/person the good guy?” - then it’s paranormal. If it’s the bad guy - generally horror.

You’d be surprised how well this division tracks with how publishers market them.

Teen Wolf, I feel, is a show that was never quite sure which side of the line it fell on. The audience, on the other hand, was pretty sure it was watching urban fantasy, which fits with the definition above. Scott McCall, the titular teen wolf, is obviously the good guy. So good, in fact, he is able to gain the powers of an alpha through sheer virtue. And the real villains of S1 are clearly the human hunters, so the audience’s expectations are clearly set.

What’s more, the audience had actual contemporary shows to help set those expectations, in that Lost Girl had premiered the previous September. Things viewers of the the two shows could expect: The main character finds themselves suddenly thrust into the world of the supernatural and must learn to find their way. The supernatural is not always nice or safe, and not all of the people there automatically like them, but, with the help of their best friend, they form a group of trusted allies and friends that eventually form a found family and band together to solve crime, protect the ones they love, and generally kick ass. Hooray! There may be horror elements, but they’re only there to add weight to the plot problems that need to be overcome.

(Arguably Lost Girl did all of these things better, but hey, Canadian genre TV has been doing a lot of things better than the US lately. Clearly Teen Wolf did it well enough to amass an extremely dedicated fandom, and created characters intriguing enough to spark the imaginations of an amazing number of fan writers. That’s not nothing!)

But then we get to S5.

Things changed in S5. When Deaton first says, “It feels like the rules of the supernatural are being rewritten,” I initially yelled at the TV, “YES! IT’S THE WRITERS!” but jokes aside, the entire Dread Doctors storyline changed the tone of the show. While the urban fantasy elements of the previous seasons allowed for the main crew to occasionally try to be lighthearted high schoolers, the lacrosse interludes in early S5 felt disjointed and out of place when cut between scenes of steampunk cyborgs performing horrifying science experiments on the main characters’ innocent classmates. While past seasons hadn’t exactly shied away from indulging in the occasional jump scare, the kanima-chimera girl’s entire arc was straight out of a horror movie, and what was worse, in the end they couldn’t save her, something they had always managed before (ex: Jackson).

(This leads to another urban fantasy vs. horror distinction I found while searching, which proposed that the difference was that urban fantasy protags got to be competent, whereas horror protags did not. S5 takes away Derek, the only person who really offered to teach any of them about the supernatural, and leaves them as truly a group of teenagers trying to navigate a world they just had started to feel comfortable in, but is now being changed around them. The Dread Doctors steal their competence and turn them into horror protags. Compare this to S4, where the group of teenagers starts the season off by traveling to Mexico on their own and rescuing Derek when a bunch of professional adult hunters couldn’t do it, and ends with them solving the entire deadpool conspiracy and defeating Kate, again mostly on their own.)

S5 is also frustrating in that almost all of the character tension outside of the Dread Doctors depends on gaslighting and emotional abuse. Theo gaslights everyone and tears apart pretty much all of the actual family and found family that had kept the audience feeling warm fuzzies for the show even after yet another between-seasons loss of a fan-favorite main character. Malia’s mother convinces her to cut off all contact with her friends “to protect them,” i.e., isolate herself so she’d be more vulnerable. Lydia is being both emotionally and physically tortured in Eichen House for multiple episodes, something her mother was apparently somehow convinced was a good idea (?).

In the end, yes, the remaining characters on the show come back together to defeat the bad guy, and indeed, Stiles’ final voiceover speech in the last episode is about how he’s not worried about what the future holds for them all after graduation anymore, because he knows they’ll all find their way back to each other. But this is after 20 episodes of weird and creepy terror, constant betrayal by nearly everyone in their friend group, and the return of Gerard Argent, proving once again that no villain on this show is ever actually slain. It’s no wonder to me that this was the season that lost the show so many followers, and it’s not just (or even primarily) because Derek left. It’s because the show tried to change genres without warning its audience. It broke the core of its own previous strength, and it didn’t recover.

As I said at the beginning, I’m still watching the current season of the show. S6 appears to be trying to repair some of the damage. It hasn’t been nearly as heavy on the horror vibe as S5 was. But the crew of main characters no longer feels cohesive, and tone-wise it all just feels a little… lost. (Which is, admittedly, at least in keeping with this season’s main story.) I’ll be interested to see how it all ends.*

*Later addition: Now we all know how it ends, and the answer is "not well." S6, what even.

Comments

[mad_madam_m]

I really like the way you delineate between urban fantasy and horror. I've always known there's a difference, but I haven't seen it articulated like this before. A+ meta all the way around.

I feel like TW was going in that direction (straight horror) even earlier than season 5. Season 3b felt darker (both in terms of storyline and in terms of, you know, the actual lighting on the show) than all the previous seasons. That's one of the major reasons I quit watching then; I felt like the show was going in a direction I personally didn't like. While I'm good with the paranormal and urban fantasy, I can't do straight horror.

And I think you're absolutely correct. Teen Wolf's inability to decide which side of the line it fell on is one of the (many, many) reasons it struggled in later seasons.

[rhysiana]

Agreed. This is a problem that seems endemic to JD's projects, too. Mandy Patinkin left Criminal Minds after the first two seasons specifically because the show was far less about the characters and the impacts these terrible crimes had on them than he'd been led to believe, in favor of torture porn and the horror movie set-ups of the serial killers.

I think a lot of TW's inability to decide (as is probably clear in the follow-up thing I just posted) comes down to its inability to write for the characters. If they'd actually managed to write a show about Scott McCall, teenaged werewolf, they wouldn't have had this issue, because they wouldn't have gotten distracted by their own nonsensical worldbuilding and stage dressing.

[mad_madam_m]

Completely agree. I think they managed it pretty well in season 1, started to falter a bit in season 2, and then by season 3 things were starting to go off the rails.

It also didn't help that they didn't know how to write villains with proper motivation. Seasons 1 and 2, with Peter, Kate, and Gerard handled that okay, but the Alpha Pack in season 3a? WTF, man. W. T. F.

[rhysiana]

Ser. ious. ly. Peter, Kate, and Gerard at least had understandable motivations. Hell, Peter even had understandable motivations after coming back, if you choose to believe his S2 self is less driven mad by the need for revenge. But I think they couldn't actually give him the reformed villain arc that would have made sense (and that Ian Bohen wanted) because they were so invested in not giving the teen crew any reliable older guide to the supernatural.

Their continual belief that the audience was in it for the villains is exactly why the viewership numbers for S5 are so hilarious to me. "Come watch S5! It's wall-to-wall villains and all your faves are separated from each other!... where did everyone go?"

[mad_madam_m]

Sometimes it felt like the PTB were actively going against anything the fans actually liked. Fans like Stiles and Derek interacting? Let's separate them for two whole seasons until Hoechlin leaves the show. Fans like the sheriff and Melissa flirting? Let's have him date Lydia's mom. Fans like our core characters? Let's throw in dozens of new ones every single season for no damn reason so we can split the focus.

I learned so much about what not to do while watching that show.

[rhysiana]

Exactly! It's a master class in how not to write.

Sadly, I don't think they'll learn any of those lessons themselves, because the fandom is so large... largely because of all the fan frustration and need to fix broken canon.

[patelyne]

I don’t have much to add to what you said, except that it makes me really glad to see you say it.
I read a lot of fic before watching this show. Like, a lot a lot. I found a good fake relationship trope and fell down the rabbit hole. The show was actually done by the time I figured I might as well finally watch it. I had a bunch of free time, the first few years were on prime, and the gifs and fics it seemed like it must be pretty good so I figured what the hell. (the fact this is what pushed me and not the years of my friend telling me to loudly and repeatedly to watch is still an annoyance to her lol)
Anyway, when I watched it I was so confused. I’m not sure how much of the differences were just because of the pocket of fandom I stumbled into or what was just fandom in general, but it was a completely different tone from what I expected (not to mention how many people I had no idea died!) I still kept watching because I did like it well enough and there were some pretty pretty people in it *cough*ian bohen*cough*, just decided that I was going to have to put canon and fanon much much further apart in my brain.
By the time I was at the end of the series though, I decided I like fandom a lot better than what the show gave me. I was picking at little things ( like towards the end - stiles’ dad is named what?!) , the fact that it seemed everyone in the show just kind of ... wandered off? (and Chris coming back without Issac was very troubling), I didn’t really connect to the new people (this probably because I’m quite a bit over the target demographic, but still) but also, it just felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on why but I think you’ve nailed it right here.
And it makes me happy to read it, because I feel less alone. I was always wondering if I only felt let down because I came at the show fic-first and just had the wrong expectations. If that makes sense?
And I know I literally just typed at the top that I didn’t have much to add..obviously I am a known liar now.

[patelyne]

Also - that friend I mentioned above is also after me to watch Lost Girl too (but I told her I have to finish catching up on a year + of Elementary first)

[rhysiana]

:-D When you do get to it, it'll seem super brilliant after everything you suffered through with Teen Wolf before.

[rhysiana]

Yeah, I started watching the show after finding fic first, although I think S5 was just finishing up at the time. I hadn't gotten terribly far down the fic rabbit hole before I binged the show, just because I wanted to know what all the fanon was being based on, and I like having watched all of canon now just so I can get all the way fandom does it so much better. (For much the same reason I'm glad to listen to Top 40 radio semi-regularly--it helps me get the brilliance of parodies that much faster.) Teen Wolf is, if nothing else, a really great example of what not to do, and offers ample opportunity in writing exercises to try to fix what went so horribly, horribly wrong.

My theory on the Junior Wolf Pack is it was becoming clear all the original actors were aging out of the show (as well as just straight up leaving for better jobs, not being the unknown nobodies they were when originally hired anymore), so the brought in the new ones in the hopes they would just slot right in and continue the show. Liam = a dumber Scott, Mason = the new Stiles with bonus Actual Gay, Hayden = the token girl (was she supposed to be Allison? Erica? some combination of all of the above?), Corey = the new Danny minus any promising snark, Theo = the new, age-appropriate-for-shipping Peter (?). Except none of them had any depth at all, and 90% of them were interchangeable White Boys with Brown Hair.

Re: Chris coming back without Isaac, have you seen the gifset from a con where Daniel Sharman was asked about that, so he just whips out his phone and calls JR Bourne to ask him to explain "Why you, Chris Argent, took me, Isaac Lahey, a minor, to France and then LOST ME?" As I recall from having followed the link to the video, his only response was to laugh. Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous writing of Teen Wolf!

That's another thing Lost Girl is much better about, btw. The last season of LG got a little weird, but at least everything they did had basis in things previous seeded into the show. They even brought back a character from S1 because she was *actually relevant to the plot.* Who would have thought that even possible?! Oh wait...

[patelyne]

I kind of wish they had opted for less episodes with more break in between if it would have meant the actors could have side projects but still stick with the show. Not BBC Sherlock level of waiting, but more? Maybe? ..actually I watched it all at the end, was there already a decent length break in between? Just realizing I have no clue what the actual release timeline was.

As for the age thing, follow them to college. There’s cities that have several schools, model off of that. ...although then they’d have needed to change the title. Angsty Adultish Wolf? Shipping for Peter? Chris. Gimme. Now. Star crossed with a side of whatever guilt/self-loathing that leads up to it? Why am I with you? Of all people?etc etc and so on. I would have grabby hands the hell out of that.but I may also like college stiles and peter too sooooo

Re Isaac - I have not seen that gif set, and now a I need to look for it. When he came back without him I was like, did you lose him? Did he run away? Is he even alive? OMG CHRIS DID YOU HAVE A HUNTER RELAPSE?!?! And also, why are none of this guy’s friends curious about where he is? Do none of you call each other? Email? Do you not have The Internets? It was way too ‘mourn and move on-next!’ For me.
I *will* watch Lost Girl at some point, it’s def in the queue. I’m sure once that happens you will know. Because I will have gone word-explodey all over your other post too.

[rhysiana]

They actually aired in those off-season summer/winter timeslots as I recall, hence the 3A/3B split, for example, and they were clearly willing to work around other projects' schedules (witness the sheer number of movies DOB was in during that time); I think the bigger issue with actors leaving was they just hated the direction the show was going. They were so, so lucky to get Hoechlin and DOB to come back at all for 6B--Hoechlin only did it because Colton begged him to do it and they have the same agent. The gossip I heard via Tumblr's churn was Hoechlin really wanted to get into Derek being a survivor and having (clear, obvious) PTSD, and JD/the writers laughed that suggestion off, so then suddenly it became vitally important to him to have his schedule free for promising movie roles, sorry. See also Ian Bohen not being in S5 at all, which looks to be just after he said in an interview that he had lobbied hard for them to let Peter be a good guy. (How sad is it I can put their various interviews in gifsets into a timeline based on their hairstyles? Tumblr + pattern matching tendencies is a scary combo and makes me sound like a truly obsessive fan, but I swear I did nothing to acquire this knowledge other than scroll my dash.) Anyway, after them making Peter team up with Kate, of all people, I would have left our of disgust, too, because that made no sense for his character whatsoever. He turned up in 6A again because they couldn't get Hoechlin to come back and play Derek in the train station with Stiles, so they just swapped in Peter when Ian said he'd do it. Who would they have gone to next if he hadn't agreed? Danny? They wouldn't have been able to get Isaac, since Sharman was already busy with Fear the Walking Dead.

What I would give for a Peter and Chris detective spin-off! With the sheriff feeding them cases. (Do you know my weakness for Peter/Chris yet? They're my go-to ship to get random fic ideas for right now. I have several WIPs.)

Idk why shows that try to transition the characters from high school to college all seem to handle it so badly. See also: Veronica Mars. (Although that was exacerbated by them having changed networks, too.) Gilmore Girls did it, uh... Dawson's Creek did it, I think? I didn't really watch that show, but I think I recall that from my cousin talking about it. But just think of all the supernatural shenanigans that could have happened on a college campus! WHY DID THIS SHOW'S CONCEPT HAVE TO BE RUINED FOREVER BY THE WORST WRITING TEAM?

[patelyne]

By the end of the show I felt like I was spending too much time internally screaming ‘you could have been so much more!’ I think that’s actually one of my tags. If not it should be.
They had some really great actors and started with so much potential, but just kept making bad choices. And why?
You don’t have to go to Supernatural levels of fan service (which honestly I love for them, but if every show did it would be madness and Too Much) But from what I’ve seen/heard it sounds like the TW writers would specifically not do things just because people wanted them. And that’s crazy. Sometimes fans actually like things that make good story lines. Shocking.

I would watch that spinoff. It would be amazing. But maybe with a different writing team than the original show. Y/Y?

I don’t know why shows have SO much trouble with the transition thing. I mean, they’ve done it in real life. Just ... do like that. But more interesting. Add monsters. Quit making it awkward, writers! Or anymore awkward than actual life. Shoot for funny awkward. Having to get back the ‘cooler of beer’ your roommate took off with (because he’s the worst) that is actually currently a pixie prison you were trying to get back home (or to whatever college the brains of your operation is going to) to figure out what to do with. Or maybe don’t try that hard to get it back. After all, roomie the worst. POTENTIAL!

[rhysiana]

Oh, yes, I definitely had a tag that was "teen wolf's wasted potential". Also, were there to be a Peter/Chris spin-off show, I think Ian and JR should just write it themselves, because they've already done at least one short film together. I feel pretty sure Ian at least wouldn't do it at all if any of the original writers were involved. Hell, it doesn't even have to be really Peter and Chris, they can rename them and set the show in a new urban fantasy world with more consistent lore! Give me a thinly disguised reboot. I know how to work with that.

Also, yes! The college potential was RIGHT THERE! But maybe the writers knew even less about college than they did about high school? Who knows. Hollywood needs a sea change. Maybe what we should be doing is holding more events at cons on how to turn fic ideas into TV show treatments.

[patelyne]

Give me any Ian/JR show. Hell, I follow Ian’s Instagram, so I’m obviously happy to watch him do basically anything (...and now I sound like a stalker)

There are so many fics that I would love to have seen filmed. So yes, teaching writers how to write specifically toward that (and how to pitch, to who, where etc) would be great.
Failing that, someone win enough money in the lotto to hire the actors in their off time to film some pilot ideas 😉

[rhysiana]

*looks shifty* I refuse to join IG because my family just wants another way to send me baby pictures, but I have a fandom friend who follows Ian and downloads all his IG stories to Dropbox for me, which is honestly much weirder than just following him like a sane person, and I recognize this... (That said, I am told JR appeared in his stories again today, and I'm so happy! It's been months since they were last dorks together!)

[patelyne]

He was! Getting chirped for dressing like a ...shit I can’t even spell it close enough for autocorrect to save me. The things that stores put clothes on. Starts with M and ends with god only knows what letters.
(your friend is clearly the best, I would have just had to get a covert IG acct)

[rhysiana]

A lumberjack mannequin, yes! Adorable.