Horror, Urban Fantasy, and Teen Wolf’s S5
Dec. 12th, 2018 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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:
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.
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:
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.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.
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.
