Teen Wolf season 2 episode 3 review: Ice Pick

This review contains spoilers.

2.3 Ice Pick

Since Scott McCall had a run-in in the forest with an angry monster and discovered it gave him mystical powers, agility, speed, strength, and killer sideburns, his life has been turned upside down. Scott didn’t ask for the gift; it was thrust upon him. However, what if you could choose to accept it, becoming a werewolf at the cost of your humanity? Would you do it?

For the misfits of Beacon Hills High School—Isaac the abused son of the mortician and Erica the epileptic with the myriad of maladies—having the choice is no real choice at all. What Scott sees as a curse, they see as a blessing. They get confident, they start dressing better, and most importantly of all, they lose all those inhibitions and fears they had when they were just like everyone else. Derek Hale has been recruiting; after all, every wolf needs a pack, and since Scott isn’t playing alone, well… maybe it’s time to find a few good men and women who will.

This week’s episode didn’t really hold up for me. Derek has gone from a quasi-enemy to an ally to a full-on nemesis at the beginning of this season, which is a little tough to swallow. I’m well aware of the axiom regarding the corruptive properties of power. The writing (from Luke Passmore) seemed a bit awkward, and I’m not sure I like how the introduction of the new wolf was handled, nor did I like a lot of the stylistic tricks director Tim Andrew went for. There were a few too many distracting elements in a pretty important fight scene, and not enough was done to ensure the action could be properly followed for my taste. He directed some very good episodes from the first season, so I’m thinking the problem isn’t so much his style as it is the material he had to work with.

But it’s not all bad. While the execution wasn’t great, there were some good basic ideas to be sussed out from this week’s episode.

The most interesting thing about this episode concerned Jackson and Lydia. Last season’s snobby rich couple gone horribly wrong, the two are split up but not entirely split up, as far as their linked relationship. They’re no longer dating, but they share something. That something is the immunity to the werewolf bite. Jackson and Lydia both received the bite, yet after coughing up a lot of black blood, neither one has become lycanthropic. Jackson’s science class mentioned something about developed immunity; if Lydia has the immunity, are they implying that Jackson caught an immunity from sex? Or did Jackson give it to Lydia? He’s blaming Lydia, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure how that works out honestly, but it adds an interesting layer to the show’s version of lycanthropy (or makes for a good, plausible red herring). Then again, biting transfers the virus, so isn’t it possible that Allison might have the werewolfitis via sex with Scott? Maybe Scott and Allison are more responsible and are practicing safe sex? Or maybe Jackson and Lydia didn’t get the werewolf disease because the alpha who infected them died before they could make their first change?

There is something to be explored there, and I hope that Scott’s long-promised talk with the friendly town vet/his boss/apparently a werewolf expert will shed a little more light on the details of just what in the world is going on with Jackson, Lydia, and the escaped lizard from the ABC reboot of V that is terrorizing MTV’s redux of Teen Wolf.

Read our review of last week’s episode, Shape Shifted, here.

US Correspondent Ron Hogan only went ice skating once, and it was an unmitigated disaster save for the laser tag course on the second floor of the venue. That part was fun! Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

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