3.15 Galvanize Kira and her family have been one of the more amusing additions to the Teen Wolf family, if only for one major reason. After three seasons of craziness, Scott and Stiles are pretty much adults in the sense that they’ve been through a lot of awful things with Peter, Gerard, Deucalion and the Alpha Pack, the Darach, and so on. Kira… has been through none of these things; indeed, she’s even less damaged than the average Beacon Hills teenager because she’s so new in town, she hasn’t yet found out just how short the average lifespan is in that city due to all the supernatural monsters. Hence, her character—at least for now—has been remarkably… normal, for lack of a better description. Kira feels, and acts, like a teenager, which is a true credit to the quality of the writing staff and Arden Cho’s acting chops. Realistic teenage behaviour on-screen is really difficult to get right, and Kira is impressively naturalistic. Much like the relationship between the men of the Stilinski clan, Kira and her father feels very much like a parent/child relationship, albeit it a different one than Stiles and Scott have with their respective parents. All three parent/child relationships work really well, and they don’t need a lot of screen time to communicate that bond, as we see this week with all three sets of parents/children getting involved in the action. There’s a good shorthand between parents and kids, and Teen Wolf is able to communicate in that language no matter who writes the particular episode (this week’s script is credited to someone named Eoghan O’Donnell, who I can find absolutely nothing about). Kudos to director Robert Hall, whose background in special effects really shows through this week in the way he uses the camera and frames shots. There’s not a lot of active camerawork, aside from a really good tracking shot from Barrow’s room to the nurse’s station leading into the opening credits, but he does enough to keep the episode visually appealing thanks to a solid sense of how to use imagery. Hall is one of the founders of Almost Human Inc., who did special effects for Teen Wolf and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, among other programmes. The sushi Kira’s parents put down looks delicious; Doug Jones looks even scarier than usual, and his surgery scenes are convincingly depicted. The way Barrow would just show up where he wasn’t wanted, crowbar in hand, was a great way to provoke jump scares without being cheap; no need to sacrifice tension. It’s a credit to both the director, writer, producers, and actors that the show turned out to be so phenomenal this week without anything too flashy. It’s solidly done, solidly shot, very well executed, and written with surprising cleverness. Barrow is creepy, which is what you want from your monster of the week. The dialogue, particularly involving Kira, is clever and energetic. Coach is back to provide comic relief (and Chris Argent gets a hilarious moment this week as well, just in case things were getting either too tense or too make-outy). Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, More Bad Than Good, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan would have loved to get his hands on some of that sushi Kira’s parents prepare for the ungrateful Scott. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
