4.9 Perishable However, what was surprising was the return of Meredith Walker, everyone’s favorite creepy Banshee, as a crucial character in the Teen Wolf universe. Granted, death comes fast and loose in the Teen Wolf world, and is easily discarded if Jeff Davis likes the actor enough (which is why Aaron Hendry gets to play both the bandage-faced Nogitsune and the creepy orderly Brunski), but seeing Meredith return was completely unexpected. Even though I’m sure she’s not the benefactor, it makes sense that she works closely with the Benefactor, if only because she has a legitimate grudge against the Martin family and Beacon Hills’ supernatural critters. As the show has established with Lydia, the powers of a banshee aren’t easy ones to deal with. It’s not like learning to tune out super-hearing or super-smells, and it’s not the awesome power that comes with being something like a kanima or an electricity-proof kitsune. Being a banshee means you’re a death magnet with a really potent scream who hears voices, and scripter Eric Wallace does a good job of establishing that this week with both Lorraine Martin’s back story and Lydia’s own guilt over what she did to Meredith. Money is a really weird thing to build a teenage-centric show around. Television at its core is all about money, advertisers spending money, shows needing money, celebrities making money, and so on, but to centre a show around what are essentially family financial problems, and to make them a discussion point time and time again while also putting prices on the heads of characters? It seems like everyone in Beacon Hills is having money problems, and most of that stems from the actions of its supernatural population. The wolves are wrecking the place, hunters are wrecking the place, and it’s hard to have a town when the school gets blown up every other week and the hospital has bodies stacked like piles of cord wood. The construction industry and the funeral industry may be the only businesses in Beacon Hills turning a serious profit (especially after the last video store in town got its only clerk mauled in the Romance section in the first season). Teen Wolf proves to be an interesting blend of ideas and impressive visuals this week, courtesy of director Jennifer Lynch, who brings one of the strongest eyes to the show aside from Russell Mulcahy. The big Beacon Hills High bonfire looks like a drug-crazed bacchanalia thanks to the combination of lighting, music, and camera angles. Leave it to Teen Wolf to make a party look ominous, and to make the records room of a mental hospital look almost as ominous. Even knowing Teen Wolf generally doesn’t deal in cliffhangers, I was still nervously waiting for someone to rush in and save Scott, Malia, and Liam from their captors (and got a pleasant thrill from watching non-werewolf Derek still beating the crap out of dudes like he still had his claws and fangs). Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Time Of Death, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is glad to see that Meredith is still around, if only because the actress is the creepiest girl on television with her crazy facial expressions. 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.
