S3x08 Teen Wolf
Mar. 2nd, 2014 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickTeen Wolf S3x08: In which I wax poetic on the delights of parallel structure as a narrative device and a literary technique. I am so totally having fun, here.
The structure for this episode is parallel structure, which I love. I just love it and I want you to love it too for it is awesome. Hopefully you’ve seen the damn show, but if not, sorry. The two plotlines that are parallel in this episode can be titled “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” and “How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue” for your convenience and my amusement. They’re parallel themes– both are narratives of loss, centered around and reflected in the eyes of the eponyms thereof. (Use a dictionary if you are confused. I’m not gonna write stupid just so you don’t have to look shit up. The psats are coming. Learn your words.)
In each framing device, we have two younglings (Scott and Allison, Stiles and Cora) listening to what are probably our two most dislike-able, unreliable narrators, Gerard Argent (Deucalion’s Eyes) and Peter Hale (Derek’s Eyes). In each framing device, the chick accompaniment to the young dude is a blood relative of the unlikeable, unreliable older-male (so allegedly authoritative in a patriarchical sort of way) narrator.
See the parallel structure here? I love how neatly things line up. It is awesome. It gratifies my soul in the same way that hearing Two Bits completes Toons who have heard Shave and a Haircut and are desperately waiting for the remainder of the phrase.
By the by, we will, throughout this article, be doing the “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” part first and the “How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue” part second. This is called parallel structure in writing and it makes your job as a reader easier and more automatic. Parallel structure also (by looking organized) strengthens somewhat weak arguments and inclines readers to look upon all the author’s arguments with more weight than they may otherwise deserve. Employing parallel structure in an essay ABOUT parallel structure is one of those things that tells you I totally care about quality construction… or that I’ve read Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism one too many times. :) (The jokes here only have to be funny to me.)
Well-done parallel structure (in entertainment media) frequently uses the parallels to comment upon or enrich one another. I mean, otherwise you’re just looking like someone who can’t fucking make up any new ideas. That’s lame-ass. So if you’re doing parallel structure, make it count and mostly folks do. They are trained professionals, after all.
In “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” we get a tale within a tale. Twice. I’m feeling very matryoshka about this, myself. The tale within the tale is the Scorpion/Frog fable. The show is not repeating shit because the writers cannot come up with another appropriate fable. The Scorpion tale is being repeated because you’re supposed to get something out of the repeating. (Alla time in literature, repeated themes are important. When you see shit more than once, pay some attention to it because it’s there for you to note. It’s the literature equivalent of “This material will be on the final exam.”)
The first time we get the Scorpion/Frog fable, it’s by way of Deaton, who has thus far in the series appeared to be a pretty decent guy. (I point this out because mostly in this ep we are hearing shit from people whom we regard as shitty, untrustworthy narrators.) Deaton relates the fable to Deucalion (and Talia Hale) to illustrate Gerard’s nature and to warn Deucalion to be careful when dealing with Gerard. (The point of the Scorpion/Frog fable is that some people will set the world on fire even though they themselves will also die in the resulting blaze. Normal people who try to engage with the scorpions, knowing that they’re scorpions, wind up dead.) Deucalion should have paid more attention to Deaton’s story and all the rest of us are nodding vigorously For Realz along with Talia when she says that Gerard Argent is a complete psychopath.
The second time we get the Scorpion/Frog fable is from Gerard to Scott and Allison. In telling the Scorpion bit to Scott and Allison, Gerard tries to make the point that Deucalion’s nature, the nature of werewolves in general is/was/alwayswillbe one of violence. Now, Gerard has just said that “Any sinister person who means to be your enemy always starts by trying to become your friend.” (This is a quote from Wm. Blake, poet. We note that Stiles and Scott take English from a Ms. Blake. That’s probably not accidental.) So y'know. Buyer beware on that bill of goods he’s selling.
In the story of Deucalion’s Eyes, Gerard totally shoots first at the meetup with Deucalion, even though he tells the kids that “it was an ambush”. In fairness, it was an ambush – Gerard carefully omitted who was doing the ambushing. Deucalion came to the meeting with a vision of peace and Gerard put out his eyes. (Shit don’t have to rhyme to be poetic justice.) Ouch on the show’s pun for that, though – heavy-handed and uncalled for in my book.
That’s, like, the climax of the Deucalion Eyes narrative. But there’s a denouement too. We get some cuddle time. I’m told people like that after a climax, but generally I find they just toss the money on the dresser and leave. In the denouement, Deucalion survives, but is told he’ll be blind by Deaton. He tells people to leave him because he’s upset. But one of his pack stays behind and attacks him. Furious, Deucalion kills him. (He can see when he’s werewolfed out.) We are not told so, but this may represent the first that Deucalion’s killed one of his own pack… and could mark the start of his slide into his recent bullshit insanity, the all-alphas-all-the-time affair (alliteration, I has it).
In the “How Derek’s Eyes Went Blue” narrative, the storyline is a bit simpler on the surface. It’s about a girl, Paige. Derek likes Paige in the way that fifteen-year-olds do. Peter (Derek’s not-much-older uncle) plays Iago to Derek’s Othello, sowing the seeds of doubt to Derek, suggesting that he should turn Paige so that they could be together forever so that she’d not leave him and not get sick and could defend herself and so forth. Peter says to Stiles and Cora that Derek came up with the “Turn Paige into a werewolf” plan by himself, but in the flashbacks we can see he is lying his ass off. We never see Derek agree to the Turn Paige (and isn’t that clever, too? Turn the page. Hur hur.) plan, though.
The next we know, Paige is in the hallway, Ennis (who is not a local wolf, just in the area for a short while) shows up to bite her. Derek hears Paige cry out and runs to engage Ennis but he is woefully outmatched. Ennis puts Derek on the ground and holds his head so that he can see Paige has already been bitten. Once Derek sees Paige has been bitten, Ennis leaves him and departs the field without engaging Derek. We see Peter hiding out behind a corner, like as if he set the whole thing up.
Anyway, the bite goes south and Paige doesn’t wolf out. She’s in pain and dying. Derek is holding her, Peter is there, not intruding but looking kinda sad about how things went so far south. Derek kills Paige by breaking her spine to put her out of her misery. The act of killing darkens his soul and turns his eyes blue from the gold they’d been before.
That’s our climax. This story gets some cuddle time, too. Our denouement here is that Peter hides Paige’s body in the woods to be found as an “animal attack” victim. (At least he cleans up his messes.) Derek goes to his mother and explains that his eyes have gone blue. His mother forgives him and tells him he’s still beautiful in spite of it all.
And all that’s left is to wrap up the frames. In How Deucalion Lost His Eyes, the frame wraps with Scott and Gerard. Gerard muses when it became his nature to believe most things couldn’t be asked for but had to be taken. (Gerard is totally singing Blurred Lines, here. Seriously, Teen Wolf, we’re gonna have to have a srs talk about consent one of these days.) Scott calls Gerard out on his lying because of his invariable heartbeat.
Meanwhile, in How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue, Stiles, who has listened patiently to Peter Hale blowing smoke up his ass for the last forty minutes, ENGAGES WITH THE LITERATURE he’s been reading in Ms. Blake’s class. Heart of Darkness (which we know they are reading because it was in an episode or two ago when she texted them the last line of the book) features an unreliable narrator Marlow, rather like Peter Hale. Stiles does not tell Peter directly that he doesn’t believe him, but it’s important for us, the viewing audience, to understand that neither Scott nor Stiles believes the patriarchical authority’s unreliable narrator because that completes the parallel structure for us. Yay!
(As a brief aside, Heart of Darkness is a frame tale just like the two stories in this episode – How Deucalion Lost His Eyes and How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue are both frame tales – told to our two pairs of younglings by Gerard and Peter respectively. Heart of Darkness is a tale told on the deck of a ship by Marlow to our unnamed listener. Parallel structure for the win!)
It pisses me off a little that the show feels it needs to tell us at the end that the framed stories (which are, throughout, narrated by two of our most disliked, known-to-be-unreliable characters) cannot be trusted by having Scott and Stiles question the validity of these narratives. I think that’s excessive. We are aware that both Peter Hale and Gerard Argent are driven and manipulative relatively evil men with little regard for the truth except insofar as it can be twisted to serve their own ends. We already know this about them. Plus also, the action shown on screen as “flashbacks” or whatever happens in contrast, sometimes DIRECT contrast to the voiceover narration, so even very, very stupid viewers should be able to get to the “Hey, Gerard. Yo, Peter. Ya’ll are lying to us” point without the explicit discussion at the end. But whatevs. I don’t write YA television. What the hell do I know?
Finally, because it was pinging in the back of my mind rather too often for me to ignore: The classical-sounding cello music Paige is practicing when Derek keeps interrupting and also at the very end where modern-times Derek looks like a beaten puppy is Schubert’s Ave Maria which everybody should be able to place firmly in the tradition of ecclesiastical music. Thematically important? Explain your answer.
The structure for this episode is parallel structure, which I love. I just love it and I want you to love it too for it is awesome. Hopefully you’ve seen the damn show, but if not, sorry. The two plotlines that are parallel in this episode can be titled “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” and “How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue” for your convenience and my amusement. They’re parallel themes– both are narratives of loss, centered around and reflected in the eyes of the eponyms thereof. (Use a dictionary if you are confused. I’m not gonna write stupid just so you don’t have to look shit up. The psats are coming. Learn your words.)
In each framing device, we have two younglings (Scott and Allison, Stiles and Cora) listening to what are probably our two most dislike-able, unreliable narrators, Gerard Argent (Deucalion’s Eyes) and Peter Hale (Derek’s Eyes). In each framing device, the chick accompaniment to the young dude is a blood relative of the unlikeable, unreliable older-male (so allegedly authoritative in a patriarchical sort of way) narrator.
See the parallel structure here? I love how neatly things line up. It is awesome. It gratifies my soul in the same way that hearing Two Bits completes Toons who have heard Shave and a Haircut and are desperately waiting for the remainder of the phrase.
By the by, we will, throughout this article, be doing the “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” part first and the “How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue” part second. This is called parallel structure in writing and it makes your job as a reader easier and more automatic. Parallel structure also (by looking organized) strengthens somewhat weak arguments and inclines readers to look upon all the author’s arguments with more weight than they may otherwise deserve. Employing parallel structure in an essay ABOUT parallel structure is one of those things that tells you I totally care about quality construction… or that I’ve read Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism one too many times. :) (The jokes here only have to be funny to me.)
Well-done parallel structure (in entertainment media) frequently uses the parallels to comment upon or enrich one another. I mean, otherwise you’re just looking like someone who can’t fucking make up any new ideas. That’s lame-ass. So if you’re doing parallel structure, make it count and mostly folks do. They are trained professionals, after all.
In “How Deucalion Lost His Eyes” we get a tale within a tale. Twice. I’m feeling very matryoshka about this, myself. The tale within the tale is the Scorpion/Frog fable. The show is not repeating shit because the writers cannot come up with another appropriate fable. The Scorpion tale is being repeated because you’re supposed to get something out of the repeating. (Alla time in literature, repeated themes are important. When you see shit more than once, pay some attention to it because it’s there for you to note. It’s the literature equivalent of “This material will be on the final exam.”)
The first time we get the Scorpion/Frog fable, it’s by way of Deaton, who has thus far in the series appeared to be a pretty decent guy. (I point this out because mostly in this ep we are hearing shit from people whom we regard as shitty, untrustworthy narrators.) Deaton relates the fable to Deucalion (and Talia Hale) to illustrate Gerard’s nature and to warn Deucalion to be careful when dealing with Gerard. (The point of the Scorpion/Frog fable is that some people will set the world on fire even though they themselves will also die in the resulting blaze. Normal people who try to engage with the scorpions, knowing that they’re scorpions, wind up dead.) Deucalion should have paid more attention to Deaton’s story and all the rest of us are nodding vigorously For Realz along with Talia when she says that Gerard Argent is a complete psychopath.
The second time we get the Scorpion/Frog fable is from Gerard to Scott and Allison. In telling the Scorpion bit to Scott and Allison, Gerard tries to make the point that Deucalion’s nature, the nature of werewolves in general is/was/alwayswillbe one of violence. Now, Gerard has just said that “Any sinister person who means to be your enemy always starts by trying to become your friend.” (This is a quote from Wm. Blake, poet. We note that Stiles and Scott take English from a Ms. Blake. That’s probably not accidental.) So y'know. Buyer beware on that bill of goods he’s selling.
In the story of Deucalion’s Eyes, Gerard totally shoots first at the meetup with Deucalion, even though he tells the kids that “it was an ambush”. In fairness, it was an ambush – Gerard carefully omitted who was doing the ambushing. Deucalion came to the meeting with a vision of peace and Gerard put out his eyes. (Shit don’t have to rhyme to be poetic justice.) Ouch on the show’s pun for that, though – heavy-handed and uncalled for in my book.
That’s, like, the climax of the Deucalion Eyes narrative. But there’s a denouement too. We get some cuddle time. I’m told people like that after a climax, but generally I find they just toss the money on the dresser and leave. In the denouement, Deucalion survives, but is told he’ll be blind by Deaton. He tells people to leave him because he’s upset. But one of his pack stays behind and attacks him. Furious, Deucalion kills him. (He can see when he’s werewolfed out.) We are not told so, but this may represent the first that Deucalion’s killed one of his own pack… and could mark the start of his slide into his recent bullshit insanity, the all-alphas-all-the-time affair (alliteration, I has it).
In the “How Derek’s Eyes Went Blue” narrative, the storyline is a bit simpler on the surface. It’s about a girl, Paige. Derek likes Paige in the way that fifteen-year-olds do. Peter (Derek’s not-much-older uncle) plays Iago to Derek’s Othello, sowing the seeds of doubt to Derek, suggesting that he should turn Paige so that they could be together forever so that she’d not leave him and not get sick and could defend herself and so forth. Peter says to Stiles and Cora that Derek came up with the “Turn Paige into a werewolf” plan by himself, but in the flashbacks we can see he is lying his ass off. We never see Derek agree to the Turn Paige (and isn’t that clever, too? Turn the page. Hur hur.) plan, though.
The next we know, Paige is in the hallway, Ennis (who is not a local wolf, just in the area for a short while) shows up to bite her. Derek hears Paige cry out and runs to engage Ennis but he is woefully outmatched. Ennis puts Derek on the ground and holds his head so that he can see Paige has already been bitten. Once Derek sees Paige has been bitten, Ennis leaves him and departs the field without engaging Derek. We see Peter hiding out behind a corner, like as if he set the whole thing up.
Anyway, the bite goes south and Paige doesn’t wolf out. She’s in pain and dying. Derek is holding her, Peter is there, not intruding but looking kinda sad about how things went so far south. Derek kills Paige by breaking her spine to put her out of her misery. The act of killing darkens his soul and turns his eyes blue from the gold they’d been before.
That’s our climax. This story gets some cuddle time, too. Our denouement here is that Peter hides Paige’s body in the woods to be found as an “animal attack” victim. (At least he cleans up his messes.) Derek goes to his mother and explains that his eyes have gone blue. His mother forgives him and tells him he’s still beautiful in spite of it all.
And all that’s left is to wrap up the frames. In How Deucalion Lost His Eyes, the frame wraps with Scott and Gerard. Gerard muses when it became his nature to believe most things couldn’t be asked for but had to be taken. (Gerard is totally singing Blurred Lines, here. Seriously, Teen Wolf, we’re gonna have to have a srs talk about consent one of these days.) Scott calls Gerard out on his lying because of his invariable heartbeat.
Meanwhile, in How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue, Stiles, who has listened patiently to Peter Hale blowing smoke up his ass for the last forty minutes, ENGAGES WITH THE LITERATURE he’s been reading in Ms. Blake’s class. Heart of Darkness (which we know they are reading because it was in an episode or two ago when she texted them the last line of the book) features an unreliable narrator Marlow, rather like Peter Hale. Stiles does not tell Peter directly that he doesn’t believe him, but it’s important for us, the viewing audience, to understand that neither Scott nor Stiles believes the patriarchical authority’s unreliable narrator because that completes the parallel structure for us. Yay!
(As a brief aside, Heart of Darkness is a frame tale just like the two stories in this episode – How Deucalion Lost His Eyes and How Derek’s Eyes Turned Blue are both frame tales – told to our two pairs of younglings by Gerard and Peter respectively. Heart of Darkness is a tale told on the deck of a ship by Marlow to our unnamed listener. Parallel structure for the win!)
It pisses me off a little that the show feels it needs to tell us at the end that the framed stories (which are, throughout, narrated by two of our most disliked, known-to-be-unreliable characters) cannot be trusted by having Scott and Stiles question the validity of these narratives. I think that’s excessive. We are aware that both Peter Hale and Gerard Argent are driven and manipulative relatively evil men with little regard for the truth except insofar as it can be twisted to serve their own ends. We already know this about them. Plus also, the action shown on screen as “flashbacks” or whatever happens in contrast, sometimes DIRECT contrast to the voiceover narration, so even very, very stupid viewers should be able to get to the “Hey, Gerard. Yo, Peter. Ya’ll are lying to us” point without the explicit discussion at the end. But whatevs. I don’t write YA television. What the hell do I know?
Finally, because it was pinging in the back of my mind rather too often for me to ignore: The classical-sounding cello music Paige is practicing when Derek keeps interrupting and also at the very end where modern-times Derek looks like a beaten puppy is Schubert’s Ave Maria which everybody should be able to place firmly in the tradition of ecclesiastical music. Thematically important? Explain your answer.
