TV Review: Teen Wolf (3×21) “The Fox and the Wolf”

Pass. See you next week.

That is how I wish I could write this review but I have word limits and five words hardly reaches it.

It was so dull! Last week I wrote about how the Stiles centric episode “Echo House” was the epitome of Teen Wolf filler episode but it was well acted and kept a strong pace so it was easy to look over. This week’s episode, which allows for a great little showcase by Arden Cho, was exposition, exposition and more exposition. The difference was that the pace and the acting dragged down the story.

Teen Wolf has a notoriously hard time with utilizing both information dumps and action simultaneously.

“The Fox and the Wolf” may be the best example of that.

The focus of the episode is to teach the audience-through Kira and Scott-about how the nogitsune came to be and how Kira’s family is tied to its history. Scott and Kira listen as her mother reveals her real age (900 years-old and still looking good) and how she’d been in a Japanese internment camp in the 1940’s. While there she met an American soldier and fell in love just before all hell broke loose.

A fight breaks out between the soldiers and prisoners due to high tensions, disease and stolen medicine that’s leaving the sick prisoners to die. In the midst of the chaos it’s discovered by Kira’s mother that there’s a werewolf among them and then, her lover is gravely burned, only to die shortly after. She’s been shot and left for dead, unbeknownst to them that her kitsune powers are kicking in and keeping her alive, slowly healing. While struggling to live she calls upon a dark spirit to possess her in order to seek revenge against the soldiers that caused her so much grief. However, the spirit instead possesses her fallen soldier.

She watches as he causes massacre, pain and strife before being forced to kill him and watch him die again with the help of the werewolf.

The moral of the story?

Kira and Scott have to kill Stiles-no matter what the cost.

Scott-in his moral high ground best-says that history only repeats itself if they learn nothing from it. He plans on saving Stiles, no matter who may be possessing him.

As Kira and Scott leave, her father comments on how history hasn’t been kind to those who turn kids into killers. Her mother says that it’s because of Allison, Stiles and Scott that the evil forces are in Beacon Hills-so they’ve made it their problem long before Kira’s family arrived. After their sacrifices to the Nemeton they awoke the spirits. For such a throwaway episode it was a jarringly fantastic revelation-tying up a loose end the audience had figured would be ignored.

There were singular moments that stood out despite the jumbled and scatter-brained script.

Derek, Allison, the Sheriff and Argent provide a dynamic grouping as they try and determine how to out trick a fox. This allows for a touching scene between Stiles’s dad and Allison as she breaks down under the pressure of their situation, allowing herself a rare moment of vulnerability and Crystal Reed a moment to shine which she nails.

We only see void Stiles for a few brief moments of screentime but Dylan O’Brien continues to kill it as nogitsune Stiles-and we can’t help a moment of dread as the Sheriff walks into Derek’s loft at the end of the episode to put a plan into action and the fox turns his manipulative eyes on him. Having Stiles in the background of the episode was a smart move, allowing for the tension to build as we listen to all of the mayhem he could cause as he’s off and out of their sight, doing who knows what.

It was an episode that had all of the makings for a strong hour of television but simply had abysmal execution. Arden Cho looked tremendous in the ‘40’s setting and the styling was vibrant and fun. It should have worked but it simply didn’t, which is a shame since the show has been doing so well. It tiptoed into season 3A territory. Luckily, it did set the ball rolling on the rollercoaster of the rest of the season and left fans itching for next week’s episode.

They don’t always manage to grab our interest, but the show knows how to suspend it and pull us in for the long haul.

5/10