After last week’s major character death, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that “Aftermath” slowed things down a bit and allowed the characters to actually deal with a good friend’s death. Scream has been criticized for having unlikable characters, and “Aftermath” was a step forward in making some previously unlikable characters (Brooke) somewhat relatable. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for all of the characters (Jake and Will, again), so the episode was sort of a mixed bag.
“Aftermath” marks the first episode of Scream where no one was killed off. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it means that we do get to spend more time with these characters. The downside of this is that there wasn’t a lot of suspense to the episode. The teen soap opera feel was in full effect this week. It was an exposition-heavy episode that slowly built the mythology of the series and gave us some insight into the Brandon James story. It was nice to get an explanation on the masks design as well (it was used to protect Brandon’s face after his facial surgeries).
I want to take a moment to talk about Brooke. Based on the comments over the previous weeks, many people seem to loathe her. I can kind of understand this, as she has been portrayed as a selfish bitch. This episode is pushing her into “misunderstood and damaged” selfish bitch territory, which is kind of predictable, but if it gets more people on her side then I’m all for it. It was nice to see that Brooke wasn’t a robot and actually felt something over Riley’s death. Her breakdown was something we didn’t see when Nina died (though to be fair, no one really seemed to care when Nina died), and it was important to instill some humanity in her. You can see the series gears at work to make Brooke a likable character. I suspect it will be some time before we see her get killed off, especially since a blackmailing subplot with her dad just came up.
The less said about this subplot this better, as it is undoubtedly the weakest part of the episode. I have no doubt that will and Jake are behind the blackmailing, which makes it even less interesting. Why is Brooke’s dad even getting his own subplot? It seems counterproductive to take more screen time away from the central cast of characters, so we will just have to see how it pans out in future episodes, but my hopes are not high.
Faring slightly better is Piper, who gets a bit more to do this week, albeit not much. Her screen time is mostly devoted to her eavesdropping on other characters. She does get some interation with Emma (and shows some brains when she tells Emma that she can tell the police aren’t confident), but other than that nothing really happens with Ms. Shay. With only six episodes left this season, Scream would be smart to start giving her more to do.
The main focus on the episode was on Emma, Noah and Audrey, as they followed clues sent by the killer to a very creepy section of the hospital. After following a trail of blood to a room with a pig corpse (the same pig whose heart was sent to Maggie in the pilot) they stumble upon Nina’s laptop with a bunch of video files with people’s names on them. This is obviously an attempt to link the main Emma arc with the super boring Jake/Will blackmail subplot, so hopefully that works out into everyone’s favor. Poor Emma was caught in the crossfire as Noah and Audrey accidentally uploaded a video of her first time with Will to a Listserv comprised of all of her classmates. Way to go, guys!
“Aftermath” was a necessary, if unexciting, episode of Scream. More time was spent establishing these characters and we gained some more insight into the Brandon James mystery. This is all well and good, but let’s kill someone next week, shall we?
Random Notes
- So Brandon James is clearly still alive, yes? I’m assuming he just got a new face since there were so many mentions of the mask being for his face post-surgery.
- The killer uses a voice changer app. That’s so Scream 4.
- Um, the police didn’t “get Tyler.” His car crashed and they happened upon it. There’s a difference. There’s a difference.
- “Emma, maybe you should take your friend to see one of those grief counselors.” -Sheriff Hudson is a terrible sheriff.
- I’m not a girl, so I’m very intrigued: do girls stress out about picking funeral nail polish? Or is that just a Brooke thing?
- “My friends are dead and everyone hates me.” -I know I mentioned it above, but I really liked all of Brooke’s scenes tonight.
- “That’s sketchy logic.” – Audrey, when Emma explains why the killer might not kill her. Audrey is quickly becoming my favorite character on the show. Her and Noah are supposed to be the audience surrogates, but I find myself more in tune with Audrey. Noah’s monologues still feel a little forced to me.
- “Maybe we should split up.” “Hey that is not even remotely funny!” -Audrey, again. See what I mean?
- Maybe this is just me, but I really hate the “character waiting on something to download/upload before someone walks in the room” trope. It’s so overdone.
- “Too obvious.” -Audrey, when “Thunderbitch” doesn’t work as Nina’s password. Times like this make me wish Scream was on a premium channel so they could have just said “Thundercunt.”