Reviews
[TV Review] “Scream” Episode 1.07: ‘In The Trenches’
Scream has been trying to find its groove all season. It reached it’s peak with episode three, the most Scream-like episode of the series, and reached it’s low last week, with its most wheel-spinning episode to date. “In The Trenches” isn’t the best episode Scream has done, but its certainly one of the better ones, with the bulk of the episode devoted to a sort of Scooby-Doo plotline as Emma, Brooke, Noah and Jake search an abandoned bowling alley for Will and other clues (I swear I’m not making this up).
***SPOILERS TO FOLLOW***
First, RIP Will. I know I’ve complained about the character being uninteresting in the past, but he did have a pretty cool death (even if we only got to see the aftermath). Also, his kidnapping last week did something wonderful: it gave us a (mostly) bottle episode that put the central focus on the four main characters we are supposed to care about, but don’t (yet). It’s ironic that the entire episode was spent trying to save Will, and the group succeeded, only for him to fall victim to the killer’s Saw-like trap the next day.
I was kind of in love with everything involving this story line, no matter how dumb it got. I can’t believe there was a moment where Noah opened the door only for the killer to be on the other side. That was classic Scooby-Doo. I half expected for one of the kids to put on a costume to trick the killer into leaving them alone. After Piper, who is still useless, led the Scooby Gang to the spot where Will was kidnapped, the episode really kicked into gear.
The killer even got plenty of screen time in this episode, which is always welcome. The game of “hide-and-seek” was plenty of fun to watch play out, and he got in some good digs on Emma’s mom (“Your mom’s a lying whore!” will never stop being funny to me). One thing I don’t understand is how he stabbed Jake in what seemed to be the heart, yet Jake survived. Surely this means Jake must be one of the killers, right? He apparently missed every single major vein and artery, so it could just be another red herring. It’s just a little too convenient. My money is on Jake as one of the killers right now.
The bowling alley sequence is what Scream should be striving to do every episode. We got a chase with Brooke, phone calls with Emma, the core group of characters working together and a major character death. I’m not saying I need someone to die every week, but there should be some semblance of suspense. The reason last week’s episode fell flat for me is because I didn’t buy for one second that Audrey was in any serious trouble (she may be the killer, but let’s be honest, she wasn’t going to get caught last week if she was). Now that Will is dead, it may give Emma the kick in the ass she needs to become a more interesting character.
In other news, Maggie and Sheriff Hudson have a dinner date. Their relationship still isn’t particularly interesting, but we do at least learn that Detective Brock is off the case (“Aw, I’m going to miss her,” quips Maggie). It’s also the only reason Audrey is even in the episode, since she goes there looking for Emma and Noah. I’m a little bummed Audrey wasn’t included in the bowling alley scavenger hunt (The Scooby Gang does have five members, after all), but I’ll let it slide.
On the more annoying side, Brooke finally confronts her dad about the body he hid in the freezer. The reason this subplot is so irksome is that Mayor Maddox pulls the whole “It’s not what it looks like” bit, which means its probably just a red herring. Scream would be much better off if it just trusted it audience and had Brooke and her father have an honest conversation, but then it might lose an episode’s worth of material to milk later in the season (yawn). Brooke did find out that Jake was lying about Will being the only blackmailer, so at least that wasn’t dragged out for the rest of the season.
“In The Trenches” is definitely a step in the right direction for Scream. It’s still walking a fine line, but at least it’s finally starting to show that it’s having fun. With only three episodes left in the season, it doesn’t have much time left to make a good impression!
Random Notes
- Maggie is making her sausage and kale thing, which is only something she makes on big dates. I must have this recipe now.
- Piper is still sort of just there, with her only purpose to tell the corse group about Will’s abduction. Please give her something to do!
- “This is wrong. Your dad. My Mom” -Emma, seeming not to care about the Cruel Intentions-y fact she is saying as her and Kieran make out.
- Noah wearing a “Free Audrey” shirt made me chuckle.
- Someone needs to make a Tumblr of Jake’s reaction shots. They are awful.
- Piper saying “That masked freak showed up” just reminds me of this scene from the second Freaky Friday remake.
- Someone in the comments mentioned last week that Mr. Branson might be Bran’s son (get it?), a la I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before, as it would be equally terrible, lazy and hilarious at the same time if this is the direction the show was going.
- “God I hate bowling.” -Brooke, doing her best to complain about everything.
- Noah calls a spear a “knife-stick.” He’s so nerdy, you guys.
- “This is going to sound ridiculous but I’ll be right back.” -Making fun of this line from Scream lost its luster when Cabin In The Woods did it four years ago.
- Check out my interview with Connor Weil (Will) right here. We discuss his death and also when the killer will be revealed!
There’s a layer of the mythic in everything Cynthia Pelayo writes, whether she’s charting the little-known history of her home city of Chicago or digging deep into the pool of shared stories that’s served humanity since ancient times. Regardless of subject matter or narrative, Pelayo reads like a writer constantly in search of the threads of legend and myth that bind us all together and keep us awake at night.
It Came From Neverland, Pelayo’s latest novel, takes that search and applies it to one of the most famous children’s stories ever conceived, J.M. Barrie’s beloved and oft-adapted tale of the Boy Who Never Grew Up. But this is not just a Peter Pan retelling, or a Peter Pan meta-sequel. Through gorgeous prose, finely drawn characters, and an iron grip on the themes that drive the story, Pelayo crafts It Came From Neverland into one of the year’s must-read genre novels, both a horrifying spin on Peter Pan and a luminous dark fantasy about the search for salvation in a cold, brutal world.
In Pelayo’s version of events, Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael really did travel to Neverland when they were children, drawn there by a charismatic and irresistible figure called Peter Pan. But this Neverland is far from the Disney version, and after fighting to survive in that ageless place, the children made their way home and shut Peter Pan out of their lives, refusing to so much as utter his name, lest he find them again.
Flash forward to 1914, where Wendy’s working as a schoolteacher at Marigold House, a London orphanage growing increasingly crowded amid the outbreak of World War I. By day, she teaches and volunteers at a local hospital, reading to the war wounded, and by night, she remembers to check every window latch and keep an eye on every shadow. But lately those shadows seem to behave strangely again. Crows caw all around her. And worst of all, children are disappearing again. Peter Pan is back, and faced with memories of how no one believed her the first time, Wendy prepares to face him one more time.
This is a remarkably well-suited atmosphere for moments of classic, chill-inducing terror, and Pelayo wastes no time weaving a world in which every bird call, every stray thought from the mouth of a child, could be evidence that this monstrous Peter Pan is near. Wendy lives a haunted existence, and as the chaos of war grips London, old fears grip her while new ones fight for position. If you come to this novel looking for something like Stephen King’s IT by way of J.M. Barrie, you’re going to get it, through flashbacks and dark lore and wonderfully well-timed scares, but Pelayo’s not done.
This version of Wendy Darling, through whom we see most of the narrative, cares for children in adulthood because she did not receive the care she needed herself as a child in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. She considers it her duty to listen to them, to protect them, to understand them in a world that still views them not as human beings, but as potential locked up in tiny bodies.
Setting the book in 1914, when young men across Europe were signing up to go and die in a war they didn’t quite understand, underscores this beautifully. Children are grist for the mill in the world of It Came From Neverland, their eager spirits waiting to be crushed by a machine of war and empire and capitalism that will not relent even if an armistice eventually arrives. It’s a wider, more existential layer of horror than the storybook monster, which gets us to open the book in the first place, but the real brilliance at work here is how Pelayo ties it all together.
At the core of all of this, the beating, icy heart of It Came From Neverland‘s horror and its search for meaning amid the narratives of war, children’s fiction, collective memory, and more, Pelayo is most interested in what it really means to never grow up. It means retaining a sense of play, yes, but it also means a refusal to move on, to embrace not just the responsibilities of aging, but the moral burdens of it.
Peter Pan is a monster not because he likes to play, but because he does not consider consequences, mortality, or even the needs and desires of others. The same is true of the leaders of Europe sending young men off to die in a war, and the same is true of leaders now, playing dice with human lives amid the rise and fall of the stock market. To never grow up is to lose something essential about being human, and Pelayo depicts that loss as both existentially terrifying and heartbreaking. That terror and heartbreak drive the novel, but Wendy’s efforts to escape that terror and to mend her broken heart make it fly.
It Came From Neverland is available June 9 wherever books are sold.
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