After last week’s episode, and the major death that concluded it, Scream did what it did in episode 4 after Riley’s death and slowed it down for a bit, but to much greater effect. The show benefitted tremendously by focussing on Emma and giving her a tough-girl attitude. While I’m still not completely convinced she’s prime Final Girl material yet, she is starting to grow on me.
The bulk of the episode really was devoted to Emma, as she moved through the grieving process after witnessing her ex-boyfriend get sliced down the middle (that must have been quite the sight for his mother). My (and many of you guys’) issue with Emma is that she hasn’t had much of a presence on the show. She’s just sort of been there and hasn’t seemed to really care about anything going on around her.
From the opening moments of “Ghosts,” we see a hardened Emma. You would think that she would have been like this after Riley died four episodes ago, but I digress. This is a changed Emma, and the show is all the better for it. I will say that her hallucinations seemed to tell her a little too much. Will basically told her what Riley’s heart necklace meant. I’ve never had the psychological trauma Emma has had (because I’ve never seen an ex get split in half), but the explicitness of these hallucinations seemed just a bit more like a cheap plot device as opposed to an exploration of Emma’s psyche. Nevertheless, it was all a lot of fun to watch, as Scream got to use a lot of fun horror tropes in the process.
Her dad (Tom Everett Scott!) being a hallucination the whole time was a somewhat clever, if improbable, twist. It just seemed a little too easy for “him” to lead her directly to the video with the sonogram on it, but whatever. I’ll just go with it. This revelation that Maggie gave up Brandon James’ child and that that child may be back for revenge cements the fact that Scream: The Series is using Scream 3 as its template. I’m not sure why, out of all of the Scream films, they would choose the worst one to adapt, but it’s too early to fully judge the decision. Maybe (hopefully) that’s a red herring.
Let’s talk about Piper. First, she keeps mentioning that her dad is never coming back. This is clearly going to come up later, but could be a red herring. The only reason that might not be the case is because the show is all of a sudden forcing the super-friendship between Emma and Piper down our throats. Seriously, they seemed super buddy-buddy this week for no particular reason. That being said, Piper still doesn’t do much. Sure, she gave Sheriff Hudson the mayor’s blackmail tape and gave Emma a pep talk that motivated her to find answers, but that’s just using her as a plot device, not fleshing her out as a character.
The rest of the episode was mainly devoted to Mr. Branson, who is still terrible. He does lead us into another Brooke chase scene though (seriously, how many times has this girl been chased this season?), which is always fun. It would have been preferable for him to have been killed, since his arrest that closed the episode makes it look like the bulk of next week’s Ti-West directed episode will be devoted to his interrogation, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
“Ghosts” was a decent enough follow-up to last week’s episode. Emma has suddenly become much more interesting after Will’s death and is entering compelling Final Girl territory, but many of the the side characters and subplots still feel paper-thin. With two episodes left to go, Scream has its work cut out for it. That most of the episode was devoted to Emma’s transformation into a stronger character puts it on par with last week’s score.
Random Notes
- “The doctor said it was some kind of miracle. It missed all of his major organs.” -Brooke, on Jake getting stabbed in the chest last week.
- “Are they gonna arrest my dad?” “That’s kinda what sheriffs do.” -Sometimes the dialogue is just awful.
- “There are worse ways to go than being body snatched by Famke Jannsen.” -Noah, name-dropping The Faculty, of all things.
- I think I’ve been pretty good about not comparing the show to the film series, but dammit, give Piper some of Gale Weathers’ spunk! She will register more as a character that way.
- I swear this is the first time they’ve mentioned the mayor’s first name (it’s Quinn, by the way).
- “You don’t get to come back after all this time and be the hero.” -Emma to her dad. That’s exactly how I feel, but replace the word “hero” with “killer.” Don’t make a new character the killer, MTV (I thought this before it was revealed he was a hallucination the entire time).
- The Noah and Audrey scenes are winning me over. The chemistry between John Karna and Bex Taylor-Klaus has improved over the last few episodes.
- Maggie can apparently tell that it’s her ultrasound just from looking at the image. Alright.
- I’m now convinced that Tom Maden (Jake) is actually a good actor, but that Jake the character is one of the killers and just a bad liar. There is no other explanation for his terrible acting.
- On that note, it’s time for another round of Jake’s terrible reaction shots! This time, we’ve got his reaction to finding out about Will’s death:
