All the things I’ve been complaining about the last few weeks (the uninteresting and unlikeable characters, the lack of immediacy, reliance on death to further interest) have come to a head. We’re at the halfway point of the first (and hopefully only) season, and I’m in full on “hate watch” mode. The further the show distanced itself from the film series, and from its machinations, the further it’s gone from actual entertainment. The only reason to watch now is to see how terrible it’ll be by season end. I guess it’s accomplished one thing: The viewer wants these character deaths.

Rather than care about who lives or who dies, here we are wanting everyone everywhere to stop doing things.

MTV's Scream Episode - Exposed

Continuing the trend from last week, this episode also lacked a character death to base an entire episode around so it had to find something else of importance to fill the gap. As part of the two bro dudes’ weird hidden camera enterprise, they end up blackmailing Rich Girl Brooke’s father, the Mayor as I forgot to mention last time, because he may or may not have killed his wife. This kind of world building is appreciated, but ultimately useless. Thanks to the lack of immediacy since a single slasher film’s plot is being stretched out over ten hours, all of this feels like its wasting time. It’s an intentional red herring without all of the finesse you’d come to expect from a better written murder mystery. The show wants us to both constantly guess who the slasher is while caring about the little goings on in the town. But it just hasn’t earned that yet. Neither mystery is compelling. First of all, everyone in this show is terrible, including the main girl Emma, and capable of killing other characters. Before her sex video leaked, she totally had a hand in some of the other hidden video stuff (as seen in the pilot). So why should we care what happens to her?

Thankfully, Scream is starting to reel that back a bit. While she’ll never be Sidney (I should stop comparing her to the main girl from the Scream films, it’s just not fair), it’s a bit more interesting to watch Emma take on this whole thing by herself. Since the Scream films were built on ensembles as it went on, they were able to bounce off of each character and make each of them interesting (i.e. rootable). But since the show lacks any appealing characters, it’s backpedaling to make Emma as interesting as possible. She’s taking this lone wolf route to fighting the killer as she refuses to trust anyone around her, and that’s pretty neat. If she continues down this path, as shown by her ever increasing annoyance in dealing with the killer’s constant contact, then the final episode of the season is bound to be interesting. It’ll be a full on fight. That is, assuming the series plans to reveal the killer at season end. If not, I guess I’ll never find out who it is because I won’t be around for season 2.

Buuuuut, that’s not to say I can’t hate watch the rest of this season. Nothing’s more therapeutic than complaining about bad TV.

Still from MTV's Scream - Exposed

Assorted Musings: 

  • Emma’s Mom and Sheriff cop guy make out for some reason. I haven’t been paying enough attention to their story to care, so I’m sorry.
  • Every make out scene is punctuated by a cheesy single MTV is trying to oush out and it makes everything just a bit more hilarious.
  • Skeet Ulrich mustache transfer student returns in this episode, and if he isn’t one of the killers I’d be totally surprised. Also he has sex with Emma in a field at like midnight. So creepy.
  • As part of all that, he shows Emma how to fire a gun. It breaks so many slasher movie rules; I hate the concept of it. Also, it just reminded me of that one hilarious Futurama quote, “Why need courage when you have…a gun!”