Well, folks. I’ve finished watching Teen Wolf Season 5B, and it was . . . not my favorite.

I will always love you, show. I will watch you to the bitter end. But, yeah, I definitely think you missed some opportunities here.

DISCLAIMER:

As with all my Teen Wolf reviews, SPOILERS! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!

SUMMARY:

After the events of “Status Asthmaticus,” Scott McCall’s Pack of Mostly Miscellaneous Supernatural Creatures seems to have broken up for good. But Scott must bring them back together if he wants to stop the Dread Doctors before they can bring the nefarious Beast of GÉVAUDAN back to life.

NOTES:

1. First, let’s talk the Beast of GÉVAUDAN because, man, there are some things to talk about.

1A. If you’re curious, I’m typing GÉVAUDAN out in all capital letters because, unfortunately, there is simply no great way to reproduce a ridiculously over-the-top French accent merely by typing it. I’m not an expert on the language by any means (I can say maybe three things, and they’re probably all pronounced incorrectly), but it seems that when Argent the Younger says “Gévaudan,” the French syllables flow perfectly off his tongue, like he actually speaks the language, a distinct possibility considering J.R. Bourne is Canadian. However, when Argent the Elder (Michael Hogan) says “Gévaudan,” it’s definitely “GÉVAUDAN.” Imagine some old sea dog on a beach telling French ghost stories to frightened youngsters, and you’ll get Gerard Argent. (Of course, for all I know Michael Hogan speaks French beautifully. He’s also Canadian, after all, and anyway it’s hard to judge with him on this show; he’s always delivered his lines as if he chews just a little bit harder, he’ll finally crack one and find some elusive prize hidden inside.)

1B. There is nothing better in life than the total random synchronicity of the universe. Case in point: prior to 2016, I’d never heard of the Beast of Gévaudan before, and yet, right about the time this season started, I read a book called The Devourers which my friend Indra Das wrote. (It’s awesome, and–shameless plug–it’s coming to America this July!) The book also makes use of the Beast of Gévaudan, which is particularly funny to me because these two werewolf stories couldn’t possibly be more different, like, in every single aspect. There’s something beautiful about the same legend being used by both literary, historical, Indian horror-fantasy and MTV pop YA horror-fantasy, and I mean that with total sincerity. The world is a strange, inexplicable place.

1C. Unfortunately, the identity of the Beast of GÉVAUDAN is only one of this season’s many, many problems.

Almost every Teen Wolf season revolves around some kind of mystery. Season 1: Who is the Alpha, Season 2: Who is the Kanima, etc. There’s even kind of a Tumblr joke about it. (Well, about that and the show’s high death count, of course, since 3A and 3B killed off, what? Four main players?) This season’s mystery is Who is the Beast and, sadly, it’s painfully, painfully obvious that Mason is the Beast. Why? Because there are no other suspects.

People, I tried to come up with other suspects. I sat on this broken down, crappy ass couch of mine and stretched and stretched for them. Maybe it could be that one girl who was losing her hair due to stress in that one episode? Maybe it could be Liam’s bisexual werewolf nemesis from that other school who shows up from time to time, either to play lacrosse or sexy dance at the most hilariously illegal nightclub ever? Oh, that werewolf dude has some random sister who’s apparently just coming back now after appearing for, like, a second two seasons ago? Sure, it could be her, why not? Maybe Jackson will come back from England–Colton Haynes is done with Arrow, right? He could totally come back. MAYBE THIS WILL FINALLY EXPLAIN WHATEVER THE FUCK HAPPENED TO DANNY. That would be awesome, but whoever it is, please, please just don’t let it be Mason.

Well, it was Mason. And I actually like Mason quite a bit; he’s about the only thing that makes the JV Squad of Teen Wolf bearable, and I’m all for him having an actual storyline– but guys, you can’t set up a mystery in Episode 11, rule out virtually every other main character (who were all incredibly unlikely anyway) by Episode 15, and then reveal that the only real suspect is, shocker, the bad guy at the end of Episode 18. That’s just weak writing. We either needed far more actual suspects (and not just the ones I was reaching for), or the mystery needed to be resolved much, much sooner, focusing primarily on saving Mason rather than merely identifying him.

1D. The other thing about Mason is that he seems to be a bright enough guy, so it kind of kills me that it never even occurs to him to think, Huh, I don’t remember what I was doing all those nights the Beast was killing people. That seems suspicious. Maybe I should check my shoes or something to make sure I’m not the killer we’re hunting for. Because sure, Mason probably doesn’t know he’s a chimera and I guess I can’t expect him to call the Cannibal Twin in Utero twist (although, just so you know, I totally did), but, like, he absolutely knows that a) the Beast and his teenage alter ego are unaware of one another, and b) their list of genetic chimeras is incomplete. Don’t you think you’d do a quick check, for peace of mind if nothing else?

I’m just saying. I expect a tiny bit better from Mason.

2. Here’s my real beef with 5B: while some of the ideas and moments are cool, almost every character’s storyline is either ridiculously rushed or stretched out for very little payoff. We’ll come back to the former in a while, but when it comes to zero payoff?

This guy. Oh man, this guy.

Again, I like Parrish. He’s a funny, not unattractive dude, and some of his backstory was interesting, like, I was super intrigued by the revelation that he actually died overseas defusing a bomb and only came back because of Scott’s, Allison’s, and Stiles’s sacrifice to the Nemeton way back in 3A. (I really wish we’d explored that further, actually . . . is Parrish essentially a ghost possessing his own body? Could you exorcise him? Will he and the Hellhound ever learn how to talk to one another directly?) But his journey to self-discovery in 5B gets repetitive fast and ultimately serves little purpose. Like, okay, here’s my imagined summary of Parrish/The Hellhound’s internal monologue for the entire season:

“So, I’m ineffectually hunting down this Beast. Crap, he got away, but wait! Let me go ineffectually chase him again! Everyone’s saying I’m the only one who can stop him, after all, since someone finger painted us battling it out on some wall. Except maybe I’m evil because I’m a hellhound and that just sounds bad? No, no, I have a duty to ineffectually chase down the Beast because I am super, super, super important.”

Well, guess what? He’s not super important. He’s not super important at all. The only thing, the ONLY THING, the Hellhound does is hold the Smoke Monster Beast for, like, two seconds so that Scott can throw the antique-cane-spear thing at him. It’s vastly underwhelming, especially when you consider the fact that there was one person who didn’t need a hellhound to kill the Beast of GÉVAUDAN: Marie fuckin’ Jeanne. Yeah. She hunted the Beast down for years and killed it by herself without benefit of any supernatural powers, much less a hellhound sidekick.

So, yeah. Parrish, I like you, buddy, but really, you’re kind of useless.

3. While we’re on the subject of Marie Jeanne . . .

. . . a few more notes.

3A. It was kind of nice seeing Crystal Reed again. It would’ve been nicer if her casting had been a surprise, and I will never fail to be amused by actors playing their relatives/distant ancestors as if it’s totally normal to look exactly like your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandma. Still, I thought it was a nice way to include her.

3B. Especially because I really like that the Beast hesitated when he saw Allison in Scott’s mind, that the memory of her gave Scott just enough time to regain the upper hand. I’ve honestly never been wild about the sentiment that the people you love live on within you after they die (or, anyway, I don’t find it particularly helpful as a condolence), but I do like the idea of that concept being presented in such a tangible way. That, I thought, was kind of neat.

Of course, then I wanted to beat my head into the wall because Lydia and Stiles close out the season with a scene explicitly spelling all that out for the audience, like we didn’t get it the first time around? (Seriously, writers. Hush your mouths.) Still, it was a nice idea.

3C. Like I said before, I am by no means an expert on the French language, but Crystal Reed’s attempt at French-accented English was . . . oh, it was so bad, so laughably bad, shaky and all over the place. In one notable scene, it was in Sunnydale circa 1997. I swear to God, I got flashbacks of Kendra’s terrible Jamaican accent from BTVS all over again. (In semi-related news, I miss Ms. Morell. I wish she would come back to Teen Wolf to offer up more guidance counseling and Needles of Death to our heroes.)

4. As far as whose storylines were entirely rushed or otherwise off balance . . . shit, let’s just go character by character, shall we?

Kira

I was really excited in 5A when Kira finally got her own individual storyline, and I assumed that 5B would flesh out that storyline, do something interesting with it–pretty much anything other than what they actually did. Instead, Kira comes back from the desert without having learned a damn thing, and her whole inner fox dilemma is dropped easily half the time. Kira’s bonkers kitsune is starting to feel a little like Chronos on Legends of Tomorrow: it pops up not organically, but whenever the show needs a plot complication. (And this is admittedly off topic, but anyone who also watches Legends . . . do you think Chronos is going to have a big twist secret identity, say like Mick Rory or Rip Hunter’s Supposedly Dead Wife or Child? Time travel, guys; anything is possible.)

I’m at least glad Kira goes back to the skinwalkers at the end of the season–because, otherwise, that whole subplot would’ve felt remarkably dumb, instead of just a little off–but she definitely deserves better in Season 6. Also–and I’m probably just forgetting something–did they ever actually solve the mystery of who killed that chimera and made it look like Kira? Was it supposed to be Theo? It’s always Theo, isn’t it? ALSO, did we ever figure out the whole deal with Theo’s parents from 5A? Because they weren’t actually his parents, right? Did Theo murder them and hire super bitter actors or something?

Malia

On paper, Malia’s storyline with her mom is kind of awesome. Malia wants revenge, the Desert Wolf wants her full powers back, and the whole thing ends with Malia stealing the rest of her mother’s power but choosing not to murder her. That all works and is very much in line with Teen Wolf’s Do-Not-Kill philosophy (with the exception of Theo, but we’ll get to Theo).

Unfortunately, while I appreciate that Malia had her own storyline, it felt sidelined far too much of the time for me and definitely out of balance with the season’s main plot. (Especially in the finale, which probably should have been two hours long, just to give all the loose ends some damn breathing room.) The Desert Wolf has been built up a little too much to end up such a small-time villain–and she does feel small time, a C-Plot bad guy. I do like Malia and Braeden teaming up, but I constantly felt like the pack should have been more involved, and at times their absence felt incredibly artificial.

Also, I don’t mind that Malia and Stiles broke up–and I’m deeply relieved that neither of them cheated on the other because ugh–but the way it happened was so vague and dumb that I didn’t even realize they had officially broken up at first. I’d guess the majority of the Lydia/Stiles shippers didn’t care, but I–who have no preferred ship either way–was very disappointed by how this was handled.

Stiles

(First, I just wanted to mention that I’m glad Dylan O’Brien is apparently recovering after his accident on set of The Maze Runner: The Death Cure. You see a famous name trending on your social media of choice, and you’re like, “Oh God, did they say something horrific and offensive, or they did die?” Good to know neither is the case here, although it’s hard to know how serious his injuries are, since I keep seeing semi-conflicting reports.)

Now, here’s the thing: I really liked 5A, Season of Darkness and Despair, but even I was ready for a wee bit of optimism and happiness when 5B rolled around. What I did not want, however, was for them to drop Stiles’s anger issues and That Time He Accidentally Killed Somebody in Self-Defense like a hot potato covered in lava-salsa.

Once Scott and Stiles work out their big self-defense vs. murder misunderstanding, it’s like Donovan never even happened, which I find frustrating. I didn’t expect or want Stiles to go total Dark Side, like, I wasn’t waiting for a full reemergence of Void Stiles. But I did want it to come up occasionally; instead, everything Stiles does this season is mostly about Lydia, and I like Stiles and Lydia–they’re my favorite characters, after all–but I want more from both of them than just setup for their inevitable romance.

I do like the moment Stiles and the Sheriff have in the hospital morgue, and I’m excited by the idea of Stiles going into law enforcement because, HA, deputy uniform. (Although at some point, that means someone’s going to have to actually give him a gun, right?) But even that whole idea of saving a life to ease the guilt of taking one didn’t really pan out for me because, presumably, that life was supposed to be Lydia’s . . . and despite what Lydia tells her mom, he doesn’t really do all that much to help. (I’m not saying he does nothing, guys. But that whole “Stiles saved me” moment didn’t feel earned at all, considering he gets all the credit for what is clearly a team effort.)

Lydia

And Lydia. Oh my God, Lydia.

Look, Teen Wolf fans will take a lot of bullshit. Drill a hole in a banshee’s head that will cause her to scream so loud that anyone in her vicinity will also die? Sure, whatever. Stick some mistletoe in that hole and stop said Killer Scream? That’s . . . okay, that’s totally weird, but you know what, I’ll take it. It’s sort of nice that mistletoe is, for once, not a Weapon of Hallucinogenic Doom and Death on this show, and besides, Teen Wolf has done weirder things. (Although, honestly, probably not much weirder.)

What I won’t take, however, is never talking about it again, like, seriously, if Lydia tilts her head, does mistletoe just fall out? Or did the mistletoe somehow heal the hole so her cranium is fully intact now? Not to mention, WTF, is Lydia really back to school like nothing ever happened to her the next day? Like, okay, I get it: Holland Roden is really good at the hurt, semi-conscious waif thing, but I’m sure lots of people were ready to have the sharp, capable, and super fashionable badass version of Lydia back. I can totally relate to that.

But guys. You can’t just have a werewolf rip into a girl’s memories, causing her to become catatonic, before tossing her in the Worst Mental Hospital in the History of All Mental Hospitals where she gets–and I can’t stress this enough–fucking lobotomized, and then give us a perfectly composed Lydia back at school the next episode with absolutely no mention of her horrific time at Eichen House or the not insignificant fact that under all her fabulous hair there is still a huge mistletoe-stuffed hole in her head. I mean, there is bullshit, and then there’s BULLSHIT, you know?

Also, I felt like Lydia was going to have much more of a pivotal role than she actually did in the final battle. Like, I kind of enjoyed how she screamed Mason free–there was pretty much zero build up for that, but it’s the kind of surreal weirdness that I generally like from Teen Wolf–but still, that’s basically all she did. Mekaela thought she was going to channel Marie Jeanne to help kill the Beast, and I’ve got to tell you, that would have been fucking amazing. It probably doesn’t bother me quite as much as the lack of payoff with Parrish, but I was still hoping for more.

5. You know who else was massively disappointing? Theo’s entire chimera pack.

There’s an idea in here–somewhere–about Theo desperately wanting a pack of his own, but his insatiable lust for power means that he’s simply incapable of keeping one, either betraying or driving off everyone who’s at his side. Unfortunately, the execution of it is just all around awful.

For starters, 5B begins with all the resurrected chimeras acting like they Came Back Wrong; the show, however, never actually commits to whether or not they did come back wrong. There are a lot of ways this could have played out. Maybe the kids who have been dead the longest came back the most evil, which is why Tracy is acting absolutely nothing like herself and why Hayden and Cory are basically quasi-evil for, like, a second. Or maybe everyone came back wrong, but Hayden and Cory have heroic love interests anchors, so they overcome the darkness in their souls, while Tracy and Josh stick to the Dark Side because they’re single. Either theory could have potentially worked, but the show is much, much more interested in the Hellhound ineffectually chasing after the Beast of GÉVAUDAN than it is in the awesome evil chimera pack it created last season.

Thus basically all of the chimeras are screwed out of any sort of real character arc (or even logical continuity), especially Tracy, who was such an interesting character and had such goddamn potential, only to end up dead after a season of being a full-on evil, right hand man type for zero reason whatsoever. It’s crap. It’s such crap.

6. While we’re on the topic of Theo, that little shit . . .

. . . his death via his dead sister via Kira via the skin walkers was, let’s admit it, super random and WTF. But I’ve got to be honest: that’s the sort of WTF that I enjoy from Teen Wolf. Have vengeful ghosts ever been a thing before on this show? Nope. Was it a straight up knockoff of Japanese horror movies? Yep. Was it awesomely satisfying anyway? YES.

Partly, I imagine my vindictive glee stems from Teen Wolf continuing to have this weird resistance to killing off its villains. I’ve more or less made my peace with the fact that none of the good guys will ever intentionally kill any of the bad guys, but by the end of this season we still have Gerard Argent, Kate Argent, Peter Hale, and Deucalion (whose alliance with Scott here is very abrupt and probably only happened so that the writers could pretend letting him free in 3A wasn’t a giant mistake) all floating around. (Not to mention the Nazi Werewolf that’ll be coming to us in Season 6 for whatever the hell Nazi Werewolves get up to.) I didn’t really need to add Theo to the Ongoing List of Vaguely Circulating Villains, especially since his pack was the most interesting thing about him and, obviously, that’s no longer a thing.

Plus, yeah, it was nice to see Theo get a little karma after watching him manipulate, betray, or murder basically everyone he’s ever met for a full season. I make no apologies for my bloodlust.

I should add that the fake-out kill where Deucalion breaks Theo’s neck seemed a little weird to me, like, maybe that’s when Theo should’ve died after all? I sure thought he was dead until the commercials ended, and we came back to Theo all like, “Nope, I’m just casually chilling on the ground. It’s all good: I love having a broken neck.” Then again, if Theo had died there, Kira would have only triumphantly returned to open a door, so yeah, no.

I did read that–along with Nazi Werewolves–Season 6 is supposed to be a ghost story, which I’m wondering if this was all foreshadow for? I’m definitely interested in the idea of Teen Wolf telling a ghost story. (At the very least, I think we should probably have our characters acknowledge that hey, by the way, there apparently is definitely some kind of afterlife, although maybe not a pleasant one.) Sadly, that same interview also says not to rule out Cody Christian returning, you know, despite the fact that his character appeared to have been dragged to Hell. Sigh. Theo was not exactly the ghost I was hoping for.

7. Also something I’d like to be addressed in Season 6: um, do all the teenagers in Beacon Hills basically just know they’re living on a Hellmouth?

So, in one episode, the Beast of GÉVAUDAN attacks the holy hell out of a high school lacrosse game; surely, some characters actually do notice what’s chasing them. More importantly, though, several characters hiding in the library totally see Scott with Full Werewolf Face on. Are we going to go back to that? Because we should totally go back to that. (I’m all for a Buffy scenario myself, where we all know that Scott and his buddies are constantly saving the day but generally choose not to acknowledge it. Ooh, maybe Scott and his pack could get an award at Prom! You know, as an homage.)

8. Finally, here a bunch of random notes that don’t really connect to anything:

8A. Remember when we first met the skinwalkers, and we got that incredibly gratuitous shot of a woman’s butt? Yeah, let’s not do that anymore. (Seriously, I expect that shit from Game of Thrones, but not you, Teen Wolf! What the hell?)

8B. I would never pick on Teen Wolf for having crappy CGI monsters because I understand budgets and, honestly, crappy CGI monsters are half the fun. But I’m a little less forgiving of egregiously terrible green screens, particularly whenever the kids are in the desert. It’s so bad. It’s so, so appallingly bad. I don’t know if there are even words for how bad it is.

8C. Was I the only one who kind of completely forgot about the Power-Sucking Claws? They end up being pretty important, both instrumental to the plot and the only thing that really ties Malia’s story to what’s going on with the Dread Doctors, but by the time the claws reappeared in the finale, I was like, “Wait . . . what are those now?” (Maybe that’s why all the quickly revealed alliances felt so hysterically random to me. Scott’s like, “I’ve been working with Deucalion all along!” and I’m like, “Uh, you have?” And then Chris Argent’s immediately like, “Yeah, and I’ve been working with Scott against you, Dad!” and I’m like, “. . . whatever, sure.”)

8D. Teen Wolf has a lot of unintentionally hysterical moments, but I’m not sure any made me laugh harder this season than a hurt and naked Parrish just sitting in between the stacks at the high school library. Somehow, only Banshee Lydia is able to find him, despite the fact that the library is currently occupied by plenty of students and he’s really not hiding all that well. (Then again, I also have to take into consideration Marie Jeanne’s terrible French accent and that hilariously anachronistic cover of “Save Tonight.” Hmmm. I suspect Most Unintentionally Hilarious Moment is going to be a difficult choice to make in this year’s superlatives.)

8E. Speaking of cover songs, I really like this snippet we get to hear of Alex Clare’s “Blow Up the Outside World,” which plays at the end of “The Last Chimera.” Unfortunately, for whatever legal reason, I can neither buy nor listen to the song in full. I hate it when movies and TV shows do that. (Also, re-watching this scene reminds me of how excited I was when 5B first started. I’m trying to decide when the season really started falling apart for me, and I’m thinking it might have been around the halfway point, when they got Lydia out of Eichen House.)

8F. I laughed so hard when Corey revealed that he’d just been, like, standing invisibly against a wall the whole time during the big battle against the Beast of GÉVAUDAN, doing absolutely nothing at all to help and only revealing himself so that he could sorta-heroically catch his boyfriend.

I will admit, I kind of like Corey. His plans to run away this season were practical, and I appreciated that. It’s good to have some less-than-fearless characters in the mix.

8G. I certainly like Corey more than Hayden, anyway.

It’s not necessarily the actress’s fault; the character is just so boring. I may have been frustrated with how the storylines of Lydia, Kira, and Malia all turned out, but at least they each seem like actual characters to me; Hayden, meanwhile, is basically just Liam’s love interest and nothing else, and that’s frustrating because I hate to spend any time on a character who basically does nothing but kiss a dude or think about kissing a dude.

The worst example of this, by far, is when the pack is infiltrating Eichen House to break Lydia out. It’s an action-heavy episode (actually, couple of episodes) that are mostly pretty fun . . . but the show needlessly breaks the tension so that Hayden and Liam can have sexy times. Like, why? Who cares about this?

8H. Lydia’s story may not have been as fully developed as I would have liked–I kind of groaned when she managed to get hurt again in 5×19–but I will say that the time she screamed so loud she blew up half of Valack’s head? Not gonna lie: that was pretty awesome.

In fact, since this review has been pretty negative overall, here are a few more scenes that I did really enjoy:

Malia & Braeden bribing that special forces dude.
Scott & Stiles working out their issues on the road trip.
Kira & Malia working together, both before and during Lydia’s rescue.
Basically any scene between Stiles and his father. As always.

8J. Finally, I was happy to see Coach Finstock again, that crazy, crazy man.

They may have more or less dropped the Not-So-Nice Science Teacher from the show–actually, they basically just dropped the entire idea of school from the show; it’s like Beacon Hills High is basically just a hallway, a library, and a lacrosse field–but it was nice to have Orny Adams back. Just like I appreciate a kid who wants to flee the evil, monstrous doctors who made him a chimera, I totally get a guy who never wants to go back to a job that got him shot with an arrow. Of course he could pick considerably less drastic escape options, like just, you know, moving away. But let’s be honest: what school other than Beacon Hills would ever let this guy teach anything? Yeah, none.

But Scott and Stiles, seriously, you guys have no excuse. Of course Coach was never going to forfeit the game. Of course he wasn’t. Honestly, I expect more from you two.

QUOTES:

Stiles: “Can someone please come and take this gigantic shard of glass out of my chest? Please?”

Scott: “It was Plan A.”
Stiles: “Plan A never works.”

Liam: “How do we get him to talk?”
Stiles: “Personally, I don’t think we utilize torture nearly enough.”

Finstock: “I hate charity games. They’re meaningless.”
Stiles: “Well, I don’t think the charities would agree.”
Finstock: “What’s it for this year?”
Scott: “Cancer.”
Finstock: “For or against?”
Stiles: “Against, Coach! Deeply against!”

Finstock: “That girl is damn serious about charity.”

Finstock: “I have a debilitating disease. It’s called ‘I’m not going to take another arrow to my stomach’ phobia.”

Kira: “Your sister wants to see you.”

Scott: “You didn’t see the way he came at me. You didn’t see the look in his eyes.”
Stiles: “Well, I’ve been with you on a full moon, so I’ve seen that look. You want to get the band back together, Scott, you don’t leave out the drummer.”

Stiles: “Are you telling me we came all the way down here to be stopped by an ordinary key?”

Kira: “You guys are all crazy. We’re gonna die.”

Theo: “Okay, maybe they’re not ready to take on an Alpha. Especially one that can smell fear.”
Corey: “He’s got fangs!”

Stiles: “I still hate that tattoo.”
Scott: “I know.”

Sheriff Stilinski: “Is that my laptop?”
Stiles: “Yep.”
Sheriff Stilinski: “You have my password?”
Stiles: “I have all your passwords.”

Scott: “Argent said it would be unlike anything we’d ever seen before.”
Stiles: “Did he say it was going to defy the laws of physics?”

Theo: “I still need to graduate.”
Stiles: “No, no, what you need is to be beaten, severely, with a lead pipe wrapped in barb wire.”
Theo: “Okay, I admit some mistakes were made.”
Stiles: “Murders. Some murders were made.”

Stiles: “Break it. Sound travels through the pipe . . . you’ll hear better, dumbass, break it.”

Liam: “I can’t just say I’m sorry. I feel like I have to do something, like maybe somehow I have to save your life.”
Scott: “Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure you’ll get the chance.”

Liam: “Is it bad?”
Hayden: “No.”
Stiles: “Very.”

Parrish: “I can’t stay. I’m a Hellhound. I have the word ‘hell’ in my name. Hell.”

Mason: “You’re still with Theo. You’re the bad guys.”
Corey: “There are no bad guys.”
Mason: “There are definitely bad guys. Some of the bad guys are called Dread Doctors. You don’t get a name like the Dread Doctors and not get classified as the bad guys.”

Scott: “I knew sooner or later one of us would get a little too much blood on our hands. I half-thought it was gonna be Malia.”

Braeden: “He tried to kill Scott.”
Theo: “Technically, I did kill Scott.”

Mason: “I’m sorry, but Theo leading an evil chimera pack wasn’t a natural progression of the conversation.”

Mason: “Okay, here we go. Gonna ram the wall. Gonna ram it with my car. Just smash through it. Take out the power, and save my friends. Here we go. All right. Just ram it, and destroy my beautiful car, that my parents bought me on my birthday . . . but Imma save my friends. Here we go. Ram the wall. All right.”
(Hayden shows up)
Hayden: “What the hell are you doing?”
Mason: “Oh thank God. Can we use your car?”

Liam: “Who’s the old guy?”
Gerard: “At the moment, they would call me a necessary evil. But you can call me Gerard.”

Parrish: “And what if you were wrong? You would have burned my eye out?”
Gerard: “Yep.”
Parrish (turning to Chris): “This guy’s your father?”
Chris: “Wasn’t my choice.”

Parrish: “Is the Sheriff on board with this?”
Stiles: “How do you think I got the keys?”
Parrish: “I thought you stole them.”
Stiles: “While that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption, I did not steal them.”

(with body bags nearby)
Liam: “Are you still mad at me?”
Melissa: “No. But if you try to kill my son again, I’ll put you in one of these myself.”

Stiles: “Your teachers, uh, gave us some of the stuff you guys have been working on. They wanted us to hold onto it for you. I saw something about the, uh, Riemann Hypothesis. Um, things like, nontrivial zeros, zeta functions, and a lot of other stuff that goes totally over my head. Maybe you can wake up and explain it to me? Come on, Lydia, you have to come back to us.”

Stiles: “What if I told you I wanted him dead?”
Sheriff Stilinski: “I’d believe you. I’d also believe that wanting someone dead and murdering them are two very different things.”

Sheriff Stilinski: “I would destroy every piece of evidence to protect you if I had to. I would burn the Sheriff’s station to the ground.”

Josh: “She doesn’t look good.”
Corey: “She has a hole in her head. It’s not a good look on anyone.”
Theo: “I can’t believe this is actually a medical establishment.”

Mason: “The last few hours haven’t been your best, but this isn’t the way to fix it. She’s going to find out, and it’s not going to hurt any less coming from you.”

Scott: “Come on, Stiles. We survived an alpha pack, a dark druid, professional assassins. We can survive Dread Doctors and chimeras, too.”

Malia: “Do it. Do your thing.
Kira: “What thing? I don’t have a thing.”
Malia: “You did it before. You had to learn how, right?
Kira: “Actually, no. It just happened.”
Malia: “How’d you learn to fight with a sword?”
Kira: “That just kind of happened, too.”
Malia: “So you’ve never worked for anything and basically you’re a cheater?”

Kira: “It didn’t work.”
(Malia pulls a shard of glass out of her forehead.)
Malia: “No. It didn’t.”

Stiles: “Did you say ‘minor internal’? Since when is anything internal minor?”

Malia: “We kind of broke up.”
Scott: “Yeah. We kind of broke up, too.”

Sheriff Stiliniski: “It’s okay, Stiles. You’ve still got me.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Here’s the thing: I’ve spent roughly 5,000 words complaining about 5B, but ultimately, I still enjoyed watching it. There are a lot of good moments I liked, multiple characters I’m still invested in, and it hasn’t become a chore to watch, not yet . . . but it’s worth pointing out that I wasn’t looking forward to each episode with the same fannish, obsessive glee that I have in the past, either.

Sometimes too slow, often too rushed, and with a lot of untapped potential, Season 5B might be Teen Wolf’s most uneven season yet.

MVP:

Hm. I think I’m going to go with Holland Roden, this time around. Lydia’s storyline might have fizzled out by the end, but the actress still does a great job with the material she’s given.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORALS:

If you know there’s a dangerous monster out there, one that’s killing people at night but living its life as an unwitting teenager by day, and you know that monster stepped in someone’s blood, getting blood on its normal human shoes–check all your freaking shoes.

Stop trusting Theo for anything.

I don’t care what’s wrong with you or your family members: NEVER ADMIT ANYONE TO EICHEN HOUSE, NOT FOR ANY GODDAMN REASON. (This is a massive fail season for Natalie Martin. She needs some serious redemption in Season 6.)