Maybe you’ve heard the buzz about this new show called Teen Wolf. Maybe you’ve already succumbed and are a hardcore fan of Teen Wolf, but can’t convince your friends that it’s actually The Greatest Summer Show Ever (which it is). As someone who’s fallen headlong in love with it, I want everyone to watch it with me, which is why I have prepared this handy guide to rebut the most common reasons I hear people give for not watching this magnificent show.
The Pilot kind of sucks.
Yes, the initial few episodes of Teen Wolf are a little rocky. The actors (with the exception of Dylan O’Brien as Stiles, who is forever one of the greatest television characters of all time ever) take a bit to settle into their roles and you will several times wonder if they were chose more for their looks or their talent. All I can say is stick with it. Read recaps, if you have to. Because things start picking up around episode three and the awesome keeps snowballing exponentially from there. By episode five there’s a parent-teacher conference montage (you’ll know it when you see it) that’s going to make you go “goddammit, I love every single one of these terrible losers!”, and you won’t even mean it ironically.
But it’s based on an eighties movie starring Michael J. Fox!
Confession: I haven’t seen the movie version of Teen Wolf, partially because I’m movie-illiterate and partially because it came out three years before I was born. (I apologize to everyone I just made feel really old by saying that.) Based on what Wikipedia tells me, here is what the two have in common: the main character’s name is Scott and his best friend’s name is Stiles. He becomes a werewolf and at first it sucks, then it helps him become really good at sports and getting girls’ attention, then it sucks again. The coach of his sport of choice is named Coach Finstock. But that’s it. Really, this show is much more of a Buffy reboot than anything else. If you like well-written teenagers attempting to balance being teenagers while also battling the forces of darkness and swinging violently between hysterical laughter and soul-crushing sadness several hundred times per episode, congrats! You’re going to like Teen Wolf.
This show is about teenagers and I hated teenagers even when I was one.
Me too! It’s a big reason I avoid teenager shows like the plague unless they’re of the Veronica Mars variety where all teenagers are written as miniature adults. But the teens on Teen Wolf are written very decidedly as teenagers. I’m not going to lie and say they don’t make terrible decisions, but they make them the way real teenagers do — with endearing, fresh-faced earnestness and conviction. As a viewer, you understand exactly why they make the choices they make and you wince at the consequences. It’s really well-written is my point.
But it’s on MTV.
I know, I know. That gave me pause too. Would you believe the show’s good enough that I’m willing to sit through commercials of that new Snooki and JWoww show to watch it? Because it’s true.
I’ve heard it’s homoerotic and while I’m into that, I’ve had my heart broken too many times.
Okay, so if you’ve heard about Teen Wolf from That Friend You Have Who Sees Homoerotic Subtext In Everything and you’re not sure if you want to trust them, I’d say this one’s a safe bet to get invested in. Showrunner/creator Jeff Davis is openly gay, though I know that really doesn’t guarantee anything. (Cough Ryan Murphy cough.) But the thing about Jeff Davis is he seems really committed to repping the gay on his show the right way. We have Danny, who’s a canonically gay character who isn’t the token gay character. We know he’s gay, but it’s treated as a character trait, not a defining characteristic. He’s smart, popular, and a great lacrosse player. It’s true he’s a minor character who only shows up in about half the episodes, but he does show up, and he’s magnificent when he appears. And it’s not just gay characters he does right, Jeff Davis has said he wants to essentially create a world where being gay is not an issue. Straight characters go to gay clubs, straight (male) characters get hit on by gay guys and find it flattering instead of flying into No Homo terror, it’s insinuated that both male and female characters might secretly want a character of the same gender, and also there are drag queens who don’t exist to solely be the butt of jokes. For reals. It’s amazing.
As for a gay pairing to root for, you’ve probably heard about Derek and Stiles. I’m going to tell you this – prepare to be somewhat disappointed. They don’t interact as much as Homoerotic Subtext Friend has lead you to believe. On the bright side, the interactions they do have are magnificent, the actors have great chemistry, and the creative team has both acknowledged that Derek and Stiles are a fun pair to write and very heavily hinted on multiple occasions that they’d be very interested in getting them together. Really. I’m not kidding. Amazing, right? And even if you’re not into pinning your hopes to a maybe, there’s a lot of good foundation work and insinuation that you could definitely run with, if you were so inclined.
Does the fact that there are a lot of hot dudes mean that there aren’t also a lot of awesome female characters?
No! It’s true that there are fewer female characters than male characters, but what they lack in quantity they more than make up in quality. The women who appear in Teen Wolf are independent, kick-ass, intelligent characters who act like people. They’re flawed, they’re not all either virgins or whores, and they’re wildly different from each other, and here’s the kicker – none of them get punished for it. There is literally a scene in which Allison (Scott’s love interest) is being praised by her mother for being over Scott (she’s not, but it’s complicated), and her mother says something about how Allison’s being strong and at least she’s not one of those girls who only cares about going to prom, and Allison says “Can’t I be strong and go to prom?” Yes, Allison! Yes! You and the other women can care about “girly” things and be smart and strong and awesome! Being “girly” doesn’t detract from your awesome, it makes you more awesome! On one hand it’s sad this is a revelation in a TV show. On the other hand, this is an awesome revelatory moment for gender politics on television.
I hate horror as a genre.
As someone who is still haunted by the one episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark I saw when I was eight years old, I totally feel you. But I honestly don’t find it so bad. You can usually tell when something’s creepy and cover your eyes in time.
How the heck am I supposed to catch up this far into the show?
MTV has the entire thing online. You will have to sit through more commercials than you would if you were watching it on hulu, but fewer than if you were watching it on TV. Also, I hear Netflix has all the episodes? I don’t know, I don’t have Netflix, because I am half five-year-old, half crotchety old person.
I have issues with enjoying myself while watching television.
Don’t worry. Based on the ratings Two and a Half Men alone, this is clearly a widespread problem
Clacked by Julia Hass 
on Jul 30, 2012 @ 14:26 EST5EDT
