Teen Wolf, yet another paranormal drama featuring werewolves, premiered on MTV just after the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. Now, I must admit right now: I will watch anything — anything — that highlights the happenings of vampires, witches, werewolves, and/or any other supernatural creatures caught in a desperate struggle to locate their identity in the mortal realms. Therefore, I was sort of excited to see how MTV was going to revamp the classic Teen Wolf, a 1980’s film originally starring Michael J. Fox.
I just finished watching the first part of the pilot episode and, while I wasn’t jumping out of my seat, I didn’t think it was horrible. The show adheres to the conventions of the paranormal genre, beginning in ways that many will find familiar — highlighting a misfit teen whose identity has otherwise gone unnoticed by his fellow peers, until he has an encounter with the elusive “otherside” and gains otherworldly abilities. A classic gawky-teenager-turned-super-human premise.
Caution: Spoiler Alerts Below!
The main character, Scotty McCall, played by actor Tyler Posey, receives his little puppy bite after perusing a forest with his best friend, Stiles (played by Dylan O’Brien), late at night. The next day, Scotty experiences heightened senses, meets the love interest, and dominates his high school Lacrosse tryouts — all with the full moon looming on the horizon.
Still unaware of the fact that he’s actually a werewolf, Scotty takes the new girl in town to the hottest party of the week, on the night of the full moon of course. Impending death, a potential damsel in distress situation, the arrival of werewolf hunters and a brooding mentor, yaddy-yaddy-ya ensues and the episode ends on a foreseeable cliffhanger: the head werewolf hunter is his new girlfriend’s father. Crap.
I think this new version of Teen Wolf has a lot going for it and has the potential to be a breath of fresh air for MTV as a network — one that is riddled with “unscripted” trashy reality shows. As Entertainment Weekly puts it, Teen Wolf is the “Anti-Snooki.”
By no means am I saying this is the bestest-most-awesomest-spectacular show out there. However, while the plotlines are so obvious it makes my head hurt and the borderline (borderline) awkward (but far from horrible) acting makes me smile/cringe, it is fun and I’ll definitely be watching to see what happens next — even though I can pretty much say for certain that the forbidden love between the werewolf hunter’s daughter and the werewolf will come to fruition, all while they struggle to prevent some horrible prophecy from being realized.
Tune in Monday night for part two of the pilot episode. If you watched the first part, let us know what you thought below! Please, please comment, just so I can be assured that I wasn’t the only loser watching it. . .
Image source: 141tv.com
