Teen Wolf: Episode 1

There seems to be an unwritten rule about the pilot episodes of TV shows; in that they must all be shockingly awful, the acting grating, and the dialogue flimsy. Bad special effects and mediocre plot lines go hand in hand with what seems like the overwhelming rush to introduce every single character all at once, in the hope that at least one might be interesting enough to keep the viewers hooked, in the hope that it might get even that tiny bit better. Even the sacred BBC’s Sherlock had that one dodgy pilot episode which was never shown, but simply added onto the DVD for laughs.

Don’t get me wrong, Teen Wolf makes no exception to this rule, but on the scale of terrible pilot episodes…it wasn’t horrific. The overall concept of the show isn’t fantastic, with teenage angst and traumatic werewolf gore being two of the most overdone genres in fiction, and some of the stereotypical high school character archetypes have been rammed in, but there were some surprisingly comedic moments, with the two main characters, Scott and Stiles, lightening almost the entire episode in their unoriginal, yet unexpected humour isms.

The plot of the episode was relatively straightforward, and incredibly easy to follow, with the destination between good characters and bad being made fairly obvious from the get go, and the typically damsel in distress figure being surprisingly likeable…for now, anyway. The relationships between the characters are clearly going to be the strong point of the show, from the friendship of the boys, and the darker, twisted relationships between Scott and the werewolves. Romantic relationships seem to have been dulled a little against the general werewolf theme, but they are there nevertheless, with Scott’s romantic interest only seemingly being introduced for the purposes of the plot twist at the very end of the episode, something which is sloppy writing at best.

The technical elements to the show were also generally good, and I was pleasantly surprised by the soundtrack, with the original score being used just as fittingly as the popular tracks, both recognisable and uplifting at parts. The special effects, whilst at the start of the episode could be considered a little hammy definitely improved in time for the big transformation scene. Werewolf transformation scenes seem to be defined along a scale from ‘bad’ to, well, Twilight, however Teen Wolf seemed to take it in a different direction, using less of the fake fur, and more of the cleverly dipped camera shots to create the effect of the wolf. The camera work in the episode is, admittedly, impressive, something which perhaps sets it aside from many of the other supernatural shows, with their overly dramatic zooms, and lagging speed shots.

Overall, with any pilot, there’s room for improvement, and hopefully some character development at least, but as a whole, it wasn’t bad, and has definitely peaked my interest enough to stick around for the next episode.