#greatrunner watches wolf pack

[greatrunner]

Given the general radio silence about it all this time, I had a feeling they canceled Wolf Pack.

But I didn't know they announced the cancellation in January of this year. It's yet another show that fell victim to a writer's strike (see: Journeyman, NBC, 2007).

For all its faults, I really enjoyed it, but I really hate how the finale ended. Now, I'll never get to see SMG be the morally dubious Wolf Mom or see my boy Everett Lang get revenge against his racist-ass white mom for institutionalizing him.

The fuck, fam.

[greatrunner]

‘Wolf Pack’ Impressions 2-4

Everett’s mom might be worse than S1 Joyce “I read the book on parenting” Summers. The dad’s passivity is really bugging me.

Every Harlan scene is an instant skip. He might be contributing less to the narrative any of the four teens.

Luna, on the other hand, is actually being a proactive character in the narrative - her dynamic with Garret is turning out well so far.

I really hope they don’t try to play Ramsey up as “the good cop”, because her passivity with regards to her task-force members is saying otherwise.

Cops getting fucked up by werewolves is an A+ in my book.

Some of the asshole high schoolers have MILD dimension to them, and that’s nice.

There was too little Everett in this last episode.

Low budget CGI is low-budget.

[greatrunner]

‘Wolf Pack’ Impressions (Ep. 5-8)

1x05 - “Incendiary“

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Armani Jackson are easily the best part of this series

Ramsey is a duplicitous cop with a personal agenda connected to the werewolf murders, and the confidence in this narrative reveal is superbly supported by Gellar’s steady performance.

Everett started out like a walking ‘anxiety (get nervous)’ kind of character in the same way Scott was your prototypical ‘kid with asthma on TV’, but has otherwise not been pigeon-held in a quagmire characterization where his kindness disallows him from defending himself from assholes (Harlan, Austin, his mother) or assholes experiencing no consequences for their fuckery (see: Scott’s every interaction with discount Logan Lerman).

Additionally, his connection to the werewolf killing people is not in the least overshadowed Harlan and Luna’s bio-family drama. His status as a forced-werewolf has allowed him to become what he considers his ideal self and I’m here for it, honestly. Scare the shit out of your bullies.

Garrett really isn’t contributing anything to the current trajectory of the plot besides some nice UST between himself and Ramsey. He is, at the moment, a distraction (like he considered himself in Harlan’s flashback).

Harlan actually becoming proactive in the narrative and contributing to an episode something other than self-involved anger? Say it ain’t so.

This series seems to want to depict teenagers authentically, but lapses right into tried and true trope(s) of ‘unsupervised parties’ and ‘teenagers have easy access to drugs to the point of being pushers themselves’.

Luna’s subplot with Austin feels more necessitated by plot than anything they’ve got going story-wise, so not terribly unfamiliar territory in the box of ‘Jeff Davis can’t do teen romance’.

However lukewarm I am on Everett and Blake’s romance, it at least feels companionable vs. Luna and Austin’s “oh, hey, you drew pictures of me, so clearly you like me!” mess.

I like Prisha. I hope we see more of her next season.

1x06 - “After Party“

Balthier’s (Gideon Emery) appearance was a nice throwback (and definitely less hammy), especially working as a springboard for Ramsey’s story.

Ramsey as the avenging werewolf mother who goes into law enforcement to track arsonists is certainly a narrative I’m here for, and a large part of the reason why I was never interested in dismissing the arsonist storyline continuing on in the background without the teens.

By and large, the story becoming more motivated by Ramsey’s desire to find her son, protect him from [the] harm (of others), at the same time protect him from the authorities is just *chef’s kiss*. I love this monster woman, she is precious to me in all her violence and underhandedness.

Everett being handed the name of the murderous werewolf feels lazy as hell. Yet it does very little to my general enjoyment to how Everett remains at the center of unraveling the red herring of a ‘teen arsonist' plot.

Ultimately the best thing to come out of the reveal that the weird kid at the pool party was the werewolf projecting into Everett’s mind was the use of sound and visuals with the dead mean girl (Phoebe) to alert him about the next victim (Austin).

And, yeah, I was kinda sad about Phoebe’s death. Especially after that dead-straight heart-to-heart they had about Blake’s mother’s infidelity, and why she cut everyone out of her life. She was a jerk, but was also intercommunicating her pain in a similar way as Blake. Let this girl have friends, please!

1x07 - “Lion’s Breath” / 1x08 - “Trophic Cascade”

There are elements to Everett’s narrative (and the idea of lycanthropy being a cure-all for all disabilities or even autism) that hits a decidedly sour (abelist, anti-medication) note. I like the idea of it boosting your confidence, or even changing your perspective on the world (since the person has become an uber predator). But altering things that are often a case of nature or nurture, not so much.

That said, the Everett’s growing steadiness and unwillingness to give his parents emotional neglect and dismissal any more room in his life is incredibly thrilling.

That scene with his mother (”You should be nicer to me”) fucking rips. But it's also what makes part of the finale so bitter. Everett’s mother really white-woman-in-distressed her son, and her exaggeration of events really got his Black ass, swirl-silly father to try and get him confined. Fuck. Everett’s. Mom. I hope Ramsey eats her.

Luna’s loss of faith in her family and friends is a far more interesting note in her stakes than Austin (who promptly disappears from the plot), and a nice reversal of her role as the believer and her brother as the inward-looking jerkass. She neither trusts her father or her brother.

Ramsey’s agenda regarding her lost children, particularly the undercurrent of discomfort from the reveal that she’s known where they were for some time, is something I’m looking forward to see play out in the next season. She doesn’t appear to be angling to nix Garrett but at the same time she’s making it very clear (to the audience) that she won’t be separated from them again.

Even as the arsonist (lmao, what a wet flop of a reveal), driving her son out of hiding (and harming him, losing his trust), she’s gone out of her way to protect the new members of her pack. And the reasons feel like an illustration of how she views who’s worth saving and protecting vs. who isn’t. It’s not altruistic, but I wouldn’t call it intentionally malicious either. She’s a wolf, and she uses her ‘humanity’ so to speak in a way that will benefit the wolves. Again, I’m here for it.

The Malcolm reveal was pretty weak, all things considered. There was no build up, and they literally have the guy spelling it out to the audience.

How did he know she was the wolf from seventeen years ago that murked his crew? How did he know Baron was her son? Why was he not a bigger character in the story if he was going to be that important to the finale?

Ramsey turning out not to be the mysterious caller was a relief and a frustration. But I’m also expecting this to belly flop should it ever get a proper reveal.

Basically, this was like any finale of Teen Wolf. Rushed to hell and back.

Could’ve done without the grim-dark trailer rendition of “Can’t Fight the Moonlight”.

My overall (first) impressions of Paramount+’s Wolf Pack first season is that it’s Teen Wolf if Teen Wolf was written more a little more competently, and Jeff Davis’ preoccupation with white boys didn’t (or wasn’t allowed to) push the protagonist (Armani Jackson’s Everett) into the margins like he did with Tyler Posey’s Scott McCall.

The super-hero-fication of werewolves ah-la HEROES (everyone gets a special ability!) is kinda eye roll-inducing, but I can deal with it.

But, if Ramsey was going to be the fire-starter all along, then the story honestly should’ve been tailored to that instead of telling and not showing that part of the story in favor of a whodunit that basically went nowhere like the Kamina plot. It seems like an ass-pull to intentionally make her the antagonist when there were better and stronger elements in her character that qualify her for that.

Part of me wants to accredit a lot of the show’s success to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s skill as both an actor and an executive producer.

Please, do not kill her character off.