Teen Wolf

I’ve been wanting to review more TV on my blog, so I’m going to start this week by doing a review of Teen Wolf.  When it was announced that MTV was going to remake the 80’s movie Teen Wolf into a TV show, a lot of people thought this was a ridiculous thing to do; but boy were they wrong!  Teen Wolf received positive reviews from TV critics and was a hit during its six-season run (several of the seasons were split into two different parts) from 2011 to 2017; and it was by far MTV’s most successful scripted show.  It was also announced just this year that a Teen Wolf reunion movie is going to be released on Paramount+ in the not-too-distant future, and most of the original cast is expected to return.  I will definitely watch the movie when it comes out!

Teen Wolf is about Scott McCall, a “normal” teenage boy until he turns into a werewolf after being bitten by one the day before 10^th grade.  Scott doesn’t want to be a werewolf and tries to fight against his new identity, but the town that he lives in, Beacon Hills, is a place where supernatural creatures really like to venture.  So, Scott tries to balance both his new identity and his “typical” teenage life with the help of his peeps:  Allison, his love interest; Derek, a mysterious werewolf with a troubled past; and, of course, his best friend, Stiles Stilinski.  Despite the reputation lots of teen shows get for being cheesy, this show is actually good.  The plots are interesting and the characters are fantastic; and the character development is really good as well.  We cannot bring up Teen Wolf without talking about Scott’s BFF, Stiles.   Stiles is sweet, funny, sometimes sarcastic, and fiercely loyal.  He’s a great friend and would do anything for his friends (can you tell I’m a huge Stiles fan?!).  However, this show can get pretty violent, as a lot of characters die and there are some gruesome scenes that even made me cringe a little.  If you don’t do well with really violent shows, this might not be the show for you.  So, I would caution parents regarding the cringeworthy scenes and I would recommend this for mature teens only.  The main message I get out of this show is a message of identity.  After Scott finds out he’s werewolf, he’s not really sure who he is (and of course being a teenager on top of all that isn’t helping).  But I feel as if, with the help of his friends, Scott eventually comes to embrace who he really and truly is.  I also noticed that there is a theme of mental health at times throughout the show; some of such parts would be spoilers so I’ll mention one that won’t spoil anything.  In one mental health-related part, Scott has a panic attack one day at school and, when Stiles tries to help him, he tells Scott that he started getting panic attacks after the death of his mother.  While Teen Wolf definitely could’ve done better with this part of the show (made mental health concerns for teens a larger theme throughout the show), I still feel as if they opened the door for young people to have some very important conversations.  The overall theme of Teen Wolf that really resonates most with me is that, in order to get through the big things in life (like figuring out your real identity and taking care of your mental health), you really do need to have good friends you can count on!