Emily Watches Too Much Television

Alright, kids! This post was initially meant to be a meta post to follow the first two or three episodes of 5A, but, of course, I haven't met a self-imposed deadline that I didn't end up breaking, so the post just kept growing longer and longer and taking more and more time to write, and then more and more episodes were airing, and then the next thing I knew, the season finale had just aired, and I was like... well, fuck. Fortunately, this super-sized season is two halves of an ongoing story of the Dread Doctors, so while the first half of Season 5 passed me by, a lot of my observations and questions are still relevant, even after we learned more information about what was going on regarding those steampunk assholes, Theo and his villainy, what the hell was going on with Kira and Jordan, why Scott suddenly developed asthma out of nowhere, etc. So, I was able to morph my in-season meta discussion into a post-season meta and speculation discussion! Hooray! So, since the premier

HAPPY NEW YEAR, YOU GUYS! I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! Anywho, I am so  sorry about how late this damn post has been. My descent into bluesville had terrible timing, apparently, because then school started at the end of August, so I not only had no motivation to write or do anything, but I also had no time  to do it, and basically it's all been a mess. Now that the fall and winter weather has improved my malaise a tiny bit, I'm attempting to hop back on the saddle, but I've decided to make a few changes to the blog and my entries in hopes of making things a little easier on myself in the coming weeks and, in turn, getting my looooong to-do list of blog posts written and posted faster while still giving you guys the discussions I've promised. So, to do this, I'm going to switch from my usual recap format with review material sprinkled throughout to just simply posting reviews-- I'm sure the posts will still end up being novel-length as usual, but at least now I can

[Ugh, sorry for even more lateness on this recap, you guys. I don't know what's wrong with me, but summer slow-down is making me incapable of doing anything in a timely fashion. Hopefully the next ones are better! Thanks for understanding-- xoxo Emily] Welp, that was a heartbreaker of an episode, wasn't it? Like, I don't even know what to say about it except that everything seems so bleak in Beacon Hills right now. We've got Scott on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown; Stiles cracking under the weight of his still-secret accidental homicide, Lydia and Malia trying to keep everyone together, and honestly, they're the ones who seem the most "normal" and not "off" right now, which worries me, considering we know Lydia ends up in Eichen House soon, and Malia is about to have some major mommy issues. Also, Liam and Hayden may or may not end up super violent and/or dead from the stuff the Dread Doctors did to them; Kira is pretty much

[Sorry once again for the lateness, guys! I don't know if it's summer slow-down, or another cycle of my never-ending on-and-off depression, or what, but I have been ridiculously slow-moving, unproductive, and generally crappy-feeling the last week or two. Here's hoping this Debbie-Downer cycle ends soon so I can get back on schedule and actually get started on replying back to comments/messages/etc as well. Thanks for understanding. --Emily] So, remember when I said that the events of the last four episodes were going to make "Required Reading" feel like a pleasant dream? Well, it's already starting, and my heart is shattered into a million pieces, and if it's already this bad, then the last three episodes are going to be even worse in intensity? Are you guys ready for it? Because I'm really, really not. I don't mean to say that I don't like it, because I do, a LOT-- if I had to rank the seasons, I'd probably go with 3B, 4, 5A, 3A, 2, an

Well, in a sensation that is becoming quite familiar to me this season, I seriously do not understand most of what is happening in Teen Wolf right now, but nonetheless, this episode was a thrilling, visually stunning, and even sort of informative, continuing in a string of amazing episodes in Season 5. Can you guys believe we only have four more episodes until 5A is over? And, as we know, the last four episodes of a season/half-season are always when shit really  starts to go down, which means all of the shocks we got this week are going to feel like pleasant dreams compared to what's coming to us. I am both super excited and ridiculously under-prepared. Anyway, there is a lot  to unpack in this recap, so I'm just going to cut to the chase and jump in so we can start discussing everything we learned. Let's talk about "Required Reading!" Previously, on Teen Wolf:  Scott, Kira, Lydia, and Stiles went to Eichen House to talk to Dr. Gabriel Valack, who wrote the

[Ugh, late again, sorry guys! --Emily] HOLY SHIT, YOU GUYS. This episode was seriously overwhelming in multiple ways, and the information learned from it has consequences that will definitely be affecting the entire supernatural population of Beacon Hills. For one, we now know that the book Malia found in Tracy's bedroom was not only planted there by the Dread Doctors themselves via Theo, but they did so specifically to lure the McCall Pack to Eichen House to talk to the book's author-- who is none other than Dr. Gabriel Valack himself!-- and To make matters even worse, it's not even a work of fiction-- it's meant to be used as a tool for those who have been messed with by the Doctors to help them remember doing so, because the Doctors' powers-- which mostly involve manipulating electromagnetic energy and frequencies-- are frequently used to make their test subjects forget that they had been experimented on in the first place. This means that the theories that p