Martin Carr reviews the fourth episode of Scream: The TV Series season 2…
Every time I watch this programme there is no avoiding the guilty pleasure it gives me. Scream is the old school 90210 of teen dramas, where actors clearly over twenty wander around looking anguished with a charge card. There is such joy to be derived from something like this that the appeal, ratings, longevity or actual plots mean very little. As long as the cast are committed and the blood flows like fine wine everyone is happy.
For the sake of drama Audrey’s involvement with the might be maybe killer, running around slaughtering anyone not high up on the cast list still has some legs. Taylor Klaus is having fun being cloak and dagger playing one side against another, while Noah’s latest beau adds another spice to the pot. Dynamics between so called siblings Kieran and Eli also makes things more interesting, as everyone begins revealing their true colours.
In true fashion a load of ‘teenagers’ get dosed and start tripping, which allows the writers to have fun with hallucinations, inhibitions and dodgy camera effects. Elsewhere we are starting to uncover identities, confirm suspicions and just generally sit back while everything runs its course. Karna, Fitzgerald and Taylor-Klaus are still the ones to watch whether or not others might cross your radar. Red herring of the moment is Santiago who is a ‘Lakewood’ six obsessive who sits there and stares a lot. I say red herring because the killer, come season finale, will definitely turn up left field and hove into view very late in the day.
Beyond the killing, petty squabbles and heart to heart conversations which mainly end up with a corpse, what piqued my interest recently was the shifting Audrey and Noah dynamic. I know this is my guilty pleasure, as in the show not the actors, but it’s a strange set of characteristics which brings these two together. He is a culture vulture who spends his time name checking films, this week alone there was Single White Female and Fear, while she does lonely conflicted yet mutually exclusive lover of the ladies very well. Poles apart yet brought together because of shared social status and love of all things geeky, what keeps them apart is the thing which makes them work so well together. There is no agenda there and they are the smartest people in most situations, sometimes through luck more than judgement. To jeopardise that by even suggesting there may be an attraction beyond the existing perimeters is bold.
A tactic that could only work if they were to become intimate and then Audrey be unmasked for her collusion with said killer. But that method would only lead to further isolation and the destruction of a character team which forms the bedrock of this show. Take Karna and Taylor-Klaus out of the equation and things would become unstable. Those issues aside I remain a fan of this show because it does what it says on the box. There are no big surprises, a respect to the source material and polish to a production which is familiar without feeling bland.
Martin Carr – Follow me on Twitter
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 28, 2016. Updated November 29, 2022.
