About MTV’s Scream Season 1, Episode 1: “Pilot”
When Jamie Kennedy’s character explains the rules of slashers in Scream (the movie), he’s acknowledging well-worn tropes the audience is familiar with. He smartens up the cast, giving them resources the primary characters of, say, Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan didn’t have. Most slasher plots are premised on their protagonists being groin-smashingly stupid, so knowing you’re in a slasher makes you stop saying “Let’s split up!” and running upstairs to get stabbity, stabbed to death.
In the pilot of Scream (the TV series), Noah (unfortunately for him, this generation’s Jamie Kennedy) explains the premise of a slasher TV series. But there’s never been a slasher TV show before, which he admits would never work. But he’s not smartening the characters up; he’s explaining to the audience what the hell we’re watching. He’s justifying the existence of Scream (the TV series), because how can you subvert a genre that doesn’t exist?
And that’s the biggest difference between Scream (the movie) and Scream (the TV series).
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