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235 FAVORITE SHIPS OF ALL TIME (ranked by my followers) 22. stiles stilinski and lydia martin - teen wolf

Sweet Dreams are Made of These

Someone whom I like and respect a great deal talked about how Teen Wolf could be infuriatingly amateur one moment and deeply compelling the next. This is, unfortunately, true. On the other hand, they used one example of the show's supposed tonal confusion that I feel they deeply misunderstood: the scene in which Erica strutted into the cafeteria in Ice Pick (2x03).

To paraphrase my mutual, they felt like this scene could have been in High School Musical, the way it seemed completely opposed to the tone of what happening during the rest of the season: the ongoing Hale/Argent feud, the threat of the kanima, and the slow disintegration of Scott McCall's relationships. And my reply is -- well, that was the point.

The scene is shot in a very surreal way; the soundtrack comes to the foreground and the scene follows its beat. Erica's entrance commands the attention of everyone in the room. Lydia's reaction, while hilarious, is also over the top, exactly how it would be if the Queen Bee/Mean Girl caricature, one that the audience once was led to believe was Lydia's true self, was being threatened in a teen-age sitcom. It feels like a fantasy.

And that's exactly what it is: Erica's fantasy. Erica's scenes before this one have contained the recognizable dreariness of a girl who feels she is being sidelined in her own life by things beyond her control. Later on in the season, we'll hear about more instances of Erica's miserable pre-Bite life. This strut is the consequence of what Derek offered her in the morgue, and exactly why she accepted. She's bit into the apple offered by the serpent in the garden.

Instead of epilepsy, she has beauty. Instead of being ridiculed for pissing herself during a seizure, everyone wants her. Instead of being powerless, she has freedom. And that's the key, isn't it? "It’s true. It is about power," Derek tells Scott. How many people have dreamed about their life getting better if their power fantasy just happened to come true?

Of course, fantasies are very often the prelude to horror in Teen Wolf. Erica still has epilepsy; it will come back if she gets poisoned too often by Jackson the lizard monster. Everyone does want her, including the Argents who chase her and Boyd through the woods with Beau Geste recordings and ATVs. And her freedom is brief, because she will be locked in a bank vault and finally killed by an alpha with more power than her.

And, tellingly, this is not just Erica's fantasy. Think of the very next scene when she gets into the car with Derek in front of a chagrined Scott. Derek's smile is a taunt to Scott, but it is, in many ways, sincere. Derek is happy. He's made Erica's life better; he was right in what he said to Scott and Scott was obviously wrong to reject him. (Of course, there will come a time when he's holding Erica's corpse, and he won't be so happy.)

Teen Wolf never attempted to be a 'realistic' drama. It used changes in tone and cinematography; it used different narrative structures; and it used shifting points-of-view all as tools for delivering its themes and unsettling the audience. One of those themes was that power fantasies are just that -- fantasies. Rejecting the values of humanity, of every day life, doesn't make you happier, they make you alone. Or they get you killed. Every dreamer must eventually wake up.

#erica reyes #scott mccall #derek hale #ice pick #tw 2x03 #teen wolf meta