The Persistence of Family Drama
Nighttime, Casa Duvall: a shrouded figure disables the alarm and breaks in, grabbing a knife in the kitchen and heading upstairs. Bypassing Maggie, they creep over to Emma’s room, pausing at the picture of her and Kieran before swiping her dream journal. Emma wakes up and grabs scissors before going down to explore the intrusion. She sees that the front door is open with an EMMA heart necklace (like the Daisy one from the first season) and immediately calls her mom. With Emma distracted by Kieran, who has arrived at 3AM to comfort her, Acosta and Maggie have a secret conversation about her attempt to reach the person who might be Brandon. They also discuss the connection between Piper and Lang.
At the hospital, Acosta questions Lang about her past connection with Piper. She claims that she doesn’t remember her, but upon further questioning reveals that she doesn’t want to explain their connection to this scared town. Lang admits that she was doing a case study on last year’s attacks, so she has insight on each of the kids. She assuages Acosta’s fears about his son, explaining that Stavo has a unique way of trying to process and understand the horrors his father deals with on a daily basis. Emma is the one who is obsessed with Piper and is harboring violent tendencies. I still think Lang isn’t taking context into consideration, but okay. Lang advises Acosta to make up with his son, but Stavo isn’t ready to accept his apology quite yet. Later we see Stavo packing his belongings and taking off again.
It Could Be…Eli (Probably Not)
At the hospital, Noah’s in a bad way as he grieves Zoe and recovers from his stab wound. “Zoe said it: I turn death into a puzzle that can be solved instead of dealing with my feelings. I missed out on so much. Obsessing over slasher logic, playing detective–I’m done with all of it,” he says, explaining his immediate shutdown of The Morgue. He’ll do one last show as a tribute to Zoe. Emma, Audrey, and Kieran are sent to pack up Noah’s murder board. They discover an article titled “Lakewood Mourns Will Bellmont.” The picture above the article features Kieran’s cousin Eli skulking in the background, despite not having known Will.
Audrey later brings him photos of him and Zoe for a heart-to-heart. As soon as she hands them over, she gets a Killer text: “What? Your friend didn’t like my gift? She’s good at cutting people off. But she better watch out–I cut deeper…” This vague threat is so lazy.
Audrey shares her creepy texts with Kieran and Emma. Emma thinks that the culprit might be Eli, as she’s been ignoring him for awhile. Cut to Eli and his mom, where we discover that Mayor Maddox is paying them fifteen grand to get out of town. Eli is mad that his mother is ruining things for him. His mother is unsympathetic, calling out his obsession with his cousin’s girlfriend. “Don’t you understand? If we stay, we risk them finding out everything about us!” she says. All of this seems like we’re being red herring-ed, am I right?
Kieran video conferences Audrey and Emma in so they can follow him as he snoops around Eli’s room. He brings them the bundle of Audrey’s letters to Piper, along with Emma’s childhood photos. They can’t use this as evidence against him, as it merely incriminated Audrey. She demands that he return everything immediately for fear of invoking Eli’s possible murderous wrath. While he runs back to the house, the girls take off to the pig farm in order to gather evidence alone, without giving him a heads up.
Time is Running Out for Our Dear Mayor
Stavo is lounging in Brooke’s hotel room, casually drawing a bloody picture of Mayor Maddox while wearing a hotel robe. “He’s ruined. He’s not acting like himself at all. Sad part is, we all know what he’s going through,” Brooke says when she returns, describing Noah. This is terrible dialogue, as it makes very little sense in context and character, especially coming from Brooke who just lost Jake. She gets distracted by her father’s press conference, in which he talks about sticking together as a family.
Over at the Maddox Manor, the good Mayor is pleading with Brooke’s voicemail for her to come home, “where it’s safe.” Sorry y’all, I don’t think there’s a single place in town you can consider safe. He gets distracted when he hears music blasting from Brooke’s room. Unfortunately, that trap was set by Eli, who takes his opportunity to break into the Mayor’s office and steal some paperwork that proves he’s robbed half of the town and has a connection to the James family. Fortunately, his pleading worked: Brooke returns, though “only because [she] missed her closet.” It’s an oddly nice moment, too bad it’s probably their last. That wasn’t meant to sound like a threat, just an observation.
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Noah Isn’t Exempt From This Week’s Hell
Noah’s attempt to record his final podcast for The Morgue is interrupted by Stavo, who’s there to convince him to continue. “Your podcast does something for people, me included,” he reasons, explaining that they all need someone willing to talk about mortality and the like. As a gift, Stavo sends Noah a few frames of his graphic novel featuring the positive way he sees Noah.
“I’ve seen Final Destination. Death is coming for us all and it can’t be cheated. It’s up to us to enjoy every moment that we have with the people we’re lucky enough to love,” Noah says, explaining on the podcast that he’s not shutting it down because Zoe loved it so much. He dedicates that episode and the entire podcast to Zoe Vaughn before uploading the file. Unfortunately, our social media expert Killer is also a pretty good hacker, because they take control and upload their own file.
The file is a video called “Audrey Jensen’s A Nightmare in Lakewood” and features sound clips from Audrey and Emma as they attempt to solve the mystery–though without context, this isn’t the impression they give Footage of every recent murder is included, as well as footage of Audrey removing the message from Jake’s bloody corpse. Yikes. Brooke sure isn’t thrilled about that.
It’s Like They’re Actively Trying to Get Murdered
By the time Audrey and Emma get to the pig farm, it’s pitch black outside. No thank you. Emma offers to go in and investigate while Audrey keeps watch outside. NO. What is wrong with everyone? Emma calls Audrey in when she discovers the secret hideout, where they find Emma’s stolen dream journal.
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Meanwhile, Mayor Maddox has arrived to carry out his latest I’ll-advised visit to prevent his documents from going public. Listen, y’all: it’s not looking good for Kieran’s innocence here. Eli is too obvious, and Kieran has been privy to most of the same information as the Killer. I’ll be disappointed, of course; this choice would lack originality in this franchise, also I’ve grown attached to Amadeus Serafini. Just saying, it’s not looking awesome.
Back to Mayor Maddox’s hideously stupid choice of caving to blackmail AGAIN. The blackmailer is playing with Mayor Maddox, who’s wandering the abandoned barn with a mere iPhone flashlight to guide him. That is, until the Killer pops out and runs him though with a pitchfork. Emma and Audrey walk in just as the Mayor removes the pitchfork and bleeds out. The Killer locks them in there, effectively framing them for murder and allowing them to be arrested. Maggie, understandably upset, tells Emma to keep her mouth shut. Acosta stops Kieran, who just arrived (or did he?), from going to Emma. “If they think we killed the mayor…” Audrey says. “They think we killed EVERYBODY,” Emma continues.
This certainly was not the best episode of Scream. The dialogue ended up being pretty clunky and out-of-character at certain moments (thinking specifically of Brooke talking to Stavo), while it felt like the plot was spinning its wheels. Going to the abandoned pig farm yet again truly made it feel like we were going nowhere, despite the Killer having made progress in framing Emma and Audrey. Hopefully next week’s season finale is a bit more satisfying, because this week was a bit of a disappointment.
Best Line: “I’m coming home. But only because I missed my closet.” Brooke gets it this week for humor. And ensuing sadness, I suppose.
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Killer Calls: 0
Body Count Per Episode: 1
Body Count Per Season: 6
Episode Rating: 5/10
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