Teen Wolf S05E14: "The Sword and the Spirit"

Most dads want what's best for us, but sometimes they can be a real pain in the b. It's always like "hey do your homework," or "don't cry on the basketball court," or "put down that glass pipe." But it's especially hard to be around dads when you're in the same business. Some dads are just not great bosses, and when you make the mistake of curing your dad's black ooze cancer with a rare flower that you keep in a safe, sometimes your dad will show up at your job and hassle you about how to murder a legendary CGI beast, which, it's like, "I KNOW, DAD." But again, it's a dad's job to make sure you're at your best, even when your dad is a known villain who occasionally enslaves lizard men and speaks in a series of guttural rasps.

In short, I REALLY love the fact that Gerard is back on Teen Wolf, but his fun scenes with Chris were just one example of how dad-centric this episode was! "The Sword and the Spirit" of course also included scenes between Scott and Liam (which MTV even labels with dad-centric hashtags) as well as a scene in which Kira's dad took away her sword (to say nothing of the ongoing Stilinski father-son feels fiesta). Of course, this show has always been pretty dad-centric, but I'm loving the multi-generational thing going on with the Argents in particular. This show is pretty adorable when it's not an abject nightmare!

"The Sword and the Spirit" was another fun hour spent thrillingly. Let's talk about it!



We began in a foggy, yellowish, presumably foul-smelling tunnel where America's favorite father-son team of werewolf hunters were stalking an expensive CGI monster. They compared notes on what exactly the thing probably looked like, but my favorite description was offered by Gerard: It looked like "a shadow pretending to be real." SAME. But we also learned that according to legend the beast has a weakness. That weakness? "A simple spear in the hands of a young woman." Uhh-kay, beast. Points deducted for that one.

I loved when Gerard casually ambled up to a pair of Dread Doctors and then paralyzed them with a simple radiation dart (?) like it was NBD. Take that you buncha cenobite-lookin' bozos.

But Chris had a decidedly more vom-inducing encounter. Upon hearing a loud skittering noise coming from a nearby grate, he lit a flare and gazed down upon DOZENS OF BODIES crawling with BUGS!

I mean, imagine THAT smell. But also, wow that's genuinely disturbing. Next thing we knew, all those bodies were being carted into the hospital, an endless procession of black bodybags on gurneys. Truly dark stuff.

The Sheriff and Parrish looked pretty upset about this, because honestly nothing threatens law enforcement job security more than when most of the citizens are murdered and thrown into a mass grave in the sewer. Parrish also seemed upset that his premonition of "everyone" being killed by the monster was starting to come true. But I admit I laughed when Stilinski instructed him to go look into missing persons reports to find out who these people were. Had there really been so many missing persons in this town that nobody knew these peoples' identities right away? That's honestly pretty grim. At least a band of local teen detectives had a theory about what was going on:

But, like a bigger monster than usual. It was a start!

Lydia's astral projection education was still going on, and in this case Meredith "locked" her in a cell and forced her to scream her way out. Lydia wasn't super into this idea, but Meredith was persuasive.

For being a Yoda figure, Meredith really was being a real hard-ass!

Meanwhile, Theo was going to help Malia find her mother, so I guess even though they were hanging out in the animal hospital, he had her meet up with him in the boys locker room (I am guessing he changed clothes in front of her, but that happened off camera) so that he could inject her with wolfsbane so that he could take her to the Dread Doctors' lair without her knowing where it was. It was a great and trustworthy plan without any flaws, and Malia immediately agreed.

This was only the beginning of what would prove to be a very annoying day for Malia!

This whole moment was so useless and wonderful. WHO IS THIS GUY? Question is NOT rhetorical because I want to know him. Anyway, because of all the dead bodies, the school was now being stalked by armed deputies, and the boys took the opportunity to question this blonde one, Deputy Strauss. And he sincerely told the boys that he believed something "supernatural" was going on, and they looked at each other bemused, or maybe hornily, who can tell. But the more lines Strauss is given each week the more I'm gonna just assume he's THE BEAST. Fingers crossedddd.

Kira's best (and kind of only) scene involved her father taking away her sword belt, on account of it was the weapon that her inner kitsune was most likely to use to murder people. Instead, he said she should use her OTHER, better weapon: her noggin! Or, really, her spirit. Which I guess made sense, seeing as she was smart and all. But will this lack of swordplay just make her inner kitsune more frustrated and more likely to pop out for more of those Mortal Kombat FINISH HIM moments?

Also it looks like sword belts are REALLY annoying to keep track of. This one just fell into a messy CGI pile onto his desk, like a bunch of razorblades. Is he going to store them together in a plastic baggie or what? Seems like a lot of trouble.

Speaking of trouble, Malia woke up in the Dread Doctors' lair and she was chained to a chair! Not a great start to her journey. But then Theo made her put on some goggles that he claimed could track any supernatural creature's geolocation (or whatever) and by the way, the goggles had tons of tiny spikes that stab you around the eye socket. This was one feature that Google Glass definitely lacked. But guess what? It worked.

Boom. Malia had spotted her mother, and as luck would have it, she was IN TOWN already. That's right, the Desert Wolf was chilling at some kind of abandoned military base and she was tying up Deaton for some reason, and now Malia and Theo were gonna go kick the sh*t out of her. Thanks for all the help, Theo. I trust him.





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