Teen Wolf 4×2 Review: 117

9 thoughts on “Teen Wolf 4×2 Review: 117”

1. I thought it was a much better episode than last week’s.

   I agree that young Derek and Stiles were hilarious. There are moments when it seems a bit jarring that Stiles is so much back to himself after what happened last season, but at the same time I do enjoy having the old familiar Stiles back.

   Lydia and Kira were great together, and I love the reminders of wealthy Lydia and super-smart Lydia.

   I’m curious about how Derek’s age-regression and memories will play out. I hope he remembers everything. It would be a shame to have established Parrish’s sympathy towards Derek and not have Derek remember it. And on a more basic level, I want Derek to remember that time with Stiles and Rafe.

   Jury’s still out for me regarding Malia. I thought her scene in the classroom was cute enough, but I don’t appreciate the show making Mr. Yukimura look bad in order to make Malia sympathetic and create some humor. I like Mr. Yukimura.

   The stuff with Peter, Kate and the Berserkers was fun in that Teen Wolf don’t-think-about-it-too-hard way.

   This episode felt more like a good season opener than last week’s episode. I guess I really missed Beacon Hills.

2. I personally like the fact that teen wolf opens as many questions as they answer, I think it keeps us on our toes and gives us a reason to come back to the show as well as making sure every episode is essential and not just a spoiler. but other than that I agree with your review 🙂

3. To address your question about the Eichen House bills: I’m not sure if you live in the US, but we don’t have government-subsidized healthcare here. We pay for private insurance to cover our medical costs. It almost never covers 100% of any cost, and the burden of payment for the balance is left to the patient (this is called a copayment). The coverage benefits of a private insurance plan vary from plan to plan. Insurance companies can offer as little or as much coverage as they want, there’s no regulation (except for Obamacare, but that didn’t kick in until 2013). In addition to a copayment, most plans make you pay a deductible, which is a specific amount of money that a patient must pay out of pocket for medical services before insurance payments will even kick in. An average deductible can range from $500-$2000, but it could be higher depending on how bad your plan is.

   Someone like the Sheriff in a small town like Beacon Hills would probably get coverage from the insurance plan offered by the county (likely an HMO), but it might not have very good benefits depending on the level of plan he can afford to pay for. HMOs, and many private insurance plans similar to HMOs, contract with specific doctors/hospitals/medical facilities in order to get discounted rates of service, creating something known as a “network.” If you go to see a doctor that’s inside your insurance company’s “network,” it will be much cheaper for the insurance company to bear the cost, so they will not make you pay a large copayment. But if you see a doctor “out of network,” your copayment will be much larger because the insurance company does not get the discounted rate of services.

   So I give you all of that long-winded explanation because it’s necessary to understand why our healthcare system is so complicated and expensive. Mental health services are not something that all insurance plans cover, and even some of the ones that do cover mental services have very strict rules. It’s quite likely that in a small town like Beacon Hills, Eichen House is an “out-of-network” facility, and the Sheriff’s insurance benefits are not enough to cover the cost of the stay. The insurance company may have flat out refused to pay for Stiles’ treatment altogether because it fell under a plan exclusion. All of these are completely realistic scenarios that would leave the Sheriff with hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars in medical bills.

   As for Malia and her dad’s bills… Who even knows? That storyline is so jumbled that I can’t even begin to speculate.

   Our healthcare system is sad and broken. 🙁

   1. This is what i, quite frankly, find annoying about Jeff as a writer. So, ‘real world’ rules only apply when they are relevant to the plot? In this case the US healthcare system (which you have amazingly written down!) just so he can have a reason for Stiles to consider offing one supernatural creature for the money to pay bills…and will not be applied when four teenagers were able to drive in and out of Mexico with a young Derek (without a passport) and Malia (i have a feeling she wouldn’t have one either), and not to mention evil Stiles killing people in the hospital without consequences for the real Stiles…i find such writing quite weak, and that’s why i’m not taking the whole ‘Eichen House bills’ thing seriously enough to link it to the current state of healthcare in the US…because that creepy place needs to be shut down pronto and i don’t think Jeff thinks highly of mirroring real world problems in his TV show, and making people feel aware of the healthcare system in the country

      There’s a different between creating a world where real world rules don’t apply and thus, making the scenario weird and silly (like Alice in Wonderland…a classic!) and creating a werewolf Tv show that applies ‘real world’ rules just to come up with a new plot line while ignoring everything else wrong with series…Teen Wolf doesn’t even seem to follow it’s own ‘fictional canon’ anymore…Jeff’s mentality is like the authors who change everything they have done just so they can tell the story at hand…this time: Hale secret vault, Eichen house bills, and again Malia

      i think the show is ignoring the audience’s intelligence, i’m not saying it needs to be perfect, but i feel the sudience deserves some sort of canonical structure to the series that’s in it’s 4th season…the viewership has gone down to S1 level in just the 2nd episode!

      Shows targeted at kids: Legend of Korra, even Pokemon, make more sense, and are able to have better canon, than what Jeff and his team of writers have been able to show in Teen Wolf

      1. I agree with you 100%. The writing on that show is not well thought out at all, and there are more inconsistencies than an intelligent viewer is able to stomach. I would argue though, that it’s not that Jeff only cares about reality when it suits the plot. It’s actually the opposite. Jeff and the writers care about reality only until some aspect of reality interferes with their plot ideas. Then twisting reality is completely acceptable as long as it gets the plot to move forward. Episode 3×20 is a perfect example of this. NOTHING in that episode reflects reality. Yet we have an entire follow up season with characters and plot points that build off 3×20. We’re expected to accept everything that happened in 3×20 regardless of how nonsensical it was, otherwise part of the story they’re trying to tell in S4 falls apart. This isn’t just bad writing. It’s a bad foundation.

         My thoughts are that, in regards to the healthcare aspect, you may be giving Jeff a little to much credit. All of that convoluted explanation I gave you probably isn’t something that Jeff consciously thinks about. I don’t think it’s supposed to be some big message about how messed up healthcare is in the US. To others it seems outrageous, but most Americans don’t think on the inner workings of our crappy healthcare system, because, for us, it just is. It’s a part of our way of life. All of that explanation I gave you basically gets boiled down in our heads to “health problems mean big medical bills.” So yes, those bills the Sheriff has are a plot device. All I was trying to say was that they’re a realistic plot device. It’s one of the ONLY realistic plot devices the show has, which is why this whole financial loss plot seems so outrageous to us. It’s like, really? Out of all the supernatural stuff that could happen, our characters are dealing with money problems?

         1. hahaha…yes, totally agree. I think the fact that out all the real life problems that could’ve been shown on Teen Wolf, getting ‘struggles with money’ really did get to me, even if it’s just a plot device

4. “The bill situation will definitely come into play when the Benefactor’s supernatural hit list is released and it might make Stiles consider killing a supernatural creature for cash.”

   Isn’t this a spoiler?

   1. As I”m still two episodes behind I’m unsure if it’s a spoiler or author speculation. If it’s a spoiler it should have been under a cut and I apologize. I’ll contact the author immediately.

      -Admin Angel

   2. It was mere speculation on may part. Having seen all the episodes of TW and analyzing them as well, sometimes the plot becomes way too obvious. The moment the episode showed the Sheriff having bills, and then the Benefactor (or whoever it was) stealing the Hale’s money at the end, i connected the two. Stiles being possessed by the Nogitsune was referred to in the premiere, and we know he has a dark side in him, that’s why i made the statement that he might consider killing a supernatural creature this season to pay the Eichen House bills, im still not even sure how they got the 50k to offer the hunters for Derek’s release…you can see from some of our previous posts, that we put a spoiler warning in them, but don’t do that when a post has predictions about future episodes, which may or may not come true as the series progresses

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