Teen Wolf recap: 'Genotype'/'Broken Glass'

This is the second time this season that MTV has aired two Teen Wolf episodes back to back, and it’s the second time that I’ve felt like one of the hours was better than the other. In this case, the second hour — though I still have some issues with it — felt much stronger to me than the first. But regardless, some big stuff happened, and that’s something I’m very happy to say considering the slower pace of the season.

We start at the clinic, where Scott is playing a voicemail from a flip phone — A FLIP PHONE! — that they got off the faceless body in the woods. Whoever is on the other end of the line, it’s a concerned mother, and they’re thinking she could be the Anuk-Ite’s other face. (Reminder: Its first face is Aaron.)

Deciding on a plan of attack, Scott thinks Mason and Theo should go looking for Aaron while he and Liam try to figure out who is on the other end of the phone call. With two people looking for each of the Anuk-Ite’s faces, they’ll hopefully have a better chance at keeping those two people apart, because once the Anuk-Ite merges its faces…well, we don’t actually know. But we can assume it won’t be good.

Reinventing the catchphrase from Heroes, Scott dramatically declares: “Stop the Anuk-Ite. Stop the war.” Or you know, save the cheerleader, save the world.

While Mason and Theo begin their journey into the tunnels — the last place “the faceless” was spotted — Scott and Liam debate how to find the woman on the phone. Liam starts to call the number back before Scott shuts that plan down. But Liam had already dialed, so it’s not a surprise when they receive a call back and realize it’s from Beacon Hills High School. Listening to the voicemail again, Liam figures out who it is: Ms. Finch, his biology teacher. And that means Liam is going back to school!

Sitting in class, Liam tries everything he can think of to get Ms. Finch to expose her supernatural side. He sets off one of Argent’s high-pitched things — their official name — and then puts wolfsbane on the chalkboard eraser. And yet all Ms. Finch does is sneeze. However, when she sees the wolfsbane on her fingers, she recognizes it and quickly dismisses the class — everyone but Liam.

Scott, realizing he can’t leave Liam alone with Ms. Finch, walks in playing the voicemail, which Ms. Finch says she left for her daughter. Scott believes Ms. Finch was part of The Primal, so he has to break the news to her that her entire pack is dead, to which I say: BUT IS SHE A WOLF?! Because she didn’t react to wolfsbane or Argent’s high-pitched thing. How is that possible?!

Liam and Scott try to explain that her daughter could now be one half of an evil being, and that’s when she reveals that her daughter is Quinn, a.k.a. the werewolf who was shot by the deputy a few episodes ago. Ms. Finch allows Liam to call her daughter to get her to the school, but she won’t let him hurt her. When Quinn arrives, Ms. Finch hits Scott and Liam with wolfsbane…but she quickly regrets that when her now-evil daughter attacks her with her purple eyes. Yep, she’s the Anuk-Ite’s other face.

While all of this is going on, I should mention that Lydia and Malia are trying to figure out how Halwyn communicated with Lydia last week. Lydia doesn’t think he’s fully dead, and she has an idea: Malia can press against Lydia’s chest in order to render her unconscious. Lydia can then, hopefully, communicate with Halwyn. And guess what? It works!

Lydia wakes up and announces that Halywn isn’t dead and that she knows how to save him. Sure, it involves moving his body from the morgue to a completely empty MRI machine, but clearly no one actually works at this hospital — what has Melissa been doing all these years?! — so it’s no big deal. They’re going to use the magnet from the MRI to pull the bullet from his brain. But wait. The bullet was coated in silver, so when Halwyn starts to heat up and heal — as Hellhounds do — that silver will melt and seep into his brain. In other words, if they bring him back from the dead, silver poisoning will kill him…again. (Next: A death with little emotional impact)

Lydia and Malia take a few minutes to argue about what’s right, but in the end, this guy could be their only hope when it comes to finding a way to defeat the Anuk-Ite, so they do it. And, as expected, the poor guy wakes up only to collapse seconds later as silver starts to ooze out of his nose. He then tells them that they can’t stop or kill the Anuk-Ite; all they can do is keep it from finding its other half. And if the faces merge, you can’t look at it. Halwyn’s final words are: “It will kill you with a look.” (So it’s like the supernatural version of Coach Taylor?)

Okay, before we get back to the boys, we need to talk about Halwyn’s death scene, because I think it illustrates one of my struggles with this season. A few episodes ago, we watched hundreds of bullets fly through Scott’s house and into the room where he and his loved ones were standing. Many people were hit, but they all lived. I’m not saying I WANT someone to die, but if I’m going to feel like the stakes are higher than ever, you can’t just tell me they are. I need to see it. And watching Malia and Lydia cry as Halwyn dies? It didn’t make me emotional. I’ve heard this guy say maybe five sentences on this show. I feel nothing for him. I feel like this season is really banking on viewers caring about characters they’ve just recently met, whether it be Nolan, Monroe, or Halwyn. And I just don’t. But maybe it’s me?

Back to the action! In the tunnels, Mason lets Theo know that he’ll never trust him just in time for Aaron to show up with a bat. But when Theo hits Aaron, Quinn also screams out in pain…and Aaron hears it. That’s how the two halves are going to find each other. Before anyone can figure out what’s happening — or rather, before Theo listens to Mason — Aaron shoves Theo’s claws into his stomach and listens for Quinn’s howl.

While Scott stays with an injured Ms. Finch — who does turn out to be a wolf and I HAVE QUESTIONS — Liam goes after Quinn, but by the time he gets to the library, Aaron’s there too. I know what you’re thinking: There’s no way they can let them merge so quickly; surely there’s more drama to draw from that. But they do!

Quinn and Aaron kiss and then fight to the death and Aaron wins, quickly transforming into the very freaky-looking Anuk-Ite, who quite literally turns anyone who looks at him to stone. Thankfully, Lydia gets to the school in time to pull Liam away before he can catch a glance.

So, how do they fight something they can’t look at? Deucalion, that’s how.

As the episode comes to a close, Scott and Malia decide he needs to get Ms. Finch’s blood off of him with a sexy shower scene. And at the hospital, the Anuk-Ite wanders the halls, rudely turning medical professionals into statues before he wanders into the morgue, and Gerard — with his back to the Anuk-Ite, of course — makes the creature a deal. Gerard will weaken Scott McCall with poison if the Anuk-Ite will kill him. And then Gerard will proceed to drive “every last one of their kind from Beacon Hills.” Although, if he’s talking about supernatural beings, wouldn’t that include the Anuk-Ite?

Regardless, another one of my struggles with this story is that we have Halwyn warning us not to let the two faces merge only for them to merge minutes later. As happy as I am to see things happening again, the pacing of it all still feels off, and again, it’s affecting my ability to really feel the danger. That being said, the next hour was better, in my opinion, so let’s get to it.

The second episode starts with Argent hopping into a police car in the middle of the night in Brazil. He forks over some money in exchange for information, and as the police officer tells him, the story begins with mass murder. As he talks, we cut to the scene of the crime: Twelve werewolves were killed, and someone very angry showed up to find out why. He was impossibly fast and had teeth as sharp as razors. He also has incredibly dark facial hair, a tendency to brood, and the kind of face you’ve been waiting years to see: IT’S DEREK HALE!

After taking out roughly 10 guys or so, Derek learns that Gerard is the one after him. And he wants Derek specifically. Now, Argent has to find him first. (Next: Deucalion returns to help Scott and Malia)

Back in Beacon Hills, Monroe is basically playing show-and-tell with Ethan as she rallies her troops. “It’s their turn to be hunted,” she shouts to cheers from her army. She then welcomes them to the armory as they each choose their weapon of choice. “Help yourselves” she tells them, as if it’s a buffet (of automatic weapons).

But when Ethan asks Nolan, “Where is Jackson?” Lydia sits up in bed and says the same thing. And now she needs to know why. Only, when she shows up at Scott’s house, she doesn’t find Scott. She finds Peter, who’s apparently looking for Malia. Neither one of them can be reached due to the fact that several cell towers are down. It seems Monroe is cutting them off from the outside…and one another.

Together, Lydia and Peter start looking for Scott and Malia, but when they turn up empty handed, Lydia confesses that, in one of her visions, she saw Peter turned to stone. Not only that, but she saw everyone turned to stone: Malia, Derek, Ethan, and even Scott. “Do you ever see anything remotely optimistic?” Peter asks. But it turns out her story is helpful, because when they figure out she was surrounded by shipping containers in this vision, Peter knows where Scott is.

Spoiler: He and Malia are in fact surrounded by shipping containers, but they haven’t turned to stone…yet. They’re training with Deucalion in the hopes that he can teach them how to fight blind in one day. And I’m not going to lie: I like this concept of a training sequence with a bit of humor, but for this to be Scott and Malia’s story for the entire episode felt like a stretch. Every time the camera cut back to them and they were STILL training and STILL sucking, I was a little less interested. That said, the way it ends is great. But we’ll get back to that.

In Brazil, Argent catches up with Derek, and I am already loving this so much. Their banter is perfection, and I have missed Derek more than I even realized. As Argent soon finds out, Derek is on his way to yet another Hale vault so that he can lock away the yellow wolfsbane he’s carrying around with him because Gerard wants it. But before he can get to the vault, Kate shows up!!!

She kills some FBI agents and shoots both Derek and her brother so that she can take the yellow wolfsbane back to Beacon Hills and put it inside a bullet…a bullet with Scott’s name on it. Yeah, yeah, Kate. We’ve heard it all before. While Derek goes after her, he tells Argent to get back to Beacon Hills and warn Scott. And now I’m left wondering why we didn’t spend this entire episode hanging out with Argent and Derek in Brazil?!

Back in Beacon Hills, Nolan finally picks the right side when he sneaks Liam into the hospital to show him a room filled with what we assume to be werewolves hooked up to IVs that contain wolfsbane. Neither one knows what it means, but when Mason and Corey arrive at the hospital to help, one thing is clear: They just walked into a trap, and they’re the bait.

Before Nolan can leave the hospital, Gabe beats him to a pulp after revealing that Monroe predicted that Nolan would abandon their cause and bring Liam here. And in doing so, he just helped the bad guys.

Speaking of those bad guys, Stilinski and Parrish realize that Monroe is having her people pull accident reports from the last decade while nurses hand over the charts of any patients who have miraculously healed. This is an operation, and they’re coming for everyone.

That brings us back to Scott, who finally takes down Deucalion just as Lydia and Peter show up. As Lydia announces, “None of us are going to survive this,” Peter warns that Monroe’s army is coming with heavy firepower…and before he can finish his sentence, Deucalion is shot more than once in the back. Scott and company then face down a large number of automatic weapons as the episode ends.

Overall, this hour had more going for it than the first (including a great soundtrack). I’ve already talked about my love of the Derek stuff, but this episode really started to feel like there was a major threat, and I’m not sure how Scott and his pack are going to overcome it. And shooting (and potentially killing?) Deucalion — though it’s not as major as what I think this season needs — is a step in the right direction. Remember when Deucalion was the big bad wolf everyone feared?! Well, this army just took him down, so everyone should be afraid. I just hope the finale keeps that tension and gives us the kind of payoff we deserve.

What did you think of the episodes? Hit the comments with your thoughts or find me on Twitter @samhighfill.