#to mirror how Liam was a social outcast because people though he was weird

[ki1ldeer]

SU phase over now back to regularly scheduled oc content

[pass-the-bechdel]

Teen Wolf full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

82% (eighty-two of one hundred).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

35.07%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Seven.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Two.

Positive Content Status:

Impressive and uplifting: it’s a show aimed at teens and young adults, and it recognises and takes full responsibility for representing a positive and progressive outlook to its audience. It’s a show full of complex, powerful, smart, skilled, wonderful, diverse female characters, and male characters who are emotional and vulnerable and honest and supportive with one another without judgment, and queer people living openly and happily without fear. I have had relatively minor quibbles, and I wouldn’t call it perfect representation, but it is easily the strongest example I currently have of the kind of positive representation I value (average rating of 3.18).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

Tough call, but season six part one edges out the competition by virtue of the highest percentage of female characters for the series (42.52%), which helps it to also score six episodes with 40%+ and three with their casts balanced or female-led at 50%+. It also turned in a 90% pass on the Bechdel.

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Season two, which featured both of the series’ under-20% female cast episodes, and turned in a total percentage of 26.5%, with only 58.3% on the Bechdel. It’s saving grace: the second-highest positive representation score of the series (3.41).

Overall Series Quality:

An absolute delight, end to end. It’s outrageous, it’s bombastic, it is, at times, ridiculous. But it embraces this about itself, it owns it and loves it and revels in it, and it maintains itself with remarkable consistency and never shows any sign of being embarrassed to be just exactly what it is. In a way, that’s another point in favour of the positive message it sends to its audience; there’s no reason to consider Teen Wolf a guilty pleasure, something to hesitate or equivocate before admitting your enjoyment, for it never hesitates or equivocates about itself. It’s an honest and uncomplicated kind of pleasure, and I, unabashedly, love it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

“You’re not a monster,” Scott declares, at the triumphant conclusion of the Teen Wolf series finale, “you’re a werewolf. Like me.” It’s a reiteration of the same line he uttered to his new beta, Liam, back in season four, and it’s a thoroughly earned mission statement for the show, a declaration that being different is ok, even if others have made you feel like an outcast for it, even if it’s difficult, even if it hurts. The way you are is ok, you have value as you are, and you are not alone. It’s easy to be cynical about that if it isn’t a message you personally need to hear, but for the youths in Teen Wolf’s target audience - especially the large queer contingent - it’s a crystal-clear affirmation that could not be more important, and not one made lightly. After all, it’s easy to make statements that sound glossy and progressive, but if you want people to really take it to heart, you have to earn it. Don’t just say it; demonstrate it. Whatever else you might think of this silly schlocky show, it didn’t just walk the walk with its representation: it strode out with pride. 

With a show that performed so admirably, it’s hard to know what to discuss in summary: the female characters really are so varied and wondrous, so complex and realistically flawed and none of them ever shamed for being different to the rest (because different is ok). The male characters really are so refreshingly low on toxic masculinity, or alternately, they have the limitations and the damage of toxic masculinity so thoroughly exposed through their narrative arcs that there’s no question about the show promoting emotionally healthy openness as a masculine ideal. The queer characters really are so numerous and loved and never made to suffer for their identities (though, if one is quibbling, there was certainly a preponderance of queer males compared to a pretty limited supply of queer females, and don’t think I forgot how they teased us with the idea of queer Stiles early on but never canonically delivered). At the end of the day though, I have discussed the above all over the individual episode/season posts, and what I really want to talk about now is how well they packaged their lesson of diverse acceptance for a young audience, because that target intention is where the show’s progressive ethos really shone.

Not all teen-targeted shows take it upon themselves to teach good morals, and to suggest that they should can come off as infantalising; as if young adults are still children, needing to be taught fundamental behaviours. Setting aside the fact that in some cases they really, really do need that (otherwise they become maladjusted adults who still really, really need those lessons on fundamental behaviours such as accepting other people for being different, et al.), the result of either option is often a bit of a disaster: you get teen shows that ignore their moral responsibility and consequently teach/reinforce incredibly damaging and even dangerous ways of thinking, or you get teen shows that treat their audience like morons while preaching in an embarrassingly out-of-touch fashion. For this reason, I have rarely enjoyed shows targeted at young adult audiences (even when I was part of that demographic) and I normally avoid such programming. As such, I am not a connoisseur of teen shows, but of the ones I have indulged Teen Wolf is absolutely the standout, not only for just getting me on pretty much every socio-political and entertainment level available, but for the attitude it takes toward that aforementioned target audience: specifically, how very in-tune it is with the way the demographic thinks and acts.

Whether a bad teen-targeted show is of the morally-irresponsible kind or the morally-preachy kind, the core problem is the same: they promote shame. It might be shame in the form of peer pressure, encouraging wild, foolish, and inconsiderate behaviour because ‘that’s what teens are like’ and making their young impressionable audience feel like weird losers if they don’t mirror the actions and attitudes depicted on their favourite shows, or it might be shame in the form of heavy-handed judgment, the idea that any experimentation or pushing at the borders of authority are absolutely BAD AWFUL things that only BAD AWFUL people do. For Teen Wolf, being in-tune with the audience means understanding that there are certain things that teenagers are extremely likely to do regardless of whether they have permission, and approaching those things as part of the audience’s reality within that spirit of understanding, focusing not on shame but rather on promoting positive and responsible behaviour. It’s really not rocket science, but somehow it’s still a wonderful anomaly. Instead of depicting teen sex as a taboo or a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t world full of dirty sluts and naive virgins, Teen Wolf is sex positive, even-handed across the spectrum of sexual activity and promoting enthusiastic consent and open discussion of boundaries. Instead of depicting teen drinking as either the worst of crimes or a guaranteed gateway to regrettable actions or something you just gotta do in order to have fun and fit in, Teen Wolf encourages making your own decisions for your own reasons, and watching out for your friends to make sure everyone gets home safe. It certainly doesn’t depict a conflict-free world where no one ever makes a bad choice or does anything stupid or selfish; it just doesn’t approach normal human behaviour with an air of judgment. There’s just no shame.

What makes this really significant is that it’s part and parcel of the whole acceptance ethos: it’s not just werewolf metaphors or telling kids that gay is ok. In order to really craft a message about not feeling ashamed to be who you are and how you are, you need to let the message touch all parts of the story, and all parts of the character’s lives, not just the big obvious points of contention. It’s a great way to be morally responsible with your impressionable audience without getting preachy and trying to tell them how to live: just encourage them to be considerate and wise about their choices by showing them how it’s beneficial for everyone, demonstrate, don’t just tell. Not rocket science at all. The other thing is that it really doesn’t need to be thought of as a ‘lesson’ at all; it’s just people being depicted in a non-judgmental fashion as they try their best to do the right thing in whatever situations they encounter. Sometimes they mess up, and sometimes they repeat mistakes, and sometimes they get overwhelmed, but they’re trying and they’re growing as people, and that’s the best you can ask of anyone, whether they’re supernatural teenagers on a tv show or not. Really, it’d be nice if more entertainment media spared a thought to reinforcing fundamental moral principles in their everyday content, because the world sure as Hell is full of maladjusted adults who are still absorbing and entrenching bad attitudes normalised in their television consumption. There’s no reason we should only expect this level of attentiveness from stories aimed at young people. That said, if this show were not targeted at young adults, it probably also wouldn’t be as good, because the reality is that the majority of ‘grown-up’ programming makes little to no effort to challenge the perceived social status quo. We’re probably lucky they kept the teen part of Teen Wolf when they adapted this story for television (the original 1985 film of the same name is NOT progressive or accepting, and I can’t recommend it - the show kept mercifully little beyond the basic idea of a teenage werewolf).

What Teen Wolf has done - and certainly not by accident - is create an entertaining safe space. For all that Beacon Hills is full of supernatural horror and grisly murders and nightmare fuel and sometimes, straight-up Nazi ideology, on an individual personal level it is a place without shame, a place where even when the characters feel backed into a corner with no good options, we can see that they have support, they have friends and family and slightly-nutty lacrosse coaches who have got their backs in a crisis, they have intelligence and skills and the hard-won knowledge of experience that will help them find a way; there is always an element of virtue shining within every moment. They still feel desperate sometimes, and hopeless, and alone. There are still a lot of bad things in their world, and sometimes that stuff is too big and too terrifying to bear, and the real world is like that too. You don’t have to be a teenager - or a werewolf - for that struggle to resonate, and you certainly don’t have to be either of those things in order to value a fiction in which being judged, marginalised, or mistreated for being the way you are is not a concern you have to add to your roster of ills. There are plenty enough terrible things in the world still, and sometimes what we really need is a little space to believe that there’s some inherent good left, too. Even if no problem is ever completely fixed, even if there will always be hate and evil and horror out there, waiting. You are valuable as you are, and someone’s gonna have your back. 

This is exactly the context in which Scott utters that final triumphant line “You’re not a monster, you’re a werewolf. Like me”, echoing that same thing he told Liam when he was miserable and afraid of what he had become and what it would mean for his life. It’s a sentiment that Scott earned from his own misery, his own fear, his own battle with having his life upended irreparably against his will. Scott is being for the new generation what no one was for him; he’s taking his hardships and forging them into a lifeline for those who come after, so that they don’t have to struggle as hard as he did. He’s doing better, one step, one person at a time. The parallel there isn’t hard to draw; the affirmation can’t get any clearer. You can’t have real representation - on any level - if you don’t have unconditional acceptance, and you can’t have unconditional acceptance if you don’t let the demonstration of it permeate your narrative. You can’t just say it. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. Unlikely as it might seem, schlocky and silly as this show was with its Steampunk doctors and Demon wolves and mountain aaaaassshhh, it was also a show dedicated to demonstrating - in varied and delightful detail - the kind of young people it hoped to be reflecting as they stepped out into adulthood. It’s easy to be cynical about that, but it isn’t useful, and there’s a kind of shame wrapped up in cynicism. Teen Wolf, to its utmost credit, was always far too busy embracing its own quirks to ever let cynicism in. I miss it already.