Teen Wolf 101: An introduction to the eighth wonder of our world.

Anyone who follows me on Tumblr will know that the past month of my life has been a rapid downward spiral into Teen Wolf obsession. Circa June 2012, I was still innocent of the wonders of Teen Wolf; completely unaware that it is the Shakespeare of our era/Twilight for people who enjoy emotions that make sense/set in a beautiful alternate universe where homophobia doesn't exist. My life was empty and barren, a tragic wasteland wherein I laboured under the assumption that Teen Wolf was a mediocre MTV show populated by a cast of bad actors with great hair. The real honest true truth is that every actor in Teen Wolf has brilliant comic timing (in addition to, yes, great hair), and one of the main characters is played by a guy who, despite having zero previous acting experience, is so talented his that his very presence onscreen is like an icecream scoop directly out of my heart. One day he will be showered with Oscars and Emmys and adoring fanmail from around the world, but in the meantime he'll have to make do with people like me reblogging 40,000 gifs of his face every day. This actor is Dylan O'Brien. He plays Stiles.

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If you watch Teen Wolf, you love Stiles. If you don't watch Teen Wolf, you are merely living through a brief period of confusion prior to the inevitability of falling in love with Stiles.

An accurate illustration of Teen Wolf fans & their attitude towards Stiles. (source)

I won't even attempt to write about the events of Teen Wolf in their entirety, partly because it's impossible to summarise a show that amounts to the distilled essence of perfection, and partly because that would take about 50,000 words. Because I'm a really good-hearted person, though, I will provide a brief 10-point guide to the defining points of Teen Wolf as it stands as the cultural touchstone of my generation.

(N.B. This post contains no direct spoilers for recent eps but since I'm writing it midway through season 2, you can assume that it's not suitable for people who are intensely invested in the idea of watching the series ~completely pure~. I've posted links to sources for all gifs, but if you made one of them and would prefer different crediting or for me to remove it from this page, just comment.) 

1. Scott McCall, the main character, is a moron. Bitten by a werewolf in episode 1, he proceeds to get into trouble and stupidly ignore Stiles' advice on a regular basis. He is played by Tyler Posey who, when asked about Scott's "black and white" attitude to loyalty, replied, "Scott's Mexican, I think." There is no such thing as a non-awesome interview with a member of the Teen Wolf cast.

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In real life, Tyler Posey and Dylan O'Brien live together. If you want to see a video of Tyler Posey answering fan questions while Dylan O'Brien cooks dinner and lays the table in the background, then this is your lucky day because that is a thing that exists in real life.

2. Stiles is beautiful like a timelapse video of a blossoming flower, and is the best mother any young wolf could possibly hope for.

A painting. (copyright rubdown.) (source)

Stiles is the emotional heart of the show. His mother died a few years ago, and now he lives with his father, the sheriff. Stiles' relationship with his father is a source of unending delight because they're so funny together (Stiles is Veronica Mars!!) but occasionally super upsetting as well because Stiles is the only person in the show who has a mature, functioning relationship with a parent but still has to lie to his dad almost every day. The worst thing is that since Stiles' dad is the sheriff, he knows that Stiles is involved in something dangerous but can't work out what it is because "werewolf gang-war" is kind of hard to deduce from the information given. 

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Aside from "every single moment of Teen Wolf", the best moments in this show are the moments when Dylan O'Brien is onscreen, doing anything whatsoever. His face is a painting and his comic timing is perfect and his pratfall abilities are on a par with Hugh Laurie's. The thing about Stiles is that you first get sucked in by Dylan O'Brien's dorky charm and ability to fling his whole body into his comedy scenes, but after a few episodes you begin to realise that not only is he the best actor in the cast, Stiles is basically the most lovable character ever. Stiles is the planner, the strategic thinker, the researcher.... basically, he's the Hermione Granger of the show. He's the Hermione and the Willow Rosenberg and the Giles.

3. Derek Hale is a lonesome werewolf whose main hobbies are shirtlessness and being sad because his family were viciously murdered by an anti-werewolf racist "hunter". He has a lot of emotions but sometimes they take a long time to float to the surface via the murky depths of his damaged psyche because he is so deep and dark like a well full of sadness and anger and abdominal muscles. (This is the reason why there are some episodes where he doesn't have any facial expressions.) Derek Hale is a CGI creation who was originally designed for videogame cut scenes but was deemed too distracting because he's so attractive.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

This is the one gif in existence wherein Derek Hale smiles. This is the complete opposite of the actor who plays him, Tyler Hoechlin, who smiles all the time and is an adorable furball who records adorable Teen Wolf adverts with Dylan O'Brien:

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4. The Argents are a family of werewolf hunters, headed up by the intensely terrifying Gerard Argent, who is played by Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. Allison Argent is our primary view into the family, a fresh-faced teenager (played by an extremely fresh-faced 27-year-old) who, at the beginning of the series, has no idea that her family are professional werewolf hunters. Because Teen Wolf is fraught with fraughtness, Allison is in a relationship with werewolf Scott McCall. It's all terribly Romeo & Juliet.

Allison's parents are Victoria and Chris Argent. Victoria Argent is the polar opposite of Stiles because she's the worst mother of all time + a werewolf racist + hates everyone. She looks like a cross between Cruella DeVille and a velociraptor, and her greatest wish is to put Scott into a meat-grinder. Chris Argent is marginally less unhinged and is possibly being set up for some kind of role-reversal because unlike his father, wife, or sister Kate Argent (who is extra unhinged and thinks torturing people is fun), he follows a hunter code that only allows him to kill werewolves who are a) adults, and b) murderers. Important Teen Wolf factoid: According to Tyler Posey, the actor who plays Chris Argent has extremely soft facial hair that he, Tyler, enjoys to touch and stroke. Remember what I said about there being no such thing as a non-awesome Teen Wolf cast interview? Yes.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

5. Lydia is a lady and a genius and a role-model, but her life is a continuous river of tears and awfulness because she's preyed upon by the Tom Riddle of undead evil werewolves, plus none of her friends have explained to her what's going on re: the existence of Actual Real-Life Werewolves. She's the "popular girl" and Stiles is tragically infatuated with her because in addition to being stunningly beautiful, she's a math and science genius. Every instant of Stiles hopelessly crushing on Lydia is a moment that stabs an icicle directly into my heart and sends tiny ice-particles through my veins to travel around my body and eventually turn me into Mr Freeze.

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6. Jackson is the last of the primary teenager-aged main characters (although he is played by a 24-year-old), and is the Draco Malfoy to Scott's Harry Potter because he's rich, malicious, and obsessed with being better than Scott at quidditch lacrosse. Aside from the fact that he looks exactly like an Abercrombie & Fitch model, Jackson is a black hole when it comes to redeeming features. He is a rage-douche and a lizard, and unlike with Lydia almost everything bad that happens to him is 100% due to his own hubris. He desperately wanted to become a werewolf so he could be better at lacrosse (Everyone in Teen Wolf is obsessed with lacrosse. Don't question it.) but instead of becoming a werewolf he began to grow an Evil Manicure that drips paralytic poison and led to his eventual Pokemon evolution of transforming into a giant lizard.

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In season 1, Jackson had three settings: Shirtless, Ragedouche, and Being A Dick. In season 2 a fourth category was added: Lizard. His favourite things are ruining Scott's life and playing lacrosse by himself at night because he's angry about how hard it is to be a super-hot millionaire teenager who is only co-captain of the lacrosse team instead of just captain. He's played by Colton Haynes, who is second only to Holland Roden (Lydia) for most ridiculous Hollywood stagename in the Teen Wolf cast roster of ridiculous Hollywood stagenames. Colton Haynes was almost cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies (just as Tyler Posey was almost cast as Jacob Black; Teen Wolf is full of Twilight rejects), but was thrown over for Robert Pattinson, possibly because when you google him you find pictures of him making out with other dudes. He is a sassy Ken Doll and likes to take ridiculous photos with Holland Roden and cries when he listens to Adele.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

7. Aside from his near-supernatural ability to be unintentionally hilarious while shouting at people, the best thing about Jackson is his best friend Danny. Danny is sensible and wry and generally delightful, as well as being the least convincing teenager in the entire show. He's also the only character whose life isn't an unending series of disasters and melodrama, because he purposefully remains ignorant of the whole werewolves/murder/peril thing about which Stiles, Scott, Allison and Jackson are so obsessed.

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Danny isn't really a main character but his role is representative of one of my favourite aspects of Teen Wolf: the showrunners' attitude towards the inclusion of LGBT characters. LGBT people are ridiculously unrepresented on TV, and although we're now getting past the point where all such characters are stereotypes, most of their storylines still centre around "issues" episodes and/or LGBT themed storylines like coming out or dealing with homophobia. But Teen Wolf? Exists in an alternate universe where homophobia has pretty much been eradicated. Really the only problem I have with Teen Wolf in this regard is that I'd like there to be a couple more female characters next season.

Teen Wolf is the only show I have ever seen that contains "gay jokes" that don't revolve around gay panic and/or internalised homophobia. The sports coach -- stereotypically one of the last bastions of 1950s-style homophobia and masculinit -- tries to fix Scott up with a guy in one of the several scenes that strongly imply that characters in the Teen Wolf universe don't expect each other to be "straight until proven otherwise" but are open-minded to a degree that rarely exists in real life. With regards to the treatment of gay characters, Teen Wolf seems to me like a new breed of TV show, the next step on from LGBT themed series like Queer As Folk and shows like Torchwood that contain a lot of queer themes but are still riddled with "issues episodes" and homophobia-based conflict. Obviously this wouldn't work for every show, but for a lighthearted comedy-drama show like Teen Wolf it's ideal.

gif from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

8. The wolf pack. Isaac, Boyd and Erica only show up in season 2, so this section is slightly more spoilery than the rest of the post. Derek bites them because he wants a pack of his own to help fight the growing numbers of hunters coming to town, which turns out to be a terrible decision because Derek put precisely zero thought into who he should bite. Prior to The Bite, Isaac and Erica are alienated and afraid, but because Derek told them that being a werewolf would make them powerful, The Bite has the placebo effect of making them take on the characteristics of that which they think is most empowering. So Isaac goes from being an awkward, frightened abuse-survivor to being an assholish highschool burnout, and Erica goes from being an antisocial outcast to being a sexxxy vamp who shows up to school wearing a leather bustier and tries to control boys with the power of her cleavage. According to Isaac and Erica, the primary symptoms of becoming a werewolf are to start wearing a lot of black leather all the time, and to act real sassy.

SERIOUSLY. THEY LOOK LIKE THIS.

Derek's pack is a complete fiasco because Derek is too busy brooding to competently teach his kids how to function as werewolves. It turns out that the best way to form a loyal band of followers is not to recruit emotionally damaged teenagers whose main goal in life is to be popular. Who knew? (Stiles, probably.) Derek may look like he was carved out of granite to the specifications of a romance novelist (TYLER HOECHLIN FOR CHRISTIAN GRAY!!) but he's kind of a Zoolander when it comes to leadership skills and forward planning.

Boyd is the third of Derek's puppies, and if there's any justice in the world he'll end up being Derek's second in command. Part of the reason why Isaac and Erica are so terrible at werewolfing is because Derek never gave them a "The strength of the wolf is the pack; The strength of the pack is the wolf," pep-talk, but Boyd is smart enough to infer this for himself. He actually seems to have a survival strategy in place, and exhibits signs of having some common sense. Maybe this is because unlike Isaac and Erica, the implication is that his everyday life requires him to far more independant.

9. Teen Wolf realism. I'm going to be referring to this a lot in future reviews, so here's a basic rundown of how reality works in Teen Wolf. At one end of the scale we have basic worldbuilding facts like the existence of werewolves and the absense of homophobia: totally fine. At the other end we have weird, laughable details that make you go "WTF" because they're so clearly not grounded in reality. For example, this week's episode -- cleverly titled "Raving" -- took place at a warehouse rave, which cost $75 to get into. $75 per ticket, for a warehouse party populated by teenagers? No. If I spent that much money to go to a party then it'd better involve trapeze artists and complimentary class-C drugs at the very least, not just a bunch of people half-heartedly dancing to Teen Wolf's ever-present soundtrack of dramatic dubstep.

A more consistent example of Teen Wolf "realism" would be the mysterious absense of city-wide panic in Beacon Hills. As of season 2, the body count in this town (plus break-ins at the school, and the mysterious "animal attacks" that regularly cause widespread property damage) is worryingly high, yet no one seems to be freaking out about it. Even Sheriff Stilinski doesn't seem as worried as he should be, considering the fact that he shows up at every crime scene and sees his son hanging out at those crime scenes as well. I can only assume that season 3 will bring some outside law-enforcement into the mix to stir up more trouble.

10. The boys' locker room. Hopefully you already have enough reasons to watch this marvel of a show, but if you need any more persuasion and are of the attracted-to-men persuasion, here's a Teen Wolf PSA for you: in addition to the show's disproportionately tiny quantity of shirts vs torsos, a truly stupendous number of scenes take place in the boys' locker room. Scenes in the boys' locker room are the "Why is Dr McCoy on the bridge of the Enterprise??" of Teen Wolf. The boys' locker room is needlessly home to so many dramatic fights and plot-points that it gets its very own rule in the Teen Wolf Drinking Game that my brother and I selflessly invented for the good of humanity.

Viewing guide: If you're still unsure about whether or not to embark upon Teen Wolf, I advise watching episodes 4 and 9 of season 1. With the basic info from this primer you don't really need to watch the first few eps, but skipping directly onto season 2 would mean missing out on too much awesomeness!