[WARNING: FULL EPISODE SPOILERS AHEAD!!]
We’re back with another absolutely riveting episode of MTV’s “Scream: The TV Series.” Last week was a big snoozer except for the last five minutes when everyone’s favorite Asian, Riley, was stabbed to death by Ghostface… or Brandon James… or who the fuck ever. When we return in this episode we’re still at the police station and Emma is super sad that Riley bled to death while FaceTiming on top of the police station (yeah…). Noah shows up and is super angry and starts yelling at the cops. Thank god this isn’t Ferguson or we’d have a fifth dead teenager on our hands! Together, Emma, Audrey and Noah – who never seem to be doing homework or anything high school related – vow to find out who killed Riley and why.
SCREAM: THE TV SERIES. SHINY SHINY! SHINK!
Sheriff Clark is talking to Maggie. Yay, everyone, Maggie’s still here… Maggie once again has her expert parenting skills on display and leavers her crying daughter, who just witnessed one of her best friends get killed, on the steps of the police station to examine Riley’s body. After she makes her “dramatic” exit a rookie police officer runs up and shows Sheriff Clark the Ghostface mask in a plastic bag and says that they found it in the debris of Tyler’s car crash crime scene. Clearly, Tyler was the killer… Clearly. Now all they have to do is find his head.
Piper Shay is doing her journalistic duties and recording podcast commentary for what I assume to be her 10s and 10s of listeners and she, too, is super sad about the death of Riley. You know who’s the saddest, though? Emma and Brooke. They’re crying and comforting each other and we get to see a much softer side of Brooke than we’ve seen in the last three episodes. She’s remorseful and genuinely blames her slutatious ways for being the reason for Riley’s demise. This is definitely going to be the turning point for Brooke in the series, but is it too late? I wish Nina got this much of a send off. Remember Nina? Their best friend that got killed in the first episode as an “homage” to Casey in Scream? Yeah, wasn’t as iconic as the creators wanted because no one cares.
Noah’s not as sad as everyone else, only broody. Audrey visits him for support and he tells her that maybe if he punched his v-card with Riley sooner he would have been the one to get killed instead. Audrey asks Noah if he’s going to the town hall press conference, but he says he’s not ready to face reality yet. I mean, you watched her die, bro, that should be reality enough for you. At the town hall press conference Will and Jake talk about trusting each other, which is funny because I’ve read so many comments online where fans of the show are theorizing that they are secret lovers. Next we meet Brooke’s dad, who coincidentally ends up being Lakewood’s mayor. He quickly passes the puck to Sheriff Clark who tells everyone what they want to hear: Tyler killed Nina and Riley and fled the scene before crashing his car off a cliff. He concludes his very aggressive speech with, “It’s over.”
After the press conference Audrey gets in Sheriff Clark’s face and demands to know if he’s going to continue Rachel’s murder investigation or if he’s just going to pin that on Tyler, too. Sheriff Clark is not the one and tells Emma to take her to a grief counselor before making a sassy exit. *z snaps* You go Sheriff KoKo. Maggie has another scene later on with Sheriff Clark where she says that they searched the lake and can’t find Tyler’s head. At the coffee shop, Will and Emma have a bonding scene that’s interrupted by Brooke – not Kieran, who won’t be appearing in this episode I guess – talking about nail polish. All of these scenes are kind of filler, just there to advance the plot, until Brooke gets sent a death pool created by the students of George Washington High. The pool is more of a poll where the kids are voting for who is going to die next and Brooke has 99% of the votes. Ouch.
When Emma gets home from work she discovers an ominous package which contains the George Washington High senior yearbook from 1994, the year of Brandon James. All of the pages are fucked up, with pictures missing so Maggie is present on every page, people crossed out and a message that tells Emma to go to where the mask was made. Emma shows the yearbook to Noah and Audrey and the girls decide to go to the hospital where Brandon James’ surgeries took place to search for clues. Good idea, definitely. When they arrive at the hospital we find that it’s abandoned, and that’s actually a really cool venue for some shit to go down at, but this is MTV so they’ll find a way to suck all of the horror out of a horror television series. Audrey brings a stun gun and a crowbar for protection and they’re off in search of mystery and suspense!
Meanwhile, Brooke is having identity issues and wishes that her mom wasn’t always away from home so they could talk. Her dad tries his best to comfort her, but she isn’t feeling it and leaves. Later on while she’s enjoying pool time, Brooke’s dad gives her a gift from her mother while awkwardly touching her leg. Brooke finally begins to open up to her father, and he begins to open up to her, but their bonding moment is interrupted by a text message, which her dad answers. This causes her to storm off and we see that the text message her dad received was blackmail from Will and Jake to the tune of $100,000 so that Will can go away to Duke University without the threat of student loans. The question is, what blackmail does the duo have on Brooke’s dad?
Back at the abandoned hospital, Audrey jokingly suggests splitting up. The two young women begin discussing who the killer could be and Audrey wonders why Emma thinks the killer is a man because women can kill just as well; which is a major nod to Randy and Tatum in Scream. Audrey also shows Emma the voice changer a la Scream 3 and demonstrates that Ghostface has been disguising his/her real voice. Eventually they discover a large, bloody trail leading to double doors with the Ghostface mask painted on it. Inside they find a dead pig with its heart and head missing, the heart obviously being the one that was mailed to Maggie. Next, they find the operating room where Brandon James received his reconstructive surgeries. It has x-rays, mask prototypes and a matress on the floor. Real classy. Suddenly, someone else is in the room and sneaking up behind them!
The girls knock him to the floor and are about to to taser his “man parts” when we see that it’s Noah. He’s mad that the girls didn’t invite him on the hunt for clues, but his anger turns to excitement when he sees the killer’s lair for the first time. He starts naming off famous serial killer movie lairs until they find another room with souvenirs from all the victims, Nina’s laptop and pictures of Emma hanging from the ceiling. Once again they are discovered and have to run for it, but not before Emma attempts to copy the hard drive from the lap top. As they make a break for it, Tyler’s head falls off the shelf. Finally, everyone will know he’s not the killer! After a small chase scene, it turns out to be Sheriff Clark trailing them due to an anonymous tip that people were breaking into the hospital. He is pissed. How dare he have to, ya know, work and be a police officer.
Sheriff Clark takes them back to the police station and dismisses Audrey and Noah, but keeps Emma until Maggie arrives. Am I the only one who thinks Maggie repeats the same three or four lines every single episode? Really, pay attention next time. While Emma is being interrogated by her her mother and Sheriff Clark, Audrey and Noah are quickly examining the hard drive only to discover that Emma took the memory card out too quickly and only one file transferred over. Noah uses his computer hacking skills to open the file and it auto-uploads to the popular slam page. Emma is telling Piper not to leave Lakewood just yet because she believes the killer is still at large, much in the same way Gale questioned Sydney in Scream (thanks for the insight superfan Mike Aspinwall! We conclude with everyone getting a mass text message. The file from Nina’s computer was a sex tape of Will and Emma’s first time.
