TV Review: Scream the Series (Season 1, Episode 3)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

EPISODE: WANNA PLAY A GAME?

THE DISH: When the dark and devious secrets of Emma's momma Maggie come to light, the killer uses them to play a cunningly cruel game to terrorize both. Could Brandon James really be back?

WARNING: MINOR TO MAJOR SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS EPISODE, STOP READING HERE!

THE DICE-UP: After a pair of pretty pulsing stints that claimed the lives of three unsuspecting teens the past two weeks, the third episode of Scream the Series – tauntingly titled Wanna Play A Game? – aptly toyed with our expectations a bit to open up this week. That is, the gore was delivered, but via Randy James in a flashback to 1994. No main characters caught the blade to kick things off this week, which, while fun and a gratefully disparate from weeks prior, also felt less consequential. Oh well, all that was made up during the wildly unforeseen last 10 minutes. Good god! But enough crying over spilled blood, let's really get into what happened this week in Lakewood. A lot of moving (body)parts!

So not only did Emma learn this week that Rachel's death was indeed a homicide made to look like suicide, she found out her coroner mama Maggie is harboring more skeletons in her closet than her own damn morgue. Being the object of Brandon James' maniacally murderous obsession, for one. And why Clark the sheriff is looking for Emma's dad, for another. All worthy of giving mama the old Ricky Ricardo riot act. Lots of explaining! Good thing Emma is back in Audrey's good graces, having told her the truth about Rachel, and also has the help of Kieran and his dad's 20 year old police records to find some damn answers about what the hell happened to her mom all those years ago. Then again, too bad our crazy killer is now DM'ing Emma under the screen name Brandon James_94. Can't the poor girl catch a goddamn break?!

Meanwhile, I wasn't really feeling the whole Jake and Will breakup, all over some petty cash we've yet to have explained to satisfying ends. Were they being blackmailed by Nina because she knew they're secretly gay lovers? What gives? Now, it does pit the two against each other and provide motives moving forward, but I truly think these scenes act as mere red-herrings than anything else at this point. Particularly the shot of Will stashing a knife in his jeans. It's a scent-thrower, nothing more. Has to be. So too was this week's continued storyline between Brooke and Mr. Branson. Their foreplay sort of plays as a microcosm for the first 45 minutes of this episode, all blue-balls titillation and no cathartic completion. Thankfully, the finale this week saved the entire episode.

Be honest, did you think it was going to be Brooke or Riley to meet their maker at the end of this week? Truthfully, once the either-or conceit was put into Emma's hands, I had no idea how it would turn out. More, I wanted it to be Brooke, I really did. Of course, knowing that Riley is infinitely more loveable, the creators knew her death would sting far greater than Brooke's would. And it does sting a bit. Just last week I was professing my excitement for seeing the blossoming love interest between Noah and Riley. Unfortunately, the latter got stuck like a engorged hog, once in the back and once in the hind quarters, then left to bleed off while whispering sweet nothings to Noah on the other end of a cell call. So sad. I really held out hope that Riley would live longer than three episodes, but hey, this is the kind of shit SCREAM did so well as a movie and looks to continue to do on its small screen counterpart. Keep you guessing and keep you hurting!

To put a lid on it, I thought "Wanna Play a Game" bounced back in a big bad way after a bit of an impotent opener. To start with a Randy James flashback, while sure to hike the body count, it featured victims too distant and unknowable to really care about or invest in. Where Scream the Series succeeds, as did the flicks, is when an integral character we've come to identify with and cheer for ends up gorily dismantled. That, and keeping you guessing as to who the killer's true identity is. That's where the bread is buttered. Thankfully, those key cogs remained intact here, particularly in the suspenseful finale crosscut between Brooke and Riley. That the killer left it up to Emma to decide whose demise he'd incur was flat out cruel, no doubt, but then to see Riley get maimed and butchered like that…well, it was effective on both (suspense and slasher) fronts. As for the other characters, more questions seemed raised than answered this week. Mama Maggie in particular and her tie-ins with Randy James. It should all make for an interesting watch over this next seven weeks or so. Keep it here every step!

KILL OF THE WEEK: Most definitely the death of Riley. She was not only one of the more likeable main characters, her death scene itself was brilliantly designed. The cross-cutting between her and Brooke, suspending who of the two would actually get killed, was a nice bit of tension I did not see coming. And damn do I now feel for Noah. He better not be the killer!

BLOOD & GORE:

• Slashed throat from behind.
• Eye-gouging with thick tree branch.
• Brutal stabbings to the back and legs.

WTF CHARACTER MOMENT: The Jake/Will interplay was a bit shady, and deserving of more airtime, but I have to say that Maggie's reticence to talk about the past is quite bizarre? Does she think she's protecting Emma? How so? Four bodies are dead. Why not spill the beans on her past with Randy James and her Ex, and while the hell the killer intimately knows her by the name Daisy? WTF?