EPISODE: IN THE TRENCHES
THE DISH: As the ranks continue to thin out, Emma must save another close friend when the killer strikes up a sadistic game of hide and seek. Can she pull it off?
WARNING: MINOR TO MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS EPISODE YET, STOP READING HERE!
THE DICE-UP: Hey now! With six weeks dead and only three more alive after last night, the seventh stint of Scream The Series lands us knee deep "In the Trenches." We last left off with Will taking a sharp blade to the abdomen before being dragged off somewhere unseen. Well, this time we resume with that exact scene, as Piper lay battered on the dusty warehouse floor…Will NOT dead, but rather bound and gagged in a dingy backroom, the killer breathing down his neck. We then cut to cozy Emma, thankfully undercutting the potential awkwardness of hooking up with Kieran (you know, cuz their parents are too), before getting a suspicious text from Will. When asking Brooke and Jake if they've seen him, Piper shows up out of nowhere to lead all four of them back to the warehouse where Will disappeared from. A "no cops Emma" sign is smeared on the wall, and as the others leave, Emma receives a phone call from the killer threatening to whack Will for good. For f*ck's sake, what's a girl to do!
Ask Noah for help, that's what. His technical aplomb is good enough to find a trace to Will's cell phone, almost too esily. Brooke and Jake decide to join in once the former's father denies knowing where Will could be. So all four – Emma, Noah, Brooke and Jake – head out passed the railroad tracks to locate that damn phone signal. Meanwhile, Keiran is stranded at a family dinner with papa sheriff and mama Maggie. Convenient alibi, no? And where the f*ck is Piper all of a sudden? Anyway, the foursome end up in an old dilapidated bowling alley, another dark and dreary set-piece that balances wonderfully with the melodramatic domestic and camped out high-school scenes. Once there they split into pairs: Emma with Noah, Brooke with Jake. What I loved here is how both males make a good implicative case against the other…Noah thinks Jake could be the killer and vise versa. However, once Jake brandishes a knife then bails on Brooke to take a leak, Sicko-Brandon James-Face comes skulking out of the shadows!
Will is found hanging but alive and unconscious. Brooke escapes the killer's clutch to join up with the others. Save for Jake that is, who is left out in the cold with the masked murderer. Could it be him under the mask? Too obvious still, don't you think? Nah, the real murk comes when Emma is steered toward a cassette tape confessional of her enraged father. Turns out mama Maggie had the old in and out with Mr. Brandon James, which sends Em into a f*cking tizzy. If you didn't catch my Kubrick reference, how about the "Daisy, Daisy" tune from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY used to almost as eerie an effect. Nice touch. Regardless, Jake comes crying for help…but how can the others trust his ass? Doesn't matter, soon the killer makes a clever ploy to pull Emma out in the open, this after jabbing Jake in the heart with what looks like his own gutting knife. Brooke ditzily pulls the blade out, but before the real killer is able to slice again, the cops – Sheriff Hudson, Maggie, and even more conveniently, Audrey and Kieran show up. All as the killer pulls a Keyser Soze and dissipates into thin air.
But really, where "In The Trenches" earns it's 9/10 rating (the first of the series) is the deleterious deneoument, where upon a sappy romantic exchange between Will and Emma is utterly sullied when the poor girl is lured out to a rural farm to witness her ex get full on masticated by a tractor-thresher…so much so that a giant blood bukake sprays the lass' pretty little face. F*ckin legit! And really, that's what I dig so much about this show. It constantly keeps you guessing, constantly stays one step ahead of expectations from every conceivable angle. Will's ultimate demise is a microcosm of the show's success…taunting and teasing, twisting and turning and totally subverting all foreseeable conclusions. The seamless pace at which all these threads of motives and alibis and credible suspicions – done with quippy, clever dialogue and in-on-the-joke awareness – is truly a remarkable thing to behold. In the simplest terms of high-praise, only three weeks remain in Scream The Series and I have just as good a guess at who the killer is as I did after week one. All you can ask for!
KILL OF THE WEEK: Most definitely Will's. It was taunted and teased pretty damn hard through this week and last's cliffhanger, but when all is said and done, dude got chewed up in a way that would make a FARGO Steve Buscemi proud.
BLOOD & GORE:
WTF CHARACTER MOMENT: I get that being a teenager is confusing and all, but why the hell did Emma realign with Will? Does she really dig him more than Kieran? Does this just further give Kieran motive? Or was it just a way to get Emma alone to witness Will's gory death? WTF!?