First of all, let me say Bitten episode 2 was much better than the premiere. It came packed with all the
interesting info and questions that the first episode completely failed to mention,
set up the stakes, and gave us a glimpse of what being a werewolf
is like in this universe. As it turns out, it’s a lot of paperwork.
What I’m trying to say is that, now the plot has finally begun, I find myself questioning the basic premise of the show’s setting — but I’m
getting ahead of myself. Let me recap the episode, since it’s mainly just an
info dump on Elena and her family:
• Jeremy — The leader. He has daddy issues, in that his dad hated
him. But, it’s also obvious that his issues translated into trying to care for his
family, as opposed to seeking another father figure for himself. Indeed, he
wants Elena back for this reason.
• Clay — Jeremy’s (adopted?) brother. The bad boy who dated
Elena, is still obsessed with Elena, follows her around everywhere (ostensibly
for her safety), and has some kind of hold on Elena, even though he’s creepy and
douchy.
• Antonio — Jeremy’s second-hand man and group chef. He
seems pretty reasonable.
• Nick — Antonio’s son and the wacky member of the family,
who’s happy either challenging Elena to a fight or jumping into her bed
shirtless to wake her up. I’m pretty sure the show meant this to be wacky, but
it comes off as super, super creepy.
• Pete — A former roadie turned into a slacker werewolf,
although he also seems like an all right dude. He’s loyal to Jeremy because
when Pete accidentally transformed into a wolf in front of a girl and had to kill
her, he was going to be executed by the Alpha — presumably the High Poobah of
all Werewolves — until Jeremy stepped in.
• Logan — The psychologist we saw in the first episode, and
Elena’s pal. He’s good-natured and has nothing to do this episode except show
up at the house.
And here’s what we learn about Elena: Apparently she first
came to Stonehaven as Clay’s girlfriend, got bitten, survived — possibly the
first female to ever do so — and started
working for Jeremy. A year ago, she was sent to stop a man named Jose Carter
from exposing the clan by selling a werewolf arm he’d managed to acquire. Jose
won’t sell it at any price (so why did he even meet with her?) and Elena is
forced to kill him.
This makes Elena sad, even though it’s Werewolf Law that she
had to kill him if there was no other choice, and the guy was kind of a dick
anyways. She’s sad because she felt she lost her humanity in that moment, which
is clearly important enough to her that she immediately fled to Toronto to try
to pretend to be a full human as much as she could. Obviously, the family knows
werewolves shouldn’t kill people (e.g., Pete) unless it’s the only way to save
the pack, so they have a hard time comprehending why any werewolf would be so
upset about killing this asshole.
But therein lies my — I don’t want to say problem with Bitten, because I’m not sure it is one yet — my confusion. This is a show about a
werewolf who doesn’t like to kill people at all. Okay, Elena’s trying to
contain the monster inside her; that’s standard tragic monster operating procedure.
The problem is that none of the other werewolves seem to be monsters. They’re all
really upset when someone murders people near their house. They express no desire
to kill anyone or anything — not even the Mutt, really — which makes it look
like Elena’s murder problem is her problem, not a werewolf problem. It’s hard
to get too invested in Elena struggling between two worlds when she’s the only
werewolf apparently having these issues.
If that were all, I wouldn’t mind, but the whole werewolf
society is strange, man. So werewolves either adhere to the Pack, or they’re
loners and called Mutts and regarded with suspicion if not outright hostility?
That seems kind of were-racist. Isn’t Elena a Mutt, seeing as she abandoned her
family to go live alone among the humans? (I imagine the show has an answer for
this, but I’m going to avoid researching the books while I do these recaps,
because I want to see how the show handles it).
And even that would be cool if it weren’t for the fact that
Jeremy keeps a shit-ton of files on all the Mutts in the basement of
Stonehaven. Not only is this super Big Brother, this is the first time I’ve
ever seen a show about werewolves who keep paperwork.
Jeremy tells Elena all her old research is in the basement, just as she left
it. She pours over files to see if she can guess who the Mutt who killed the
girl is… instead, of, you know, turning
into a wolf and going hunting.
There is a reason for this, in that there are hunters about
and Jeremy wants to wait a day until Logan arrives and the whole family is
together. So they wait, and when Logan arrives, they wait some more until night comes. Elena eventually
finds a shanty shack where the Mutt/killer lives (he’s gone for the moment) but
once they find it, she, Clay and Nick all immediately head back to Stonehaven
to figure out what to do next, as opposed to just catching the dude.
To be fair, even the show realizes this is a terrible idea,
because the next morning, a new body is found right outside the Stonehaven
grounds — that of a little boy. The hunt is officially on, both for the killer
and any wolves unfortunate enough to be seen by the increasing numbers of
hunters. Hopefully Elena has something in her files about how to deal with
this.
Assorted Musings:
• I get the feeling there’s a lot of Axe body spray being used
in the Stonehaven household.
• The first thing Elena does when she hits the Werewolf Hall
of Records is start picking up scrolls — specifically, the Scroll of
Exposition, which explains how werewolves are made, followed by the Scroll of
Sexist Exposition, which explains there are no female werewolves because women
are too weak to survive the bite and transformation process. And holy crap was
that voiceover ridiculous.
• Why is there a cage in the basement if nobody turns into an
actual werewolf, they can turn into wolves whenever they want and they stay
perfectly lucid? Is it for prisoners? Why keep them among all the files?!
• Syfy should really just follow its bliss and let Bitten be the first non-pay cable show
to feature nudity. You can’t really do a show that’s about sex and werewolves
justice if you can’t ever show the sex. Besides, the first cable station to
take this risk will hit a ratings goldmine — and nowadays, I really doubt many
advertisers would pull out.
• I can’t tell you how disappointed I am Bitten uses the word Mutts to describe rogue werewolves and not “wereholes”
or “asswolves.”
