Things have officially picked up on Bitten. Some major shit went down on the third episode of Syfy's "werewolves plus fucking" show, and with it some surprisingly real consequences. Plus, all the werewolves went to dance clubs!
We left the last episode with the pack finding a werewolf-mauled little boy right on their property. The hunters find them almost immediately and start a pissing match, I guess because the Stonehaven land is full of wolves (more specifically, wolf tracks), which leads the redneck hunters to believe the family are pro-child murder. After Elena freaks out one of the hunter's dogs and Clay gives a hunter a gentle pistol whip with his own gun, they back off. Jeremy calls the police.
Elena decides to stay, obviously, and Jeremy forms everyone's plan of attack: Elena and Clay will return to the city to hunt the Mutt, while Logan, Nick and Pete are sent to go find a Mutt named Karl Marsten, who supposedly is up-to-date on Mutt goings-ons (but more up-to-date than Elena's files?! Madness!). Later, Jeremy takes Elena aside to show her that her boring boyfriend, whose name I've forgotten and I can't even be bothered to look up, has sent her flowers, which Jeremy has hidden because Clay apparently can't handle knowing about them. But since Clay is a werewolf, he can smell them, and he can also overhear Elena's conversation with Dullard even though he's outside. It's actually a well-done scene, with no dialogue, where a clearly consternated Clay turns on his truck's radio really loud.
This is when all the werewolves hit the clubs. Elena and Clay, after randomly driving around town, find a flier for a club and decide to go there, and, of course, the evil Mutt is hanging out. Meanwhile, Nick, Pete and Logan head to Nick's club to meet Marsten, who is suspiciously easy to find (which, happily, was the show's intention and not just bad writing). Let's start here; basically, Marsten is supercilious and clearly hiding something, and he tells them he'd be glad to help as long as Jeremy thinks about letting him have some territory.
Meanwhile at the other nightclub, things quickly get more interesting. First of all, Elena and Clay hatch a plan where Elena enters the club and herds the Mutt through the back, where Clay will be waiting; this is neat because 1) it's a sensible plan and 2) it does give us some proof that Elena and Clay can be an effective team together.
Of course, this immediately goes to hell when Elena confronts the Mutt, the Mutt essentially tells her to fuck off, Elena refuses, the Mutt grabs her, and then Elena grabs the dude's heart with the help of some werewolf claws. She starts to threaten him, but before she really gets anywhere the sensation of having five sharp claws jammed into his chest makes the Mutt freak out a little, and he starts to transform — Elena barely manages to toss him in an office in the back before he wolfs out.
So while it's entirely Elena's fault for mismanaging the situation, this is a damned interesting conflict: Elena is charged with keeping werewolves secret, but now there's one transforming right behind her, and the only thing between it and a crowd of dancers is Elena and a none-too-sturdy door. Also, the Mutt is super-interested in killing people. Which, after bursting through the office's ceiling to get to the rafters and the balcony level, he does.
He mauls two victims before Elena and Clay chase him outside, where the cops have arrived. The sheriff shoots him a little, but then a truck hits him — I have no idea where it comes from, who was driving, or if it was even intentional — and splatters him everywhere. And then is when I learned werewolves in Bitten do not regenerate.
All that's left is for Clay to find the victim who was bitten but hasn't died, notice he's a heroin addict, and then smother him against his manly shoulder (it's a weird way to kill a grown man). Elena is upset, but Clay says he never would have survived the transformation process, and he just saved the dude days of agony. To its credit, Bitten makes the decision seem like it could go either way — Clay wanting to end the suffering of some poor dude, or Clay somewhat remorselessly keeping the Pack clean of ne'er-do-wells like heroin addicts.
All's well that ends well! Kind of! Because now that the crisis is over, Elena and Logan immediately book it for their home in Toronto, where they discover their significant others have arranged a dinner date for the four of them, which is super-boring but in which we learn members of the Pack are apparently horribly shitty liars — a drunk third-grader could have sounded more convincing than the two of them trying to get their story straight. Meanwhile, Pete heads off to join his band on tour again, and Nick and his dad Antonio decide to track Marsten and figure out what his deal is.
That leaves Jeremy and Clay, who are sad that Elena left; admittedly, Clay is more the brooding, shirtless, going for a wolf-run sad. Which is when Elena and Logan get a call telling them to come back. Because when Clay went on his sad run, he found Pete. Dead. It's ain't over. Which is sad for them, but great for us, because seriously, everything that happens in Toronto is boring as shit.
Assorted Musings:
• Everyone seems super-worried about the hunters being on their land, but they can control when they change into wolves and they can control what they do as wolves. They don't have to go out. What's the problem? Sure, it's kind of annoying, but it's not really a danger, is it?
• Elena and Clay knew where the Mutt lived. Is there a reason they didn't go back there and wait instead of wandering aimlessly around town and hitting random dance clubs?
• There's a scene somewhere in there of a dude meeting Dullard to have him make a presentation to convince his business partners to sell vodka. I assume this will lead to something somewhere down the line, but as it stands, it's the most useless, boring bit of television I've seen in some time. We're right in the middle of a werewolf murder investigation, on multiple fronts, and all of a sudden we switch to some personality-less dude who's asked to help make a Powerpoint or something.
• In my notes I had actually written "Nick, Pete and Logan make a good trio together." Oh well.
• I also liked the scene where Elena tells Clay he can't go in the club because he'll inevitably lose control and expose them, and Clay tells her off because it's completely unfair that she thinks he can't control himself. Not only is it a subtle indication of how much Elena still blames Clay for burning her into a werewolf, if Clay was going to be nothing but a perpetual hothead he was going to be almost as boring as Dullard (at least he turns into a wolf sometimes, though).
• "International Mutt of Mystery." I'm warming to you, Bitten. Don't fuck it up now.
• That said, Bitten, I'm very glad you had the dignity to have Elena say "It feels good to be home" during her reunion sex with Dullard, instead of the more obvious and more awful "It feels good to come home."
• Werewolf Shit We Learned: Any bite from a werewolf can turn you into a werewolf, as long as you aren't mauled so badly you die of your wounds naturally before you can turn. Although this will probably kill you anyways.
• Werewolf Shit I'm Still Confused About: I thought following the Pack rules made you a member of the Pack, but Marsten is clearly abiding by Wolf Law and yet is still considered a Mutt. Also, is the Pack the same as the family? Aren't there more law-abiding werewolves out there than just these guys? Because it sounds insane that there would be like six Official Werewolves all living in upstate New York, but the Bitten novel's Wikipedia page seems to indicate it's true.
• Philosophical question: If these guys can't turn into anthropomorphic wolf people can only turn into regular wolves, and can be killed by anything a wolf can be killed by, are these guys really werewolves, or just people who turn into wolves? Discuss.
onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Werewolves in the da' club leads to murder in da' club on Bitten