“You can’t save them. All you can do...is watch.” – Ghostface, “Scream 4”
“In the Trenches” digs a grave for another Lakewood teen and “Scream” starts narrowing down its suspects list as the season nears the home stretch.
The episode starts out on a hopeful note for our beleaguered heroine Emma. She and her mom seem to have cleared the air somewhat after their talk about Brandon James. And despite the awkwardness of their parents dating, she and Kieran can’t help enjoying some pre-homeroom smoochies. But the penny drops when Piper shows up at the school and tells Emma what happened to her and Will at the warehouse. Seems nuGhostface wants to play a new game – hide-and-seek – and Will’s both the prize...and the bait.
Emma enlists Noah’s help in tracking Will’s phone and, with Brooke and Jake also along for the ride, sets out to rescue her ex. The trace leads them to a dark and dilapidated bowling alley on the outskirts of town with crappy cell service. It’s a cool and creative setting for this setpiece, especially when that creepy Daisy song from the pilot starts playing over the stereo system. Things drag a little to start, with the teens ambling around, seemingly and strangely not taking the situation too seriously. But it’s classic slasher fun once nuGhostface starts chasing them around the lanes. There’s also several nods to the rules – Noah is aghast every time someone suggests splitting up; Emma acknowledges how stupid she sounds when she says, “I’ll be right back.” The end result? A wounded Will is saved, Jake is stabbed but survives, and Noah is just happy to make it to the “tearful reunion montage.”
The killer does take the opportunity to drop more Brandon James knowledge on Emma. A timecard shows that Brandon once worked there (I’d thought he was a homeschooled recluse, but he had a part-time job?). And there’s a tape from a PTSD therapy session Emma’s dad Kevin attended after the attacks, on which he talks about seeing “them” together in the bowling alley and that he can’t believe “she [slept] with that monster.” Now, the obvious inference is that he saw Maggie with Brandon. But would I be the only one not shocked if the person she was with was actually Troy, the older James brother? Either way, this indiscretion is evidently what’s behind the “whore” accusations nuGhostface keeps making about Maggie.
But that’s not the worst shock Emma suffers in this episode. Everyone may have made it out of the bowling alley alive, but nuGhostface isn’t done with his game. As Noah notes earlier, he’s not just murdering Emma’s friends, but is making her responsible for who lives or dies. So when she agrees to watch a movie with the recovering Will, an angered nuGhostface ambushes them both. And just like Chekhov’s gun must eventually go off, the scary-looking farm equipment we saw a few weeks back loops around as Emma is tricked into tripping a wire attached to it, shredding Will (in a gory but basic cable way; what we mostly see is Emma getting sprayed with his blood).
So with Will’s demise, who’s left to suspect? While wandering around the bowling alley, Jake and Noah both spend some time pointing a finger at the other. Jake pegs Noah as a character type familiar from cop shows – the nice, nerdy friend or next-door neighbor who turns out to be the culprit. Additionally, Noah’s the one who led them there. Noah, meanwhile, is skeptical that “Shake and Jake” would be so game to save Will or back up the others given what they all know about his blackmail schemes. His being attacked off-screen provides him a cover of sympathy. And he also knows about Brooke’s affair with Mr. Branson, as does the killer.
And what about Mr. Branson? Noah fills Audrey in on swiping his prints last week, which apparently turned up no hits. Audrey thinks it’s time to tell the police their suspicions, but Noah reveals that the malware has been scrubbed from the school server. Further, they notice a substitute teacher in Branson’s place. What better excuse for taking a mental health day from work than kidnapping and murder.
Then there’s Mayor Maddox. Even after Brooke confronts him, he continues to be evasive with her about her mother’s whereabouts. Could he have set Will up from the start, and followed Brooke and her friends to finish what he started, to bury his crimes once and for all? It might explain why the masked murderer slices up Will and Jake, but hesitates to hurt Brooke when he has the chance.
Finally, there’s Kieran. Because he ducks out on an awkward dinner with their parents (who, in a moment I didn’t like, were celebrating Detective Brock being off the nuGhostface case) after Emma bails, he has no alibi for the time of the attack. And thus he looks extra shady when he shows up at the bowling alley, all Billy Loomis-like, right after the killer disappears. He also acts jealous – both before and after he knows about the kidnapping – about Emma’s connection to Will and now the competition’s been eliminated.
Will you miss Will? Who do you think is behind nuGhostface’s mask, and who do you desperately not want it to be? Join us “In the Trenches” of our comments section to share your speculations and suspicions.
