“It’s starting again, Randy.” – Sidney Prescott, “Scream 2”
As Noah explains to Zoe in the first of these two “Scream” episodes, the killer making such a public spectacle of Jake’s corpse was “an announcement, a coming-out party, a classic end-of-act-one body drop.” And “Dawn of the Dead” and “Jeepers Creepers” do a good job of exploring that aftermath, and the grief, fear, and conflict it creates among the living members of the “Lakewood Six.”
The big development that plays out across these episodes is Noah discovering Audrey’s connection to Piper. Now sometimes, TV shows have their characters act dumb to further the plot, but I really liked how the secret came out in “Dawn of the Dead.” Noah’s been noticing Audrey’s weird behavior for a while. And the lockdown of the high school following the discovery of Jake’s body only fuels Audrey’s paranoia about Gustavo, causing her to make several costly slips of the tongue – revealing that she’s been getting calls in addition to the texts, hinting that someone else is dead – that Noah can’t help but clock, so much so that he ends up swiping her phone. And because he knows his bestie so well, he’s able to crack her password only to be horrified by just how little he knows when he sees her communications with nuGhostface. Good stuff all around.
At first, though, it seems like “Jeepers Creepers” is going to walk it back. Noah is all too eager to get on board when Emma – who spots Audrey’s picture at the center of his murder board – suggests that the killer is gaming him, making him “connect dots that don’t even exist.” And later, when they’ve both seemingly been attacked by nuGhostface and tied up in a creepy fairground funhouse (and sidebar – I loved Noah walking into the place, realizing the horror movie scenario he’d stumbled into, and being all, “Nope!” as he tried to flee), Audrey spins a believable story about the killer luring her to Jake’s body and then using the footage to keep her quiet. But when she learns Noah came to the fairgrounds to talk to Eddie the desk clerk (who is, of course, dead), Audrey is forced to reveal that she staged their attacks to throw suspicion off herself.
Near the end of the episode, Audrey comes to see Noah and finally comes clean. She says that she contacted Piper and begged her to come to Lakewood...to help her research a documentary about Brandon James, who Audrey believes wasn’t a monster, just someone who felt as “alone, rejected, and angry” as she did. When the murders started, Audrey claims that she confronted Piper, who swore it wasn’t her, and Audrey fears she’s now paying for the bloodshed that happened because she believed her. I’m not sure this is the whole story, but Noah accepts her explanation, assuring her that she’s a victim too (Bex Taylor-Klaus and particularly John Karna did a nice job throughout this plotline). In any case, Audrey pleads with Noah to let her be the one to tell Emma, but because this is TV, we see that her entire confession was accidentally recorded by Noah’s podcasting equipment. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for that bomb to go off.
The other major plot thread throughout these episodes is the investigation into The Night Jake Died. Brooke spends most of “Dawn of the Dead” in a fog of grief (and, contrivedly, a cheerleading outfit), but she’s still able to name a suspect – Branson. She later overhears Sheriff Acosta telling her father that Branson has an alibi for that night. So Brooke deputizes Gustavo to find out what it is (and sidebar – she might live to regret trusting him. Sure, he explains away his creepy drawings as a graphic novel he’s making about “Murderville,” but then we see him taking shirtless selfies wearing the nuGhostface mask. That’s just messed up) and what he digs up is rather juicy – Branson claims he was with the woman he’s dating...Ms. Lang. Ooooh! Ms. Lang was also acting suspiciously during the lockdown, purposely locking Emma alone in a room, possibly to see if it would trigger her PTSD. And, I realized, her having been in town if off-screen during last season’s events (and this goes for Zoe, too) might end up being important. So she’s definitely someone I have my eye on now.
Anyway, Brooke vows to uncover the truth and uses her wiles on both Branson and Ms. Lang. She first goes “crying” to Ms. Lang about a fictional hookup with Branson the night Jake was killed and gauges from her reaction that the alibi is bunk. She then “seduces” Branson into a meetup, but it soon gets dark and twisty when Brooke ties him up and threatens his manhood with a pair of scissors. His junk in jeopardy, Branson spills all. He wasn’t with Ms. Lang, but was actually waiting for Jake, who he alleges was going to pay him to leave Lakewood, and Brooke, for good (I loved how Carlson Young played Brooke’s tiny, touched reaction to this). Branson also claims that Jake was getting the money via some deal with her dad (and sidebar – we not only see Mayor Maddox trying to ensure his pact with Jake stays secret, but also enlisting Kieran’s aunt Tina to finish the job, whatever it is). Brooke leaves satisfied that he’s telling the truth, but admits to Gustavo that she doesn’t feel any better.
Elsewhere, I don’t really like the subplot that’s developing with Kieran. During the lockdown, one of Sheriff Acosta’s men finds a gun in Kieran’s possession, which he understandably says he carries to protect himself and his friends. Sheriff Acosta is sympathetic to a point, but he also wants an in with the “Lakewood Six.” So he half-blackmails, half-manipulates Kieran into working with him and thus Kieran sells out Emma and tells the sheriff that someone slipped Jake’s phone into her bag. This sparks several fights between Kieran and Emma about trusting each other, and about the best way to handle this second round of nuGhostface terror. I’m not sure I buy Kieran’s insistence that his dad might be alive if they had done things differently last time (and therefore I loved that, at one point, Emma doesn’t hesitate for a second to ignore his concerns and goes to meet Noah as planned) so this sorta feels like false drama to splinter these two, and possibly push Emma towards the ever-annoying Eli.
Speaking of annoying, one red herring I hope ends up dead by season’s end is Haley. She’s the chick that was part of the prank on Audrey in the season premiere and she spends her screen time in “Dawn of the Dead” whining about the “Lakewood Six” and about being considered a suspect by the sheriff. Because pulling a fucked-up joke on a survivor of a serial killer is a sign of a balanced person? Shut up, Haley.
But it’s Branson that ends up on the wrong end of the killer’s knife at the end of “Jeepers Creepers.” In a gruesome cliffhanger, nuGhostface creeps into the hotel room where Brooke left him tied up, cuts off one of his hands, and – as Branson howls – cauterizes the stump with an iron. Buuurrrnnn.
Those are my thoughts on “Dawn of the Dead” and “Jeepers Creepers.” Now it’s your turn to “Scream” about these episodes in the comments section.
