James R | On 09, Jul 2016

Warning: This contains spoilers.

This is it, Episode 6 of Scream Season 2 tells us. This is the moment when Noah confronts Audrey and the truth comes out. End season. Except, of course, there are still several episodes to go – and things are never that simple in Lakewood.

The opening attempts to dissect the events of Season 2 into a simple diagram, one that Noah has now oriented around his central suspect: Audrey. He comes up with a straightforward way to verify his theory: Eddie the motel employee. But he’s already facing complications: Eddie, lest we forget, has been pushing up the daisies for a couple of weeks.

What follows is a diverting hour of cat and mouse that entertains precisely because nobody really knows who the cat is – and with the Lakewood Five seeming to fall apart after a fairly united first half of the season, trust and certainty aren’t about to return any time soon.

For us, though, it’s getting to the stage where we finally feel like we’re getting a handle on who might be Ghostface 2.0, as more evidence, and more confrontations, are unavoidable, now that the show’s second run is nearing its end game.

That means that, even though this episode is something of a wheel-spinner, there’s a welcome change of pace, as we move from surprised audience members to wannabe detectives.

Top of the list? Well, let’s start with Audrey. Emma doesn’t quite believe Noah’s theory when he tells her at the start of the episode, although that’s probably mostly to do with the fact that he didn’t tell her the full story – Really? More secrets, Noah?

The main evidence to date has been her phone, which Noah sneaks back into Audrey’s backpack, but Audrey’s getting increasingly suspicious of Noah, just as he is of her – not least because it’s so easy to spot him following her down the street.

We still need to name the second killer, though. To that end, the show continues to nudge us in the direction of Stavo, who remains the most obviously creepy addition to our cast. He and Audrey cross paths, giving him a chance to explain his weird, bloody drawings in full – it turns out he’s making a graphic novel of the Lakewood killings, with an emphasis on the word “graphic”. That’s hardly convincing, but more suspicious is the fact that he has a mask in his room that he likes to muck around with – something that he hides in time for the arrival of Brooke, who meets him to ask him to nose around his dad’s office for information on Jake’s murder. Surely, he wouldn’t agree to help, if he had things to hide? Or would he agree, just so that he can hide his tracks?

Either way, though, it seems too obvious. Speaking of which, Seth Branson comes back into the frame this episode, as Brooke still insists that he could be the culprit – which is why she’s using Stavo to secure more evidence on Jake’s killing. She learns that Mr. Branson’s alibi is their psychology teacher, so she quickly hooks up with her, pretending that she and Seth spent that night together to observe her reaction. Soon enough, Brooke and Seth are spending the night together proper, as she handcuffs him and, instead of seducing him, interrogates him.

Who should come along after Brooke’s departure, but the killer to have their bloody way with him? That rules out Seth, then, not that he was ever a real suspect. But the teacher’s reaction to Brooke’s comments – a surprising amount of anger – puts her right in the guilty crosshairs. Who knew that she had it in her? And her jealousy certainly gives her a motive to get rid of Seth.

While we’re speaking of seemingly trivial supporting characters, what about Zoe, who doesn’t make an appearance this week? Does it mean anything that the show hides her, just as we start to make our predictions? Is it busy throwing red herrings at us, diverting our attention from the real killers?

Then, of course, there’s Emma herself, who may or may not have been imagining everything so far. She doesn’t tell anyone about her confrontation with Ghostface 2.0, at Ghostface’s order, and that only makes her more unreliable. No one else has been present whenever we’ve seen Ghostface 2.0 and her on screen. The Sheriff’s office, meanwhile, discover that Emma’s IP address is being used to send suspect messages, but that’s hardly conclusive – this is, after all, 2016.

But the episode’s main focus, once again, is Audrey, and it’s the gradual developing of Noah and Audrey’s relationship that keeps the storyline interesting – after their kiss at Kieran’s surprise party, the chemistry between the pair has been given an added layer of depth. So the prospect of them having it out once and for all is genuinely exciting.

A swift text exchange with “Eddie” sees Noah (and Emma) agree to meet “him” at an abandoned fairground – another neat nod to genre cliches that suggests the show’s not about to run out of wit just yet. Inevitably, Emma is delayed, so Noah goes it alone, only to find himself in his car with Ghostface 2.0 on the backseat.

It’s a surprising moment, because it seems too soon for Noah to be sliced and diced – and, thankfully, the show’s writers agree, instead just handcuffing him to a roller-coaster car… along with, you guessed it, Audrey.

Does that mean she can’t be a killer? And does it mean that Emma genuinely might be, because she’s nowhere to be seen? Luckily, Emma pops up – along with, you guessed it, Kieran – to rescue them both. Which means that now we have two of our prime suspects at the scene of the crime. And yet, rather than get carried away with pointing fingers, the show smartly uses the brief moment of isolation for Noah and Audrey to give him a chance to confess his feelings for her. It’s an endearingly sweet conversation amid the horror – but there’s still the underlying tension and distrust. Is he just saying this to get under her skin, or to stop her realising he’s onto her? Or does he really like her? Heck, could it be both?

Audrey, later, gives us the answer we’ve been waiting for regarding her role in Season 1: she brought Piper to town and feels she’s responsible for what happened. However, (she says) she wasn’t an accomplice and didn’t realise Piper was a killer. Nonetheless, she doesn’t want Emma to know.

As for the kidnapping? Audrey comes clean about that too and admits that she staged this whole thing, so that she could convince Noah of her innocence.

Do we buy all these explanations? Not really, and that’s partly thanks to Bex Taylor-Klaus’ enigmatic performance. She’s consistently hard to read: are her facial expressions psychotic, vengeful, suspicious, guilty or is she just in a bad mood? But there’s also that underlying question of where she got the mask from to fake the kidnapping – is there some kind of Ghostface 2.0 costume aisle in Walmart? Noah, tellingly, records her “confession”, which suggests he doesn’t buy it either, no matter what his romantic feelings are on the matter.

As the episode ends with that reveal, we haven’t got any further with our suspect hunt, which might frustrate some, but as Scream Season 2 lines up its final act, their relationship is enough to keep us tuning in for another week.

 

Scream the TV series is available to watch online on Netflix UK, as part of an £9.99 monthly subscription. Episodes arrive every Wednesday at 8am, within 24 hours of their US debut.

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