So many reveals this week. Unfortunately, not all of them were so great.
Over the past few episodes, Scream has been doing a decent job misdirecting the audience to keep the killer a mystery.
This week we were privy to two clues.
The first is that Emma’s mother had a one-night stand with Brandon James that resulted in a child that she gave up for adoption. Although the time line of these events are a little vague, it seems pretty safe to say that the birth of this child and Emma were close enough to put them at relatively the same age. This opens up the possibility that the killer is one of the students at George Washington High, but judging from how much Scream the series takes from the original film that was a strong possibility from the outset.
The second big reveal is that Mr. Branson isn’t who he says he is. Apparently, this isn’t the first affair he’s had with a student and he’s still up to his old tricks. The fact that his last affair ended up in the student’s death would suggest that murder is another vice he can’t shake. Let’s be honest though, does anyone really think this could possibly be Branson?
This attempt to misdirect the audience has to be one of the weakest I’ve seen in the show. Obviously the motive doesn’t fit. If his history resides in elsewhere from Lakewood, his interest in revealing Emma’s dark family secrets simply doesn’t fit. What dog does he have in this fight?
Furthermore, there’s no way the killer can be this stupid. Of all the places Branson could hide the evidence to incriminate him he picks his classroom? A place he probably shares with other teachers and gets a constant flow of foot traffic. Audrey has no problem spotting the evidence through the vent from halfway across the classroom. He wasn’t worried about custodial crews cleaning the vents or one of the other students looking up?
Now let’s pick apart the attack on Brooke.
Let me first say I am so glad they didn’t off Brooke in this episode. To have her killed off in a moment of weakness would have been a low blow. For a second, I thought they were going to attempt the old “killed in the throes of passion” slasher trope popular in the Friday the 13th films where anyone caught having sex is brutally murdered mid coitus.
But I digress.
If Branson is the killer he has no intention of actually killing Brooke. He simply wants to torture her. Mapping this attack out, are we to believe that Branson goes off screen to change into his killer attire only to make a half-hearted attempt at attacking Brooke before making another costume change to console her? It kind of reads like the plot of Mrs. Doubtfire, if Robin William’s goal was to terrorize his family rather than get close to them.
Some better writing would have linked Mr. Branson to Brandon James somehow rather than steeping his motive in something so banal as some sadistic sex fetish with his students.
This turn of events isn’t a complete loss though, if anything it’s caused me to double down on the possibility that Noah is the killer. The guy is constantly guiding everyone to the clues and keeping everyone guessing. As soon as any of the students try piece together the clues, Noah is always the one to guide them in a different direction. It has been assumed up to this point that it’s part of Noah’s character to always be second-guessing and keep all the possibilities open, but it’s getting to the point of becoming dubious. In terms of framing Branson, who else could have planted the malware into the school system to begin with? Could Noah be Emma’s long lost brother?
