Scream: 10 Problems Season 2 Needs To Fix

So close, yet so far.

Scream TV mask
MTV

MTV's Scream just wrapped its first season, and has it lived up to the legacy of the movie franchise? Has it even come close? 

Not really, and although Scream was ultimately a fun summer show with some likable actors and interesting set pieces, it has a long way to go if it wants to match even the weakest entry in the film series.

Simply put, if you tuned into Scream this year because you're a big fan of slasher movies, chances are you were disappointed. This show should have just been given a different title because it has virtually nothing in common with the Scream films. There's no Ghostface, none of the iconic characters, and barely anyone ever dies. A lot of its faults, like the boring relationship drama and lack of any actual kills, are unfortunately an issue of it being an MTV show setting itself up for multiple seasons.

Yet there's so much genuinely good stuff in here that the series isn't beyond saving, and these writers could very easily improve the show dramatically with just a few tweaks to the formula. With plenty of time to go before the next batch of episodes, here are 10 big problems with Scream's first season that need to be fixed next year.

10. More Deaths

Scream TV mask
MTV

In the pilot of Scream, Noah said that you can’t make a slasher movie as a TV show, primarily because slashers are all based on body counts, and that’s not something you can emulate in a series that lasts for many seasons. At the time, viewers assumed the writers were including this meta commentary so they could go on to prove Noah wrong.

They really didn't. A lot of the first season was rather boring for the simple reason that barely anybody actually died. Across 10 hours of slasher content, there were only five deaths of named characters, including the two in the first five minutes of the pilot (and not counting the killer herself). Only two of the five were characters that were very significant, and in four episodes of the season, there are no deaths at all. Noah lays out in the pilot that the show will flesh out all these teenagers so that when they're killed, it hurts. Very few of them actually are killed, though. So much for that.

Had the showrunners approached this as a miniseries or anthology, they probably would have been more willing to kill off characters, but they clearly were setting things up for a long series, resulting in something that doesn’t feel like a slasher at all. You can’t call yourself a slasher if barely anybody gets slashed. 

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Contributor

Lover of horror movies, liker of other things. Your favorite Friday the 13th says a lot about you as a person, and mine is Part IV: The Final Chapter.