Scream: 10 Problems Season 2 Needs To Fix
8. Fewer Pop Culture References
The Scream films have always relied on meta humor and pop culture references, featuring genre savvy characters who are aware of horror movie tropes. The MTV series has that with Noah, yet the writers have taken this way too far to the point that Noah is just a walking pop culture reference machine. In some episodes, that is seemingly all he does.
Besides, Noah's references aren't even clever; they're just very surface level observations or comparisons to other things that exist. When they find a bloody knife in Mr. Branson’s air vent, Noah says, “Holy Dexter’s air conditioner.” Yep, that sure is a reference to another popular show where this happens. Clever, huh?
In the original franchise, characters would often make references to genre cliches only so Wes Craven could subvert them. In this show, Noah will reference terrible cliches of the genre, and then the show will just execute those cliches. He makes a remark about how stupid it is for everyone to split up, but then that’s still what happens. Is it supposed to be okay that the series is bad just because a character points that out?
For Season 2, Noah needs more of a personality beyond just constant, not very clever references to movies and TV shows. He’s like Abed from Community without any of the depth or humor.