Recap: "Goosebumps" Werewolf Skin, Part 2

Now, you might be thinking at this point that it's pretty ironic for a town called Wolf Creek to have a werewolf problem. And you'd be wrong. "Ironic" means "the opposite of what's expected."

If Wolf Creek had a vampire problem, that would be ironic.

If a Goosebumps episode ended without an ironic twist, that would, ironically, be ironic due to the absence of irony... which would then mean that it didn't end ironically, so....

Oh, dear, I've gone cross-eyed.

Happy Halloween! Have a scary day!

With two werewolf intruders about to come in-tru-der window, Alex decides to use every photographer's favorite improvised weapon: the camera flash. The werewolves freak out and run off to parts unknown, leaving Alex alone until morning. All he has for company is the empty bottle of relabeled Sprite Wolfbite soda he set up to fall if somebody tries to enter his room. And fall it does when Uncle Colin comes in.

Alex brandishes a makeshift weapon and starts babbling about the Marlings and werewolves to his aunt and uncle. They don't believe him, but the ruined bars outside his window are hard to argue against.

Uncle Colin: "Well, I- it must have been a bear or something."

"You ever hear of aurora borealis?"

Alex: "I saw it. It was part animal, part human! It had fangs and claws and pointy ears. Sorry, but that's a werewolf."

Thanks for playing.

Alex: "Hannah said the woods weren't safe and now I know why."

Aunt Marta: "Oh, you've been talking to Hannah. Alex, Hannah's older brother was bitten by a wolf. A year ago, right out behind the Marlings. The wolf was never caught, but Hannah has spent days out there trying to find it."

Uncle Colin: "That's why we locked you in. We couldn't risk having you wandering around in the woods."

"I wanted to cuff you to a chair, but Marta overruled me."

Aunt Marta: "Or bothering the Marlings."

Alex: "Oh, sure. Let's be polite to the werewolves next door."

And so, racism continues to fester within these lands. When will the hatred end? It's fine to be Lupine, Alex!

Alex finds Hannah in town and tells her what he's figured out; the Marlings are werewolves, and they were trying to attack him.

Hannah: "That's weird. Wolves don't usually climb."

Alex: "Oh, yeah. And how many werewolves have you seen?"

Hannah: "Lots of them."

Hannah claims that the woods are packed full of werewolves. She didn't tell Alex earlier because she was afraid that he wouldn't believe her. Which makes sense. His disbelief was why he wanted to meet up with Sean and Arjun.

Hannah: "That's why my brother ran away. He tried to tell people what he saw, but they wouldn't listen. Nobody believed him."

....I'm not saying it.

"Say it."

No. I'm not going to.

"Say it!"

No.

"Say it!"

...Fine.

I guess Hannah's brother really was the boy who cried "wolf."

Yeah, go ahead and groan at that one.

Anyway, Hannah starts telling Alex what she's pieced together in terms of werewolf history. Basically, it boils down to "people chopped down trees and the werewolves lost their homes," which sort of ties in to her earlier lament over a soon-to-be-built shopping mall.

Alex: "That must be what my aunt was talking about! She said they were working on some kind of secret project."

I don't follow.

Alex: "They must be taking pictures of werewolves for the government! You know, some kind of bizarro X-Files thing."

"Bizarro X-Files"?

"Me think this am not caused by aliens. Me not want to believe."

Hannah: "So what're you gonna do now?"

Alex: "Well, first, I'm gonna forget about the Chiller magazine contest."

"I mean, let's face it, that plot thread has been going nowhere fast."

Alex: "I'm going big time. Newsweek. No, People. No, even better... the National Exposer!"

Ah, the hot sheets.

This is when Sean and Arjun literally pop up. As in from below the frame. They ask where Alex was, since all they accomplished by waiting for him was get Arjun exposed to enough mosquitoes to warrant a big ol' facial bandage.

Arjun: "They like my blood."

"Just mine. They're very picky mosquitoes."

Alex brags that the werewolves came to him last night, which Mutt and Jeff here have a hard time believing. So Alex dares the two to meet him at the Marling house at midnight.

Alex: "That is, if you're not chicken. Cluck. Cluck. Cluck."

I was with you up until you started saying "cluck," Alex. You just can't make that sound intimidating.

Later that day, Alex's aunt and uncle drive off in the jeep, which is Alex's cue to call up the National Exposer.

Alex: "Hi, my name is Alex Blackwell. I was just wondering, how much would you pay for a picture of a real werewolf?"

We never hear the end of the conversation, but apparently, it's enough money to warrant Alex busting out of his room with a crow bar.

All dressed up in his Live and Let Die cosplay, too.

Alex heads out into the woods and camps out behind a log. Luckily, he brought plenty of chocolate to him himself awake through the night, as long as he keeps eating.

Litterbug.

As he struggles to stay awake, a werewolf attacks!

....But it's just a dream, revealed when his teacher comes by and wakes him up.

Teacher: "I couldn't let you face the werewolves alone."

Except the twist is that the teacher is a werewolf!

....But it's just a dream. Again.

Alex: "That's it. No more chocolate bars before bed."

You know, I'm actually not going to criticize this too harshly. The dream sequence, I mean. Don't eat candy before bed.

After all, the two brief dreams are a visually interesting way to illustrate that he spent the whole night outside and nothing happened. It's not like the episode is telling us that a good chunk of the plot wasn't actually real. Looking at you, "Awesome Ants."

Alex is bummed that he has nothing to show from his night under the stars other than a heap of candy wrappers, but he comes across the wreckage of his uncle's jeep as he heads back to the house. Inside the jeep, he finds a big clump of fur....

He runs back home to look for his aunt and uncle, and eventually does find them. But only when he aims his camera at the Marlings' window and zooms in. To Alex's horror, he can only watch as his aunt and uncle remove their KY-soaked bodies from their werewolf skins.

KY Jelly: From Xenomorph saliva to Predator blood, it's here for all your practical effect needs.
...And other needs, I guess.

Marta and Colin towel off and start heading back to their own house, having heard some suspicious noises, so Alex springs into action to repair his busted doorframe and pretend to have been sleeping the whole time. He manages to hide the crowbar and jump in bed at the last second, successfully fooling his aunt and uncle.

Alex heads downstairs after a bit, trying his darnedest to act nonchalant as Aunt Marta makes him some French toast. He claims to not be hungry, but Colin insists that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Then he turns into a hypocrite by mentioning that he and Marta won't be eating.

Uncle Colin: "We had a bite- we had a bite- we had a bite last night."

I know it doesn't come through in the recap format, but the episode was kind enough to remix Uncle Colin's line to make it spoopy. Anyway, the headline of Colin's paper reads "Three Hunters Missing in Woods," which connects the dots for Alex all too well.

Uncle Colin tries to makes chit-chat, so Alex hightails it out of there by "remembering" that he's late for school.

Aunt Marta: "Late? It's seven o'clock!"

And so, Alex- hey, wait a minute!

University of Michigan! Cool!

So, is Wolf Creek supposed to be in Michigan? Which, coincidentally, is also the home state of noted werewolf Taylor Lautner?

Wait... is Marta wearing a U of M Wolverine sweater because of the misconception that wolverines are somehow related to wolves? Because they're not. At all.

Although I guess I can't really blame anyone for thinking that. I mean, according to an interview with Rolling Stone, even Hugh Jackman initially thought that wolverines were some sort of mythical wolf thing, leading him to study wolves before filming the first X-Men film.

But on top of all that, Marta's shirt doesn't even feature the correct M. Is she wearing some kind of third-party bootleg apparel?

Anyway, in the woods, Alex gets Hannah up to speed. The Marlings never existed. That creepy house is just a way for Colin and Marta to change their skins in peace. The two kids come across the location of the wrecked jeep, but find no wreckage. Hannah's worried about Alex's safety, but he theorizes that the bars on his window were put there to prevent Colin and Marta from killing their own nephew.

And at this point, the audience is probably supposed to assume that Colin and Marta didn't pick Alex up from the gas station immediately because they were off werewolfing.

Now, you might think "Awwww, they didn't want to hurt their nephew even though they're werewolves!" I would like to point out that they still left him to spend the night at a gas station, rather than arrange for somebody to get him and take him to the house.

Alex: "There's got to be some way to break this curse."

Yeah, like the way Sean conveniently outlined in class during the previous episode.

Speaking of class, Alex's teacher has a talk with him after school, all the while sporting a facial bandage.

"I saw Arjun with one, so I assume this is what all you cool kids are doing now."

Teacher: "Um, I hope our little talk yesterday didn't scare you off living here in Wolf Creek."

Wait a minute.

That was not yesterday.

That couldn't possibly be yesterday, since night fell more than once in between then and now. I mean, let's check the timeline, here.

Night 0: Alex arrives and sleeps on a bench.

Day 1: Alex takes pictures and meets Hannah.

Night 1: Alex gets chased by something after Hannah departs.

Day 2: Alex has the werewolf discussion at school, gets asked to meet behind the Marlings'.

Night 2: Alex gets attacked by werewolves.

Day 3: Alex talks to Hannah, gets the idea to stay out all night to look for werewolves.

Night 3: Alex has weird dreams.

Day 4 (Today): Alex discovers the truth about his aunt and uncle, this scene happens.

Either this is a continuity error, or the teacher somehow remembers talking to Alex in his second dream. Then again, every night so far has been a full moon, so I can only imagine that the linear flow of time itself has simply given up at this point.

Teacher: "See, I'm afraid Sean has a rather overactive imagination."

"I do wish I could simply crush the last vestiges of creativity within him."

Teacher: "Unfortunately, it's the only thing about him that is."

Way to insult your student through subtext, jerk.

Alex: "What if it was true? What if there really was a werewolf and it was someone you knew? What would you do?"

But the teacher has no answer, since werewolves aren't real. So Alex quickly comes up with a reason to leave to save face.

Alex: "My aunt's making pizza waffles, and she hates it when I'm late."

Pizza waffles sound awesome. Is that a real thing?

....Google says yes.

With a final warning that "sometimes legends bite," the teacher lets him go, leaving Alex free to sneak into the Marlings' and steal the skins, watched over by Hannah. And secretly, Sean and Arjun. With the skins found, Alex steals them and stuffs them in a bag. When Colin and Marta arrive to wolf up for the evening, Hannah and Alex beat a hasty retreat into the woods. So now it's time to start digging.

That is an impressively deep and square hole he dug by himself with nothing but a shovel.

Hannah, having helped with nothing, freaks out and runs off.

"See you at the twist ending."

So Alex is left alone to throw the garbage bag of skins into the hole, shortly before two werewolves attack!

Or rather, Arjun and Sean in Halloween costumes attack.

Sean: "You don't really think we believe in that junk, do you?"

But when the empty skins break free of the plastic binding them to claw at the two kids' legs, they change their tune. The two not-quite-bullies run off, allowing Alex to beat the skins down with a shovel. And when Colin and Marta come along to try and reunite with their skins, he limply swings the shovel at them, hoping to keep them at bay until the moon reaches its highest point.

He succeeds, and the curse is broken as a moonbeam shoots down from the heavens and blows up the skins real good.

All the best legends involve explosions.

But if I remember Sean's description of the lore... he said you had to destroy the skins, with no mention of burying them. So how did Alex know that burying them would make them blow up?

Either way, with the skins destroyed, Colin and Marta hug Alex for ending their long nightmare. The curse has been lifted.

And so, we cut to sometime later, where Colin and Alex develop photographs together.

This is a surprisingly bright dark room.

Alex: "All that, and I still didn't get a decent shot for the Chiller magazine."

What about that one where your aunt emerges from her werewolf skin coated in slime? That was pretty creepy.

Colin: "Well, maybe next time."

Alex: "Next time? I hope not."

But Alex is in a Goosebumps episode, meaning that there's a twist ending. And it comes when he looks at one of his pictures with a magnifying glass, discovering a very furry Hannah... who Uncle Colin just let into the darkroom to visit Alex.

Hannah: "What's the matter? I told you I don't bite."

And with that, the episode ends. So let's review.