I’m guessing “Second Chance at First Line” was intended to originally air in its entirety with the pilot, because it picks up moments after the pilot’s last scene, with Scott walking into the locker room and melting down at the realization that Allison’s dad is the hunter who shot him. Thankfully, Stiles arrives in time to talk him down and tell him to get out on the field and work it out there. Not-so-thankfully, he does just that, semi-wolfing out and taking down Jackson after Jackson makes his own foul tackle.
Scott collapses as soon as Jackson falls and only Stiles knows why. He hustles Scott into the locker room and Scott rages at him to get out because he’s full-on transforming. Stiles fetches a fire extinguisher to cool him down and it works. Scott doesn’t remember what happened but Stiles tells him it’s his anger and he can’t play if he might hurt people. Later that night, Derek makes the same case, popping up in Scott’s room while he’s video chatting with Stiles, only he adds a “P.S., I’ll kill you” warning. Scott goes to talk to the coach, but he’s not listening to it. For him, rage=good player/no problem. Next?
As for Allison, Derek returns her jacket to her locker and Scott has a minor interrogative meltdown to which Allison responds intelligently by backing away from the crazy (yay!). Following Derek’s late-night admonition that Scott shouldn’t play, Scott goes to see him and picks up a blood scent. He and Stiles then go to the morgue to check the scent of the half of the body they found in the woods. They’re a match, so Scott and Stiles go dig up the first victim at Derek’s house and find it’s a wolf, but after they circle the grave with wolfsbane, the grave suddenly holds a woman. Stiles calls his dad and Derek is arrested but the plan falls apart when the DNA results show an animal, not a human, killed her and Derek is technically a human. Also, they find out the woman killed in the woods, and buried at Derek’s, who they now realize was a werewolf, was Derek’s sister.
Additionally complicating matters for Scott with the lacrosse game, Lydia lectures him about how she can’t date a loser and Scott needs to man up so the team can win, because if he tanks the game, Jackson’s a loser, etc. Before the game, Scott wolfs out again and goes roof climbing at Allison’s before bailing off and getting clipped by her dad’s car. It’s unclear whether dad totally grasped that Scott was wolfed out when he hit him. Scott apologizes to Allison for his earlier creepy behavior and she says all’s forgiven and she’ll be at the game.
Scott arrives for the game (against Mystic Falls High – hee ! – and where everybody seems to be freezing their asses off despite it supposedly being California in September – double hee!), and the spectators include Allison and her dad, Lydia, and Scott’s mom. Even though Jackson attempts to sabotage the game for Scott, he actually kicks ass and they win, but he wolfs out at the end of the game and flees the field.
Balancing out her earlier smarts, Allison goes looking for him in the darkened school, then locker room, where we see him stalking her from above. She finally finds him, re-Scotted, standing in the showers (dressed, again, not that kind of show). He confesses that she makes him goofy nervous and he really wants a second chance, and she says he has it. They make with the smoochies for a stretch (which Stiles sees) before she leaves to find her dad. Scott’s happy about kissing Allison and hopeful that he can control transforming and continue to play because he was able to unwolf himself. Outside on the field, Jackson finds Scott’s glove with the wolf claw holes in it and is wondering WTH as Derek appears silently behind him. Dun. Dun. DUN.
I liked that this episode amped up the creepy. We had wolfcam infrared camera angles a few times so we could see the distorted heat-fueled images that Scott had to sort through when he was wolfed out. We also got the full prosthetics – looks like the show is taking its time in turning him into a complete wolf just yet, so we have more of a wolfboy thing going on for now.
Photo Courtesy of MTV