Scream - Hello, Emma / Wanna Play a Game?

Hello, Emma finally gets the killer to Emma, the “Sidney” of the Scream show. Posing as a security phone operator (her door is open and the alarm supposedly triggers a call from house security), that devious, sinister voice begins his/her game with Emma, and this episode follows into Wanna Play a Game? with the phantom-face mask killer in black cloak (I’ll just start calling him Scream killer) beginning to toy with the lead character of the show. She’s defiant but that will cost her dearly when she is forced to choose between the safety of either Riley or Brooke. Tyler, whose body has yet to be found (or his car, which comes into play in …Game?), is used by the Scream killer as a tool to draw Riley into a trap, leaving the comfort of a police station believing he was nearby. Brooke’s fooling around with her teacher is a subplot that seems to be a well kept secret. However, it is clear that the Scream killer knows about it because he influences Brooke to go to her favorite hotel room so he can offer Emma the dreaded Sophie’s Choice. She thinks choosing Brooke is the safest bet because Riley was in the police station. A nifty trick on the police (they think Tyler is rendezvousing with Riley at a certain place but it is just some guy with a piece of paper mocking the sheriff’s department) and Riley blindly walking into danger leaves quite a well orchestrated chase scene and key couple knife stabs bookends …Game?, assuring those out to stop the serial killer that he or she is quite clever and astute.

In Hello, Emma, Audrey’s girlfriend (she’s a cutter as evident by the marks on her body due to her serious self-esteem issues) is a victim of the Scream killer. A rope ready for her neck, the Scream killer surprises her, lynching her off the balcony of her home. Believed to be a suicide, Maggie inspects the body forensically and determines that the injuries didn’t agree with a hanging from a ceiling fan (the killer arranged for it to look like a hanging in her room), telling the sheriff just as much, not knowing that her daughter, Emma, was listening just outside the door of the coroner’s room. That and the later Riley murder in …Game? continues the trend many might remember from Harper’s Island, that a killing is almost always assured in every episode of Scream. Built as a slasher show would be expected, Scream: The Series follows the rules of the genre significantly. Noah, the token horror aficionado, never fails to wax scientific about the details and how they seem to align with the current state of events inflicting their school (dubbed by a rival school as MurderSchool!). Noah and Riley have been flirting and developing a cutie-pie high school romance that abruptly ends before they could have premarital sex, prematurely disturbed by the Scream killer. Noah is the last to talk with Riley before she bleeds out…irony at its darkest. For extra irony, her demise is atop the police station where she left the comforts of right into her own doom.

Emma is trying to determine if Will is worth a second chance. The sheriff’s son, Kieran, isn’t afraid to offer himself as a possible romantic interest, and there’s even the big basketball game where Will can show off his skills to impress Emma, but she kind of debates inside who to choose. Then there’s the awkward continuing rift between Emma and Audrey, an estrangement Emma so badly wants to heal and her work to mend the fences she helped to create is starting to calm the storm as Audrey gradually appears to be in the process of forgiving her.

There’s this odd development between Will and Jake over cyber stalking and money that was kept in a buried box. Supposedly Jake has evidence that could hurt Will’s chances at a basketball scholarship, but the writing of this subplot has kept it all quite vague. Will is presented as suspicious, questionable, and secretive. As if he is not to be trusted while Jake just continues to be portrayed as a creep. When he speaks and how he behaves, Jake rarely appears as anything more than some sleazy “doosh” (funny painted insult on his big truck). Will has his jock popularity to benefit him, but Emma seems to be slipping from his grasp.

There is this true crime reporter named Piper Shaw (Amelia Rose Blaire) that arrives in town looking for the scoop and has a blog that earns her some notoriety. She tries to get interviews with a more-than-willing Noah who is always ready to offer his “monologue” (Brooke has a snide remark for pretty much anyone she is less than impressed with) regarding the crimes and Emma (who works at a coffee bar). We’ll see where the show goes with her.

Maggie’s link to Braydon James is further elaborated as back story unveiled seems to indicate she was possibly closer to the infamous killer than first realized. Kieran brings over some old files for Emma to peruse. The teacher (Campo) gives out an assignment regarding selecting a work and two students paired together acting it out. Emma and Kieran are put together as are Noah and Riley, Jake and Brooke, and Will and Audrey. This takes a backseat ultimately to phone messages from the killer involving him/her standing right nearby the pool with Nina’s dead body and from “Tyler” which lures Riley to her eventual demise.