Scream episode review — 2.4 — Happy Birthday to Me
By: Patrick J Mullen
Tags: Tv Reviews, TV, Horror, Scream, 2010s

Original air date: June 20, 2016

Director: Daniel Stamm

Writer: Brian Sieve

Rating: 5/10

Alright, so this episode’s weird, but kind of creative and different. It’s got plenty of stupid shit in it, as most of the series does, but it’s definitely watchable.

Kieran’s birthday is coming up, and Emma is planning on having a small private thing, until his cousin, Eli (Sean Grandillo), says that he actually wants a big party.

As the viewer, you know he’s full of shit right away, but I suppose Emma doesn’t have any real reason to think Eli’s lying at this point. But maybe she should suspect his less than honorable intentions when she sort of has a moment with him as they are setting up.

At school, Audrey pulls the fire alarm in order to have the chance to dig through Stavo’s things, where she discovers some creepy drawings he has of the Lakewood Six.

At this point, Stavo’s the most likely person to be blackmailing and harassing Audrey. That means it’s not him, right? Just trying to follow the logic of the last season here.

At any rate, at the party, they are gifted a bottle of expensive Mexican tequila with a note from Jake, which like obviously it’s not from Jake. And at this point I’m not sure why Brooke would think it was, considering she learned in the last episode that the flowers on her car were actually from Mr. Branson.

So everyone has the tequila at the party and they don’t figure out it’s drugged until Audrey learns that it’s from Jake (she is of course the only person at this point who knows Jake is dead), and everyone’s throwing up and hallucinating for the rest of the party.

Audrey kisses Noah, even though he’s on a date with Zoe, as she hallucinates him as her girlfriend who died in the last season. And Noah’s kind of into it, and it turns out Zoe is, too, joining the action.

This eventually leads to a Noah-Zoe breakup at the end of the episode that’s sort of oddly written. Like I think she breaks up with him because she suspects he’s into Audrey, but the dialogue makes it seem like she’s disappointed that they aren’t going for a threesome. Maybe that is the reason, but it’s not really that clear.

Brooke is being helped into bed by Stavo, and starts hallucinating Jake in the room, telling her that Stavo’s just trying to get in her pants — which, like, fair, but that’s also basically all Jake was doing for the entirety of the first season, so that’s a bit weird. I mean, it is a hallucination, so I guess I can’t expect the hallucination of Jake to have any self awareness, but whatever.

Most consequentially at this drugged up party is when Emma wanders outside and gets attacked.

She gets rescued by her father, who apparently had stopped by the house and heard that she went outside. But at any rate, nobody else saw the attacker (including her dad), and so they can’t confirm anything when talking to the Sheriff. Though Audrey does agree that if she says she saw something, then she did, and I was thinking like shouldn’t Kieran, Noah, and Brooke all support her on this, too? Like sure, Audrey’s the only one that technically knows there’s a killer here, but be a good friend, or in Kieran’s case, be a good boyfriend.

After Audrey informed the Sheriff of his son’s drawings, he investigates in his room and finds the killer’s mask, so I’m interested in seeing where this goes.

The episode ends with the whole Lady of the Lake Pageant thing that we’ve been talking about for a few episodes, and Brooke and Zoe are among the finalists. And Brooke gets a bucket of blood poored on her in a Carrie homage, and Jake’s body makes another long awaited appearance.

So the episode definitely has some good stuff, but we get some really dumb character actions — mainly from Brooke and Emma. Brooke should at this point not believe the tequila is from Jake, and thus not drink it (nor should Audrey willingly accept a drink from Stavo, the one she suspects of having ill intentions). And Emma wandering outside during all this is very dumb, particularly after they all agreed they needed to stay together once they learned they were drugged. Also the “moment” she has with Eli should be a giant red flag, particularly since she’s found him creepy all season. But whatever. It’s fine.