Scream Episode 7, "In the Trenches"

Oh. My. God. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been waiting for this episode since the beginning of the show. I just didn’t know when it would happen. But instead of yet another recap (which I don’t understand the point of anyway), let’s look at some of the themes in episode 7, “In the Trenches.”

First, I want to mention something I forgot to add into the Mr. Branson argument last week. Something that seems too obvious, but I’ll say it anyway because it caught all of our attentions: the similarities in Brandon and Branson. Especially since Daisy’s nickname for him was Bran… This tidbit pales in comparison to the new reasons to suspect the mysteriously missing teacher. Noah reminded us that this man has no past to speak of, no history tied to his fingerprints, and no more malware incriminating his computer. Incidentally, he is also missing from this entire episode. And as for Audrey, she may have had an alibi for when things started getting crazy at the Bowling alley, but exactly how did she know where everyone was when she couldn’t even hear what Noah was saying on the phone? Come on, guys.

A lot of small things happen and are said when the quartet is at the abandoned bowling alley that want you to start suspecting everyone, but we are pretty sure there are explanations for all of these. Jake getting stabbed with his own knife, for example. This just screamed call back to the 4thScream movie, where Emma Roberts pushed a knife into her own shoulder. It’s suspicious partially because it happened off screen and should have been a bigger deal, and also because Jake just looked like he had padding under the wound. And also the fact that he lived. There is also a constant paranoia in the air; almost everyone making a case for one of the other kids when they split into pairs. This is just part of the fun. They’re saying what we’re thinking and the show is having fun with that.

The first time we watched this episode I didn’t notice a recurring theme that has been brought up in previous episodes. There is this constant call back to the weird speech Jake gave Brooke in episode 3, about the shark and bobcat. This “who really has the power in the relationship” idea gets brought up once when Noah says the killer “wants you to think you have some power so he could take it all away.” It comes back in a more subtle way in the bowling alley, in the mural on the wall, which depicts the same flavor of relationship; the jaguar and the squirrel. A predator and an innocent. Mr. Branson and Brooke?

As everyone reading this knows by now, we crossed another suspect off of our list at the end of episode 7, but we were also given a big piece of the backstory puzzle. I'm talking about the recording of Emma’s dad, talking about her mom and Brandon's relationship. The two men's images have completely switched since the beginning of the show, and this new piece of evidence seems to point in the direction that the Impostor was just thinking about earlier in the day. That Brandon James might be Emma's real father. However, you'll have to look past the blood splatter to realize how huge this reveal is.

-Huntress