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‘Scream’ Season 3 In Jeopardy, On Probation With MTV

By Nick Younker
Published on: 12:13 PST, Oct 16, 2016

Scream on MTV is coming off the heels of a weak performing Season 2 and Season 3 has been given a “slight” renewal. While the MTV original series has been a hit with select fans in the younger demographic, is has failed to deliver the numbers that the network needs in order to turn a real profit off the show.

In an article on Deadline, the report shows that Scream has indeed been renewed for Season 3, but there is a catch. It seems as though the show has been put on probation by MTV by giving it a slap on the wrist with only six episodes in an otherwise crowded market for shows like Scream.

What fans of Scream need to realize is that the show had more than enough momentum heading into the freshman run of the series. But it really gave the Scream franchise as a whole a total and complete makeover, especially in regards to the mask and the plot.

There were several factors that led to the success of the original Scream film franchise that spawned from horror maestro Wes Craven back in 1996. Some might sum that up by saying it was the perfect storm of intrigue and gore supplemented by the young cast and setting.

Scream originated in a small California town and was the product of young sociopaths that had been led terribly astray after family issues and the influence that pop culture had on them. The massacre that played out on the original Scream film took place before the onslaught of mass-murders that were happening at schools, but it did echo the same sentimentality of the disturbed teenager who was willing to go to extremes to leave his mark on the world.

Although the MTV Scream franchise tried to find its way into that world, it fell short in many areas. First of all, the killer in Season 1 of Scream was not exactly a teenager, but rather a grown woman who came to town looking for a lifetime of revenge on an innocent girl who had nothing to do with her pain.

What started out as a love letter to the late Wes Craven has morphed into a mostly forgettable TV series that has played its fans for fools in many different areas. MTV likely took stock of the criticism and started incorporating more of the plot twists from the original Scream movie, but the formula did not play out very well when Season 2 finally hit the air.

One of the hallmark elements from all of the Scream movies has been an opening scene where a big name actress, such as Drew Barrymore, takes a phone call from a man who seems harmless in the beginning, but then morphs into a psychopathic personality right up until the moment he presents himself to the character and kills her/him.

Season 1 of Scream got that part right, for the most part. Season 2 of Scream almost got it right, but then slipped on the banana peel halfway through the act and the moment was lost.

Season 3 of Scream is a final chance for the show and its producers to get it right. And, as most Scream fans already know, Season 3 of Scream will be once again featuring a shakeup with the top production brass. This includes getting new showrunners and writers for the show, which it is in serious need of.

Despite the strong momentum heading into the Scream TV shows with the film franchise, the second season of Scream was barely able to churn out the intrigue with audiences, averaging a mediocre 377,000 viewers per episode. That includes the Live + 3 numbers. By comparison, TV’s biggest show, The Walking Dead, usually pushes out between 15 and 18 million viewers per episode.

[Feature Image by MTV]

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