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The Strain S1E7, “For Services Rendered”

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Now we’re cooking.  The vampire menace is starting to make itself known.  They congregate like packs of zombies, sniffing the air for fresh blood.  And, even though their stingers aren’t strong enough to break through glass, their elbows are very much up to the task.  The early vampires – like Crazy Lawyer Vampire – are starting to take on a more feral look.  A sparse head of hair to go with red eyes, a deteriorating body and herky-jerky movements. That’s what I loved about these vampires in the books: they’re animals.  There are levels to these vampires, but most of them operate on the lower, animalistic tier.

I feel like the show was really starting to come into its own even before the vampire hunters showed up at the end.  I’m a huge fan of these guys.  Before too long, the history of The Master – and the mythology behind the vampires – should start becoming more clear.  As good as this episode was, it should start getting even better.

All that’s left for Eph to do is to shave his head to avoid detection.

Hates:

1. The cabbie that refused to drive away from the house, while blood-drenched maniacs circled his car.  Just drive, fella.

2. The reaction of Jim’s wife after he told her what was going on.  I honestly had a hard time figuring out exactly what she was mad about.  Was it the fact that he lied?  Did she think he was still lying about everything?  Was it that he was planning on helping Eph?  It escalated very quickly with very little explanation.  (It should be noted that I prefer very little explanation in scenes like this, but it was still pretty confusing.)

3. Setrakian being a smart guy, yet very much underestimating Eichorst in the train station.  That was completely out-of-character for him.

4.  No Fet in this episode.

Loves:

1. I was really excited to see Chief (Aaron Douglas) show up, and just as sad when he died moments later.  Still, his high-pitched scream of “What the shit!” was one of the highlights of the episode.  RIP, Chief.

2. Gus trying to explain to the cops what was wrong with the guy he took down.  “He had a six-foot frog tongue.”

3. The scenes with Eichorst and Setrakian in the concentration camp were fantastic.
I also loved hearing Eichorst’s true vampire voice a little later in the episode.  Really creepy.

4.  I mentioned it earlier, but the scene with Joan chasing her kids through the house was tremendous.  Really creepy and tense.  I loved her movements, and I was a huge fan of her shaking reflection in the mirror as she descended the stairs.  That entire scene was some top-notch nightmare fuel.

5.  Eichorst jumping on the side of the subway car.  It looked completely ridiculous, and I couldn’t stop laughing.  It was basically a vampire version of Mr. Bean in Rat Race.

6.  The vampire hunters showing up.  As I mentioned, I love these guys and I love the story behind them.  I’m also a big fan of the leader talking in his best Bane voice.  “The Master’s punishment must be more severe.”

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The Strain S1E6, “Occultation”

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Welcome back to the world of The Strain.  Here you will find exterminators who are wizards with charcoal and probably should have gone into architecture, boyfriends schooled in all manner of jackassery, and patient cabbies who act as getaway drivers and listen to the ramblings of out-of-breath old men (I assume he heard about the exploded house and immediately thought about the insane old man he picked up in the area, but never got a response on his 911 call.  Vampire police don’t answer the phone).

This was a better episode than last week.  The show is starting to pick up momentum.  Some of the characters are finally starting to connect.  It’s only a matter of time before all the characters rally around Setrakian and some of these disconnected threads start coming together and stop dragging the show down.  The eclipse made its presence felt in this episode as well.  About time.  We got a lot of good hand-wringing and “end of the world” talk, but I didn’t hear a single person say, “May God help us.”  It’s like no one even saw Independence Day.

I think we’ve turned a corner with this episode.  I can feel the pace quickening.  This was the beginning of some very good things.  I know I haven’t quite been rewarded for my optimism in the past, but this one feels different.  I want to believe.

Hates:

1. Matt.  I hate everything about Matt.  I hate his big stupid face.  I hate his, “I’ll go upstairs and call the cops,” move.  I hate the way he blinks REALLY hard when he feels insulted.  There is one thing I love though, and that’s the fact that he’s stupid enough to confront some hooded vampires that have just fatally wounded a coworker.  His temper means that we will hopefully only see him in one more episode, and he’ll likely be a vampire.  So long, Matt.  We barely had time to adequately hate you.

2.  Setrakian and his failing heart.  This is a man who is single-handedly mowing down vampires with a silver sword tucked in his cane, but can’t rig up a device to make his medication easier to get to?  Surely he has a Pez dispenser in his shop that he can put those pills in, right?

3.  Gus.  Will his character get better?  Hopefully, but I cringe every time he’s on the screen.  Here’s a hospital tip: no one wears their scrubs that low.

4.  FBI agents watching a bloody, disheveled man stumbling car-to-car and shrugging him off.  “Just a homeless guy,” they said, until they had no more throats.  That’s pretty much the same thing as describing Damien from The Omen as, “Just a rambunctious kid.”

5.  Gus hitting a vampire in the back of the head with a block of wood.  It’s not the hitting him that I mind, it’s that the blow appeared to kill the vampire.  Last I checked, you can’t kill a vampire with blunt force trauma, and I saw no silver on that block of wood.

Loves:

1. Fet’s creepy vampire drawing was fantastic, but that entire scene was amazing.  He was sitting in the corner of a restaurant with his jacket collar up, sketching silently to himself while other exterminators wondered aloud about the wave of rats rolling through the city.  He vaguely resembled Nosferatu with facial hair and a gym membership.

2.  The bloody handprints on the wall of the basement that Setrakian was investigating.  Bloody handprints on walls creep me out every single time.

3.  The language of the FBI agent.  This guy killed me.
Some examples:
“I’m not going to dick around with you.”
“If you’re jackin’ us around…”
“I don’t care what fancy medical school you went to.”  (This is the equivalent of calling someone “city boy”.)
I’m really going to miss that guy.

4.  Fet throwing open the window, killing his vampire boss, then doing the same with his flirty coworker.  It was a terrific scene.
Fet had a great episode.  Or, rather, Kevin Durand had a great episode as Fet.  He can go from jovial to dead serious at a moment’s notice.  I’m glad we’ll be seeing more of him.  He brought a lot of emotion to this episode.

5.  Corey Stoll breaking out his best interrogation room wig.  “I need it to say, ‘I know what I’m talking about, but I understand why you think I’m crazy.’  Just something that I can really run my fingers through, ya know?”

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The Strain S1E5, “Runaways”

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I hate to keep harping on the same points over and over again, but they give me no choice.  Outside of Abraham Setrakian, there are no other characters with decent stories.  This show drags when it is driven by character drama.  I liked seeing Setrakian’s history with The Master and Eichorst, but the rest of the drama doesn’t do anything for me.  I don’t care enough about Nora to care that her mother has Alzheimer’s (that’s not knock on Alzheimer’s; it’s a horrible disease that I don’t wish on anybody).  I don’t care enough about Vasiliy Fet to be interested in his flirty relationship with his Rat Queen.  They’re trying to get us to care about these characters, but it’s just not working.  (As a reminder, I have read the books, and I loved some of the characters, but their small screen counterparts aren’t doing it for me yet.)

Setrakian is great.  He has a sword and a nail gun, and his plan is to use those to kill vampires.  That’s pretty much his only plan, and it’s as beautiful as it is simple.
At the end of the last season of The Walking Dead, our heroes(?) found themselves locked in a train car in a camp full of cannibals.  Rick – their fearless leader – turned to the group and appeared to have a plan in place.  His cohorts gathered around, waiting for his brilliant plan.  “He’s going to tell us the plan.  We’re going to win.  We won’t be eaten.”  Instead, he said, “They’re screwing with the wrong people.”
When Setrakian heard about that nonsense, he laughed and put a silver nail into Rick’s leg as a form of motivation.

We got some fun with Boliver, and we found out that Larry Fessenden is the man to call when you need to get rid of a messily dispatched urologist.  Just don’t call him to kill a vampire.  The man is useless without a pit.

There were some creepy scenes, and I like how Eph is all-in on Setrakian’s bonkers plan to eradicate the vampires.  But, overall, this episode just felt like a drag.  There are too many disconnected storylines.  The sooner they all start connecting, the better off the show will be.  The best scenes in this episode were Setrakian and Eph talking through how they’ll fight back “the infection”.  The worst scenes were pretty much anything besides those that didn’t actively involve vampires.

Hates:

1. I don’t like that this bothered me, but it did.  How was it that Setrakian was the only person in his bunk to notice The Master?  It’s not like it was a quiet affair; all fast movement and loud robes.  And yet Setrakian was the only person who heard it.  How is that possible?

2.  Nursing Home Vampire came out of nowhere, and it was an extremely short scene.  It seemed like it was thrown in as a panic move.  “We need to get Nora and her mother together.  But how do we get her out of the nursing home?  Vampire shows up out of nowhere!  HIGH FIVE!”

3.  Eph returning to his genius-level milk drinking.  If I had just seen a couple vampires beheaded and spewing white blood infested with worms, the last thing I would want to drink would be milk.  I assume they cut out a scene of Eph watching the blood flow from a vampire’s neck then say, “Mmmm.  That looks good.  I’ll have that.”

Loves:

1. Bolivar dragging his victim into a dark corner while growling, “Mine!  Mine!”  It was a good way to kick off the episode.
His assistant mentioned that his upcoming concert was titled “Serenade for an Eclipse.”  In the book, the eclipse was a big deal, but I don’t remember them mentioning it in the show except in passing.  Am I wrong, or did I just miss all the eclipse talk?

2.  Setrakian dropping eggs of wisdom.  Some of my favorite lines:
“They are no longer people and to think of them as such is extremely dangerous.”
“I will not hesitate to release you.”
“So you’re romantic and impractical.”
“Inaction is the greatest evil.  We both have work to do.”

3.  Larry Fessenden’s character’s name was Jack Noon.  JACK NOON!  As near as I can tell, that makes him an 80s action/porn star who mainly does Western themed films.  I bet Jack Noon parties are insane.  That Jack Noon is always looking for the magic.
On the Del Toro scale of names, Jack Noon ranks right up there with Stacker Pentecost and Hercules Hansen.

4.  The camera zoom on Setrakian’s face as he stood outside the shed containing Vampire Ansel.  It’s moments like that that lead me to believe they’re very much going for a b-movie vibe.

5.  They’re doing a good job of setting up the rules for this world.  “One worm is all it takes to infect you.”  “A vampire’s reflection will shake in a silver mirror.”  They’re being very clear, and I love that.  I hate a world with hazy rules that are easy to backtrack on.

6.  Vasily Fet wandering the sewers – based on the premise that rats are running from a larger predator – and coming across a horde of vampires.  Really creepy scene.

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The Strain S1E4, “It’s Not For Everyone”

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Last week I talked about how getting away from character-centric drama was the key for this show.  Distract the audience with vampires so we don’t see just how poorly written this show is.  “Gone Smooth” finally did that, and “It’s Not For Everyone” continued down that path.

That’s not to say there weren’t problems with this episode.  Between the horror movie logic of Eph and Ansel’s wife to the magical sassy hacker to the not-so-triumphant return of Gus, there were plenty of nits to pick.  But there were also enough interesting developments to drive the plot forward that those little moments didn’t bog the show down.

This is far from a great show, but it seems to be steadily improving with each episode.  That’s a good sign.

Hates:

1.  Eph and Nora have seen those white blood worms up close in a previous episode.  And yet they picked up Captain Redfern’s worm-infested body with nothing more than latex gloves.  They made some passing remark about the worms, but it wasn’t until after Redfern’s body was on the slab.  This is a very sloppy CDC.

2.  The magical hacker.  She’s smart!  She’s sassy!  She’s sexy!  And she’s the only person who can crash the entire internet in less than a day.
It’s 2014.  Aren’t we done with the magical hacker by now?

3.  Ansel’s wife, Ann-Marie.  I get it.  She’s extremely religious and she loves her husband.  That’s fine.  I’m kind of religious and I love my wife.  But, if I saw her drinking blood with a new appendage slithering from her mouth, I wouldn’t just tell her to get some rest, and I certainly wouldn’t leave her alone with the dog.
I also like how her religious background only extends so far.  Ignore the fact that my husband is turning into a vampire?  Okay.  Kill my slightly annoying neighbor because he hit my dog once?  Fine and dandy.  Maybe she hadn’t gotten to the part in The Bible where they teach, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  That was just a metaphor, right?  It wasn’t talking about your literal neighbor, especially if he’s being kind of annoying.

4.  Eph heading back to the house he visited last week.  After seeing Redfern, he knew what was going on, yet he still went into a house he was 90% sure had at least one vampire in it with absolutely no weapons and no backup (Nora doesn’t count as backup).  That was a supremely stupid move.

5.  Nora and Eph seemingly flipping characters over the course of one episode.  In the previous episode, Nora tracked down Setrakian because she wanted to figure out what was really going on.  In this episode, after being saved by Setrakian, Nora decides she wants no part of this, while Eph is all in.  What changed over the course of one episode for her?  Yes, she saw a little girl get beheaded.  But she also knew it wasn’t truly a little girl anymore, as was evidenced by the stinger lashing out of the girl’s mouth, desperately trying to kill her.  What was the alternative in that situation?  Make a cup of tea and talk it out.  Oh Nora, you know nothing of honor or dying by the sword.

Loves:

1. Picked up right where the last episode left off; three professionals trying to figure out how to perform an autopsy on a vampire, then figuring out the best way to dispose of the body.  Just like college, amiright?
I was eating dinner when Eph pulled the stinger out of Redfern’s body.  I would advise against you doing that.  Learn from my mistakes.

2.  I could listen to Sean Astin scream, “His dick is gone,” for an entire episode.

3.  The way Vampire Ansel looked chained up in the shed.  His make-up looked like it came straight out of a low-budget zombie movie.

4.  Jim confessing his role in the pending apocalypse.  I wasn’t looking forward to watching an entire season (or more) of him trying to hide his betrayal.  It’s out there now.  You are dead to Eph and his crazed hair.

5.  Setrakian showing up and beheading vampires with his silver sword while Nora screamed, “We have protocols!  Protocols!”  That made me laugh pretty hard.

6.  Setrakian’s closing line of, “Get the gasoline.”  It’s party time.

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The Strain S1E2, “The Box”

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After an underwhelming start to the series, I was hoping that this second episode might renew my excitement for the show.  The survivors were being released.  With The Master being transported across the river by the unaware (and always angry) Gus, the apocalypse would be starting.  In addition to that, Vasiliy Fet (my favorite character from the book, played by the always excellent Kevin Durand) would show up.

Fet showed up, which I enjoyed.  He had a small role, but I’m looking forward to what he can add to the show.  As it was, most of his part in this episode was played for laughs.  And, while I’m happy to have him aboard, I doubt I would feel the same if I had not read the books.  I likely would have wondered aloud why they were adding another character when they hadn’t come close to fleshing out the ones they already had.

This episode was pretty much like the first.  Bloated and confusing scenes masquerading as mystery.  The quicker they get all the characters together, the better off the show will be.  As it is, we’re left watching disconnected characters float around with very little reason to be invested in what they’re doing.  I understand that they’re trying to build the individual characters – to make us care about them – but they’re doing a terrible job of it so far.  Had I not read the books, I wouldn’t care about any of these characters.  As it stands, I have read the book and I’m still having a hard time caring about any of their screen versions.  Here’s to hoping that changes soon, as I’m already starting to lose interest.

Hates:

1. Francis Capra’s lazy, sniveling Crispin.  He has never been the best actor, but I’ve never seen him this bad.  Weevil would be ashamed of you.

2. The dialogue is downright laughable at times.  I was particularly fond of this exchange between Captain Redfern and Eph:
“No one gives a shit about the truth.”
“I do.”
BOOM.  EPH MIC DROP.  This was delivered with all the earnestness of a soap opera.
There was a later scene with Eph and his son (Zach) that was equally terrible.  I had to check to make sure I wasn’t watching an after school special.  “Corey Stoll stars in My Son Has a New Daddy.”

3. Kelly’s friend getting mad at Eph for not remembering her name.  It’s pretty clear that they’re setting her up for a future scene but couldn’t figure out a subtle way to introduce her.  I imagine her turning into a vampire, Eph being forced to kill her and saying something like, “I remember your name now, bitch.”  I am 90% sure this will happen.

4. Eph talking about his entire past in an AA meeting.  This was more or less equivalent to dropping this information on a summary card.  I know they’re trying to get us invested in his character – to show his struggles, to make him more human – but this scene really fell flat for me.

5. Gus.  I’m crossing my fingers and hoping his scenes get better as his storyline overlaps with others, but, for now, every scene involving Gus is painful.  I like his character and storyline in the book, so I’m still holding out hope for him.

6. Eph’s wig.  C’mon man.  Embrace the baldness.  At least there was no mention of milk in this episode.

Loves:

1. Jack Kesey’s portrayal of Bolivar.  It seems like that guy is having a blast.

2. The scene where Eichorst visits Satrakian in prison.  Far and away the best scene of the series so far.  Tense, emotional and well-acted.  I was glued to the TV.

3. The little girl soaking in the tub while “This Old Man” played in the background.  We saw a “cheery music in the background, horror in the foreground” scene last week with “Sweet Caroline”, and another one this week.  While I have really liked both scenes, I hope they don’t overuse it.  Still, this scene was terrific.  A great way to end the episode.