May want to save that late-night macaroni for another time...
This week’s episode
picks up right at the moment the previous one left off, with Eph, Jim and Nora standing
shell-shocked over a dead vampire they’ve just killed. The cat’s out of the bag
in regards to the plague victims, and all hell is just about to break loose as their
revived corpses are rising up and spreading their infection.
Being that this is a
Guillermo Del Toro joint, what’s the first thing our stalwart heroes do after
offing the newly-turned vamp? Well, cut him open in a disgusting (yet oddly fascinating)
autopsy scene, where we see firsthand just exactly how vampire biology works
through some excellent makeup and creature effects. Del Toro and Hogan’s
vampires are quite different than your typical Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee be-fanged
gentlemen: here they’re mindless drones, shedding or transforming everything in
human anatomy that doesn’t contribute to their consumption of blood (like hair
or genitals), and trading their fangs in for fleshy, tongue-like “stingers”
that allow them to equally drain their victims of blood and pass along the bloodworms
into another host body to spread the infection.
An infection that’s
already taken hold of another plane survivor, Ansel Barbour, who this week
feeds off the family dog while his wife Anne-Marie has a crisis of faith or
something, and decides to start feeding her husband the neighbors. Although
this storyline provides some more excellent horror scenes, the sooner we’re
done with Ansel and company, the better. I’ll be honest: the domestic stuff
between Ansel and Anne-Marie is getting to be unbearably stupid. These scenes
remain some of the most poorly-written and -acted bits of the entire show -
made all the worse considering it takes away screen-time from far-more
interesting characters. And although there’s some interesting ideas going on
with Anne-Marie luring her annoying neighbors into their shed to be fed to her
turned husband, the way the scene plays out in the show is so lazy and
uninspired, it’s almost insulting (Neighbor: “Your dog is loud and stuff! You
should beat him instead of locking him in the shed!” Anne-Marie: “Okay… would
you actually like to do that yourself?” Neighbor: “You know what, I think I
would!” CUE: horrible vampire death).
Much more interesting
is the stuff going on with Gus, who apparently spent the entirety of last week’s
episode sleeping. But, good news: he wakes up, and continues to flesh out what was
a pretty one-note thug in the pilot. Del Toro recently said in an interview
that he wanted Gus to start off as a gangbanger stereotype, only to then reveal
the layers to his character as the episodes go on. It’s a choice that is really
starting to pay off, and it helps that Miguel Gomez sells his scenes with aplomb
- playing a young thug who loves his mother and wants to set a good example for
his brother, but - at the end of the day - has to get paid somehow. Gus’
storyline this episode has very little to do with the spread of the virus,
which kind of kills the storyline’s momentum, but it does introduce another
important character: Alfonso Creem, played by none other than The Wire’s Jamie Hector. It’s always
nice to see a familiar face... especially when that face is Marlo Stanfield.
Other than that, we get
some more bits and pieces with billionaire vampire lackey Eldritch Palmer, and
these scenes also do nothing but halt the momentum of the overall story. All of
Palmer’s scenes this episode serve nothing other than to have two or more
people standing around, telling us how the world is slowly eroding around them
and laying out the plans for how that end is going to go down. Which would be
fine and dandy, if only it weren’t so lunk-headed in the execution. Case in
point: Palmer wants to shut down the internet, so news of the virus won’t
spread. Cue punky English hacker chick, who conveniently shows up for an
interview with Palmer and Eichorst (who is sadly underutilized this ep). And
then, the very next scene in this particular thread, we’re told punky English
hacker chick has shut down the internet, so… huzzah? The writing is getting
increasingly lazy, which I think I can only tolerate for so long if the show
continues on in this fashion.
One thing that will
absolutely get me to tolerate all the lazy writing in the world is more John
Bradley, whose badassness is finally unleashed this week as the episode closes
with Setrakian beheading two vamps with his silver sword cane. He only gets
this one scene at the end (along with a brief bit of business between him and
Gus), but since this episode ends with Eph and Setrakian finally joining
forces, he’ll hopefully get even more to do in the coming weeks. I’m really
looking forward to getting “the band” get together, so to speak, as watching
Stoll, Bradley and Kevin Durand (whose Vasily Fet is sadly absent this week)
play off of each other should be a good bit of fun.
All in all, the horror
elements continue to shine (and this is still easily the best-looking show out
there currently), but everything else just seems to be circling further and
further down the drain. The showrunners seem to be in such a rush to get to the
good stuff, they’re mangling the connective tissue that holds the whole thing
together - cycling through tired clichés and rote, boneheaded explanations to advance
the plot. It’s especially frustrating, as they already have all the answers at
hand in the already-quite excellent novels. I understand that changes must be
made when adapting into a different medium, but the changes made thus far have
done nothing but make the storyline more contrived, and - for lack of a better
word - stupid. But oh, well… they still have nine episodes to go. Hopefully the
showrunners can get The Strain back on
the right track before this season closes out its run.
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