Monday, July 28, 2014

The Strain - 1x03 Gone Smooth - Review

The title of this episode is clever, once you get it

The bodies from the incident have disappeared! Jim (Sean Astin) discovers he's entangled with the wrong crowd! Eph (Corey Stoll) loses his custody battle! Nora (Mia Maestro) finally asks the man with all the answers, Abraham (David Bradley), what the hell is going on? Vasily (Kevin Durand) is really good at capturing rats! And Eichorst (Richard Sammel) is his own make up artist!

To say that a lot happened in this episode is.... actually not quite true. But there is a lot of key moments here that should be touched upon. 

From the opening scene of this episode we see Eichorst's true form: a very noseless Nosferatu. The image definitely will remind people of Voldemort from Harry Potter, but fans of the vampire mythos will know that this is what vampires are suppose to look like. I've always wondered how is it that the vampires in this show turn into hideous monsters yet are capable of walking around like normal human beings. The answer: prosthetic makeup. However, given that Eichorst is an older vampire it is possible that this is showing us what the species could be. Mainly because besides from him and The Master, none of the other vampires in the show seem to have intelligence other than the need to feed. However given that The Master and Eichorst are older, it can be assumed that an older a vampire gets the less animalistic one becomes.

I am very pleased to report that this time it actually seems like Eph, Nora, and Jim are now worth watching. This is mainly due to their interactions with the other key players in this slow game for the world. Well, maybe not so much so for Eph. As I stated before, he loses custody of his kid. But this can be seen as a weird blessing for the plot as it freed him from that drama and forces him to focus on the real problem that is going on. Because of that, it leads Nora to hunt down the crazy man they sent to prison for answers. Abraham is definitely one of the two best characters in this series, and he is not pleased with Nora and Eph sending him to prison for telling the truth. He's even less pleased that when Nora asks him for answers, she's still in disbelief of him. You feel the frustration that Abraham is going through in order to try and lay out what has to be done, but he doesn't linger on it as he sees it as his responsibility in the end. With Jim's side, we see that he's been secretly working for the Stoneheart Company (aka bad guys incorporated) where he starts to fear his actions of wanting to help his sick wife may be the cause for the coming apocalypse. It is good to see our main characters actually becoming essential to what is going on, though that doesn't prevent them from still not being too interesting. Only time will tell.

But back to the characters who are interesting. Abraham is definitely a man on a mission. If you do not believe him within his own personal time limit, he views you as non-essential to his cause. It just goes to show the amount of determination he has in wanting to eradicate the problem before it progresses. This determination shows in how he was able to bribe a young hacker to find out all the names of the people on board the flight so that he can "pay his respects." He is so far the only character in the series who has a very personal and powerful drive that keeps him going that is essential to the plot. But then there is Kevin Durand's exterminator Vasily Fet. This episode showcases not only that he's an efficient trapper but also completely dedicated to what he does. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I will not be surprised if he turns out to be the vampire hunter that Abraham used to be when he was younger. One can almost tell that it is going to happen with just how skilled he is with capturing a rat, as well as knowing the backstory of the building his clients live in to inform them why the problem keeps happening. I look forward to the moment these two come together, because we all know that these two will definitely be the vampire wrecking crew.

Of course we can't get through this show without talking about the survivors. This time the primary focus out of the four survivors is on Ansel, the most normal guy of the group. He's not a lawyer, a pilot, or a rock star. He's just an ordinary guy. And seeing his transformation effect his family life is a disturbing one as he is clearly losing it. This goes so far as him drinking blood from a raw steak using his new vampire leech tongue that his wife didn't seem to notice. Rock star Bolivar on the other hand has been getting nothing but fan fervor for both his survival and biting a girl in the neck during a foursome. Unfortunately for him, his transformation has progressed even further to the point where not only does he loses his hair...but his penis and testicles. What's left? Well...now you know where the title comes from. It is unknown if he's fully embraced what he is, as he felt nothing watching his penis fall off and into the toilet. It does leave for a disturbing image. And while there was no signs of that bitchy lawyer survivor, we do spend a lot of time with the pilot survivor in this episode. He knows he's about to die from the number of vampire worms swimming through his body, and it is a heartbreaking scene to see that he knows it. However he appears to have transformed the fastest out of the four survivors. In the final scene of this episode, Eph, Nora, and Jim finally come face to face with the monsters that they are dealing with. And Nora learns what Abraham meant by doing what has to be done.


SCORE: 7.5 - The slow burn is about to erupt in flames
STATUS: Continue to watch - Shits about to get real

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