The premiere concluded with a speech stating that it would be love which would allow the vampire plot to succeed against the human race. The second episode takes great pains to prove that point, showing how the human capacity for empathy and connection is manipulated and preyed on by The Master and his steadily growing horde. Love coupled with idiotic bureaucratic concerns proves to be a dangerous brew for Eph and the rest of our heroes as the show settles in.
That’s how you know that this is a real-deal horror jam. On virtually any other show, humanity’s drive to give and receive love would be the thing which staves off the darkness and propels the heroic characters on. Here, when Eph breaks off his investigation to go connect with his son and then hit up an AA meeting, the personal triumph of bonding with his son and standing fast in sobriety is undercut by the fact that THE MORON IS LETTING VAMPIRES ASSERT CONTROL OVER THE WORLD YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO TAKE DELAYS LIKE THIS ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? WHAT ARE YOU DOING BAD HAIRPIECE GUY?
Phew, sorry about that.
It’s an oddly structured episode, to say the least. The first half concerns itself with checking in on our various characters and continuing to drop hints about the larger histories and backstories of the world we’re still being introduced to, while the second half puts the focus almost exclusively on Eph as he and Nora are thrown off the investigation but continue to try and figure out a cause and cure for whatever shuttered the plane and killed all but four passengers.
That’s where the bureaucracy kicks in, as Palmer’s cover-up scapegoats the airline and convinces the world at large that it was a mechanical failure which led to the deaths and not some sort of disease. Government bodies are more than happy to not have to worry about a quarantine (there’s some blather about the economy to try and justify why the federal government would be OK with allowing a death-soaked airport to continue operating mere hours after hundreds of people died of unproven causes, not even waiting for a fucking autopsy report on a single dead body. The explanation is less convincing than the special effects in Dracula: Dead and Loving It.) Both Guillermo del Toro and Carlton Cuse have invested a lot of time in a lot of work depicting various authority figures as witless buffoons operating obliviously against cosmic purpose, and they revisit that ground here. Unfortunately, it’s such an all-consuming cynicism, embodied by characters whom we have not been given any time to actually know or understand, and it ends up coming across as empty plot mechanics designed to put Eph and Nora on the outside of the investigation, struggling against not only vampires but conspiracies and red tape.
That the episode focuses so much on said red tape makes it the perfect spot to bring in a new major player: Vasiliy Fet, as played by Kevin Durand. Durand’s one of those guys who usually gets reduced to playing thugs and henchmen, which is a shame as he’s got a rascally charisma that comes through in the few roles where he’s allowed to show it. That aspect immediately comes into play, as we meet Fet investigating a restaurant infested by rats, using a dead one to send the disinterested patrons scattering. Fet’s way on the margins of the main story and probably will remain there for some time, but he’s quickly established as a man who’s direct, to the point, gets results, and operates on a code of honor that has no interest in bribes or niceties. Also, no hair piece which puts him a good deal above the lead of the damn show.
I’ll be curious to see what the average gore quotient is on this show once it has settled in. Last week had plural Grand Guignol gore sequences, while tonight’s scales it way back. We get another nice long look at the pulverized skull, which is neat, but the red stuff is kept in reserve for isolated drips and drops.
And maybe it’s because those sequences were kept in reserve, but I honestly found the minor flare ups of grue in tonight’s more upsetting than the pilot’s throngs of undead or that one guy getting his face turned into skull-fragment-pixie dust. As with last week’s, there’s a patience to the way the show lets its sequences play out, allowing tension to build before reaching crescendo. We spend the whole episode watching the surviving passengers nursing problematic symptoms, culminating in Bolivar (Jack Kesy) biting open the throat of one of his groupies. The biting alone would have been an appropriate climax for the episode, but then The Strain does one better and has Bolivar get down on all fours and start desperately lapping up the pools of blood on the floor. It’s hilarious and disgusting (and owes a whopping debt to the most iconic scene from del Toro’s Cronos) and a nice example of how withholding the blood-letting can have bigger results than if the carnage was wall to wall.
Heck, the most riveting scene in the entire episode plays out without a single drop of blood being spilled. Setrakian receives a prison visit from vampire retainer Thomas Eichorst (Richard Sammael) and the standoff between the two is loaded with tension and yet-to-be-revealed history. Eichorst boasts about being responsible for Setrakian’s prison camp numbers and luxuriates in the pain he’s caused the old man in the past and the victory which he believes to be rapidly approaching. Sammael has the Waltz turned up to full Basterds but it works like gangbusters in the scene, particularly when put up across from David Bradley’s terrified but unbowed Setrakian. Like Fet, Setrakian is probably too proactive a character for the show to allow him to be running around while the vampires are spreading out, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that Bradley is the soul of the show and needs more room to play.
The Strain is still finding its groove, awkwardly transitioning from the meta-plot and the home drama of Eph and the other characters. But the cast continues to do strong work, and the hour is so busy that the episode flies by. Coupled with the show’s knack for darkly beautiful Gothic imagery, it makes for a potent and highly entertaining hour of television. Hopefully the next few episodes will see the divergent stories start to converge and strengthen each other.
And if not, well, we’ll always have that guy getting his skull smashed into chunky brain soup. Again: neat.