The best episodes of The Strain have invariably been those that tighten the focus on a select few characters and give the show a chance to breathe from the myriad characters and plot threads. So when it rapidly became clear that tonight’s episode was almost exclusively concerned with the parallel journeys of Kelly and Dutch, I settled in for what I hoped would be a nice bounce back from last week’s muddled disappointment.
And, on the one hand, it was a very strong episode, tense and scary as you would expect from the show this deep into the first season. But it was also an almost punishingly tragic episode, a long and dark voyage into despair.
The episode is primarily about resolving what happened to Kelly Goodweather before Zack came home and was attacked by Asshole Boyfriend. Nothing good, as it turned out. Kelly had gone to work that day and been stunned by the news that half the school’s faculty and student body are absent from some unknown illness. Realizing that Eph was right about them being unsafe, Kelly rushes home to pack so she and Zack can clear the city.
Asshole is waiting, and now he’s a vampire. The fight scene between Kelly and Matt is an exceptional bit of staging by director John Rounders Dahl, staged more as a domestic brawl than a horror set-piece. Kelly is caught off guard and desperate, flinging anything she has at hand at the bloodied and grime-soaked thing that was once her boyfriend. The fight culminates in her bashing his face with blender blades, slicing his head open and releasing a bevy of worms.
The audience has been trained by this point to understand that the worms are fast and incurable, so when the screen was suddenly filled with an explosion of the fuckers landing on Kelly, the jig was up. To really seal the deal, the show ended up reenacting a controversial billboard and had a worm cram its way INTO HER GODDAMN EYE. I can only imagine the panic attacks that set off in the more sensitive viewers.
An infected Kelly spends the remainder of the episode searching for Zack while slowly succumbing to her disease. In perhaps the most heartbreaking touch, it gradually becomes clear that Kelly’s fevered hunt for Zack is just that: a hunt. This is not a mother desperate to find and protect her child, this is a predator with instincts and drives that they barely comprehend but need to fulfill. Kelly eventually slaughters her former friend and her son, notching another item off of The Strain’s “They Won’t Do That” list. It’s a pretty short list at this point. Toddler-death was about one of the only cards they had left to play, and they played it twice in this episode as Eph then re-kills both mother and son when he discovers their vampiric selves slumbering in the basement.
(GREAT, creepy image of the mother lying with her son curled up in her arms, almost peaceful in death until they sniff out Eph and come to snarling life. Just that one image made me long for someone to re-try an adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal ‘Salem’s Lot, and this time capture the haunting family dynamic between the vampires that gives the book its kick. Third times the charm!)
Kelly is summoned by the voice of The Master to join him in the subway, bringing our best-yet glimpse into the life cycle of the vampire to a close. It’s a cruel and ugly fate to befall a character whose only crime was trying to preserve some semblance of normalcy for her son and some kind of autonomy from her controlling prick(s) of a romantic partner.
Even more devastating is Eph and Zack’s gradual realization of how truly gone Kelly is. While they never come face to face with a vamped out Kelly, what Eph discovers in his hunt is all but proof positive that she has been taken. Much as he claims to not be giving up, it’s clear from Stoll’s face that Eph knows that his wife is gone to him. And he can’t even manage to hold onto Zack to at least share in their grief, as the boy wants no part of his failure of his father, preferring to relive happier moments through old videos.
Things are no brighter for the other half of the story, as Dutch attempts to undo her hack of the Internet (I wish they had just let this element go, but no dice). She and Fet attempt to break into Stoneheart but are apprehended almost immediately and Dutch is brought before Eldritch Palmer. Palmer’s looking better (having orphan-organs implanted will do that, I guess) and he snottily mocks Dutch’s efforts, informing her that it is her own sense of feeling small and unimportant that left her vulnerable to his offer, even when all common sense would suggest that BREAKING THE FUCKING INTERNET is not the most up-and-up activity.
To this point in the series, Jonathan Hyde hasn’t been asked to do much besides be shitty to people while slowly dying, but he brings a real menace to a character who could (and in the book, did) come across as an insufferable prat. Even pinned to a bed, Hyde dominates a room and Eldritch Palmer is clearly a man who is fully aware of the imposing cut to his cloth.
Dutch and Fet are led off to what appears to be their execution, only to have Mr. Fitzwilliams inform them that he doesn’t actually approve of Palmer’s plans to bring about the end of civilization in exchange for immortality. Because…well, why would he? Unfortunately, Fitzwilliams can’t be brought to openly rebel against Eldritch, a man whom Fitzwillams has been established to revere as a father figure.
Just as Kelly is now a powerless slave bent to the will of The Master, so too are Dutch and Fitzwilliams ultimately pawns at the beck and call of a seemingly all-powerful figure. Whether by fear or love, there are never limits to the ways that the powerful can exploit the powerless.
Worse, instead of being united by their circumstances, the stress and frustration of the day has only served to fracture the nascent resistance group. Dutch splits after Eph is short with her following a callous remark about Kelly, while Fet is clearly none-to-happy with Eph’s behavior. Nora’s heartbroken, and Setrakian seems at a loss as to how to wrangle any of these people into an actual force.
These people are tired and spent and petty and broken, and they may in fact be our only hope. This… this could not go so great.