Eph takes a drink.
That, ultimately, was the endgame for season one of The Strain. All the horror, all the bloodshed, all the machinations of demons and showrunners, all came down to Eph deciding it’s just not worth it anymore, pouring himself a shot, and drinking it down.
What gave Lost its power was the ability to intermix earth-shattering narrative twists with soul-splintering moments of character catharsis. Plenty of shows attempted to mimic the heavily serialized myth-arc structure of Lost, but what all those pretenders failed to grasp was that Lost existed and succeeded because of how incredibly compelling and involving the emotional journey of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, et al, was.
Now, The Strain does not often echo Cuse’s other show. There’s more goo per-episode than Lost would fit into an entire season, for one. But in its best moments, you can see the same creative drive. All the gore-soaked mayhem and cosmic tomfoolery is, should be, a vehicle to explore characters who are struggling on the brink between sin and grace, grasping at whatever hold they can find.
So Eph takes a drink, and the season ends. The first season of The Strain was, finally, the story of a man attempting to maintain his sane and decent ideals while the world went to Hell, only to find that sane and decent ideals were not enough, never enough. And so, Eph takes a drink.
I wish the show was more consistent in how it navigated that territory. The Strain season one has shown often dazzling promise, but been matched at every step with frustrating clumsiness. Every time it seemed the show had finally settled fully into its identity, they would do an episode that only reminded how much more there was to go. The show concludes its season in fine fashion and with enormous promise, but after thirteen episodes of promise, is that enough?
The finale was built around the Extermination Gang launching another assault on The Master, this time having tracked him down to the club where Bolivar had been planning to host his club before he ripped his own genitals off and then other stuff happened, but mostly the genitals thing was the concern.
Frustratingly, we’ve been down this road before, and it’s probably not great for the grand finale to the debut season to so immediately recall earlier episodes of that same season. But the final battle is a pretty excellent set-piece, cutting back and forth between the various parties as they all carry out individual storylines within the fight.
(The color scheme of the club in the opening tableau of the gathering sides so directly recalls the lighting/color of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World that I’m going to believe that it was an homage and if you try to say different I will cry until you stop arguing with me).
Nora sliced off Bolivar’s tentacle-thing as revenge for her mother’s murder, while Dutch and Fet take on Eichorst, with Fet firing silver-studded nails right into his smug fucking face. Meanwhile, Eph guides Zack through the slaughtering vampire’s art, and Setrakian rushes forward to meet The Master.
Before we go any further, how about a round of applause for Corey Stoll? When the show got going, much of the conversation surrounding his performance was focused solely on that dead-skunk he had glued to his head. As the show progressed and the hairpiece did not, Eph unfortunately began to fade into the background and seem ancillary to a narrative he was ostensibly central to.
None of that is Stoll’s fault, and in several moments tonight he reminded us of just why he deserved to carry a show. The scene where he carefully guides Zack in how to wield a sword was easily the finest sequence The Strain has assembled yet, as Eph’s voice shook and eyes darted in pain and regret as he described to his son the best way to kill people. You could almost hear the man’s heartbreak through the screen.
The battle seems won, as Eph smashes The Master through some windows out into direct sunlight. But it turns out that this too will not be enough. While Eichorst and the other drones flee, The Master still manages to escape, leaving even Setrakian stunned and speechless. All along the gang had hoped, assumed, that The Master, for all his power, still played by the “Rules” of vampire lore, and had pinned much of their hopes on that perfectly logical assumption.
Well, logic went out the fucking window at the same moment as the conspicuously not-dead Master. Now they are adrift, with their enemy in the wind and any scrap of hope squandered.
And then Kelly comes home. She doesn’t even attack, only makes her presence known to Eph and Zack so they will both know the power of The Master and the hold he already has over their lives.
It’s a bitter, bleak place for the show to leave off, and my hat’s off to Cuse and his team for being willing to go there. Much as Setrakian’s final speech calls for hope, the final shot of the bread van (and I love that this is simply accepted as their default transportation now) racing through a burning city suggests nothing but defeat.
There’s other bits of progressing threads throughout the finale:
Palmer is up and about, claiming all of Setrakian’s treasures as either war trophies or fan-ish collectibles. Mr. Fitwillaims abandons him, and Palmer ends up murdering a government official attempting to quarantine the city. Palmer is informed by Eichorst that he hasn’t actually undergone the transformation and is still mortal, which means next year will probably continue his kvetching about bullshit. For obvious reasons, Palmer has not really been a focus for this season, a real shame given how tasty Jonathan Hyde obviously finds the scenery. With Palmer now up and about, they’ve given the character much more longitude to be a magnificent bastard to the world at large. Or he could keep being an annoying hanger-on.
Also hanging on: Gus. Gus’ role tonight was to be brought before the Ancients, the ruling body of vampires. The Master’s final design was disappointing, if not outright hilarious looking, but I was impressed by the Ancients. They follow the same basic outline (Nosferatu-faces, sans-noses) but their withered, rotting forms are much creepier and imposing then the giant albino bat-muppet that does long, involved dialogue scenes with our main characters. The entire scene with Gus, Mr. Quinlan and the Ancients hits the exact right note of creeping otherworldliness, as if by traveling underground, Gus has stepped foot into a world where the rational and sane are meaningless.
It turns out that even the ruling body of vampires does not care for The Master’s actions and they would like Gus to lead the charge against his forces during the daylight when Quinlan and the other vamps are waylaid.
Things in the world of The Strain are getting messier and stranger as it goes along. But as long as the show remembers that it’s chief concern must always be a man long sober deciding he has had enough, and pouring himself that first drink… if it can hold onto moments like that there just might be true greatness waiting to be found.