by Brendan Foley
Welcome back, Strainiacs. Very sorry to have missed last week’s episode, if only to write a 1000-word treatise on the glory that is Corey Stoll finally losing the dead skunk on top of his dome. Seriously, that man’s screen presence with and without the wig is like a switch getting flipped from OFF to ON. Now he’s back to a skull so shiny you can see your own reflection, and the show is a thousand times better for it.
After weeks of set-up, storylines have begun merging together and picking up speed on The Strain. Everyone is making big moves this week, and the result was one of the stronger episodes of this second season. There’s still the usual pacing oddness (something that we may have to simply accept is an engrained part of The Strain and will likely never be fixed) but this was a big bold hour of episodic horror television.
The central story this week was Eph’s misadventures in Washington D.C., trying to get officials on board with his ‘Let’s murder millions of infected Americans with this biological weapon I whipped up whilst drunk’ plan. And, shockingly, everyone involved is actually super-cool with this idea. The show has kind of boxed itself into a corner here where we understand that this is a vampire apocalypse, but to the people not on the streets of NYC, what Eph is saying must seem like madness. But with the nation apparently collapsing under distress (the president is under impeachment, senators are fist-fighting in the aisles) I guess you are just supposed to take the leap.
Episode writer Justin Britt-Gibson does something very clever with Eph’s Washington trip. See, we know we’re watching an ongoing, serialized story about people fighting the vampire apocalypse, which means that there ain’t nothing getting resolved midway through season 2. So Eph’s plan is bound to fail, and the tension from his excursion comes from how and/or when the ax is going to drop. When Eph hooks up with an old friend, and when they go to a pharmaceutical company rep. and to a general, we the audience are waiting to see who is going to betray Eph and when it’s going down. Will the old friend turn out to be another Stoneheart puppet? Will the pharmaceutical company freeze Eph out to pursue nefarious purposes? Might the general have some other duplicitous scheme for a chemical agent?
Nope. Everyone, it seems, is actually totally on the up-and-up and everything is going swimmingly until a Stoneheart assassin rolls up and kills Eph’s friend and Leigh, the pharmaceutical rep. that Eph had been working with/bedding. Eph assassinates the assassin, but not before catching a bullet himself.
(Sidenote: This episode really clarified for me how weird of a lead Eph Goodweather truly is. He’s not an antihero of the Walter White/Don Draper cut, seeing as his mission is totally righteous. But even acknowledging that he’s on the side of the angels, Eph is a total dick. He’s a drunk and a bully and a cheat, here happily hopping into bed with Leigh with nary a pause to think about his undead wife or Nora, who is stuck in NYC watching Eph’s piece of shit kid [although Zack is OK this week]. Eph is our hero, but he’s also something of a scumbag, and I’m wondering if this season might not be escalating to a point where the others can’t ignore this anymore and call him out.)
While Eph is desperately trying to make big moves to save NYC, and even possibly the world, the folks on the ground are stuck trying to make it from minute to minute, which leads to some gooey goodness for us, the audience. Gus and Angel briefly team up to take out some vampires, which was nice to see.
Also nice: a return to the super-creepy chamber of the Ancients, where the assembled twitchy Nosferatus get chewed out by the mysterious vampire/samurai guy. Book-readers know who this fellow is, but the show is keeping his name locked down for the moment. Anywho, he’s got some Winston Wolf in him as he asserts that he’ll clean up the mess, but he’ll need some help hunting in the daylight.
Hey, Gus gets to be relevant again!
The big showstopper set piece for the week is Nora and Zack’s desperate escape from Kelly and the feelers (which really are just the creepiest goddamn things ever) through a deserted church. It was a nice, extended suspense sequence, well shot by Howard Pretty in Pink (?!?!?!?!) Deutch.
(I don’t know if it was a specific choice, but there was a ton of red lights throughout this episode. Only the D.C. section was spared this stylized look [until the Stoneheart assassin showed up, at which point the red lights resumed in the background]. Unreality suits this show well, so if they are working to amplify the sense of exaggeration, that’s probably a good move)
Kelly, it turns out, is a way more compelling figure as an undead Terminator “Mama bear,” as Fet quips, versus the living/breathing incarnation last season. Fet, Setrakian and Mr. Fitzwilliam pop up to slaughter the feelers (and I do love that the show has arrived at a place where our heroes can shoot vampire children multiple times in the head and no one flinches) and chase off Kelly. Fitzwilliam gets bit and is subsequently decapitated. So much for the redemption he was so interested in. Damn, and Setrakian came thisclose to smiling this week.
The episode was titled ‘Identity’ and there was an effort made to tie the stories together under the theme of obfuscated or shifting identity. Eph and Angel both deny their reputations and original aliases, but when push comes to shove there’s no hiding what they are. Fitzwilliam was interested in changing who he was, and Setrakian seemed delighted at what a symbolic victory this conversion could be. But instead Eph’s friends are slaughtered because even a shaved head can’t change him, Angel’s wrestling instincts assert themselves in a fight, and Fitzwilliam’s dreams of repairing his soul end with his disembodied head rolling down the church aisle.
The vampires don’t concern themselves with change, even when they are undergoing actual metamorphosis. The Master summons Eichorst and Bolivar to his lair to witness his transference to a new body. Eichorst assumes it will be him, but instead The Master (fantastic make-up job on his 60% burnt off face) spews his worms into Bolivar (no part of this sentence was a metaphor). Bat-muppet Master collapses, and new rock star Master stands proud and strong.
We are exactly midway through the season, and things are looking good (well, not for the heroes. They be fucked). The Strain has doubled down on the crazy, and is really succeeding as a weekly hour of straight-faced lunatic pulp. Here’s hoping the back-half keeps it up.