The Strain proved to be something of an odd duck during the current era of ‘peak TV’ or ‘too much TV’ or whatever term or age you want to assign this period of binge-watching when every channel and network is loaded with programs determined to capture your attention.
Clearly, FX hoped that the combination of cultishly adored director Guillermo del Toro (currently riding an unprecedented wave of acclaim thanks to The Shape of Water) and Carlton Cuse (an old hand at TV production and one of the architects of Lost, among others) for a rip-roaring supernatural thriller would yield a hit on the level of The Walking Dead, a show that FX passed on before AMC picked it up and re-wrote history.
The Strain never became that, but for four seasons it followed its own defiantly weird course. Adapted (with growing looseness as the show went on) from a trilogy of novels by del Toro and Chuck Hogan (writer of, among other things, the novel that became The Town), all 46 episodes of The Strain are now available to own in a single DVD box-set. Though it has more than its fair share of ups and downs, The Strain as a collected whole is a horror epic well worth your time.
The Strain begins as a supernaturally-tinged plague drama, following epidemiologist Eph Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his team at the CDC as they investigate a bizarre incident involving a plane landing at JFK with seemingly all passengers deceased. Being the good little consumers we are, we understand that the cause of death is vampirism and that a plan is afoot by an entity known as The Master to spread the plague across the world.
It takes a long while for the characters in the show to catch up to this, and over the course of four seasons we watch the plague spread and human society teeter and then collapse. Without spoiling just how far The Strain takes its premise, it’s safe to say that the world of the final season is radically different from the one of the first, and represents such a massive evolution that at times it is difficult to reconcile the far-out, mythical conclusion with the staid beginning.
That journey is greased by a large ensemble, including David Bradley as Professor Setrakian, a Holocaust-survivor who has faced this evil before and attempts to avert it once more; Mia Maestro and Sean Astin as Eph’s colleagues at the CDC; Kevin Durand as Fet, an exterminator who gets an early look at the infection; Miguel Gomez as Gus, a young gang member who stumbles into various prime positions during the fall of humanity; Jonathan Hyde as Eldritch Palmer, an infirm billionaire collaborating with the vampires in the hope of gaining immortality; and Richard Sammel as Eichorst, the chief henchman of The Master and an old rival of Setrakian.
The Strain’s identity was in flux throughout its run, and early episodes see the show struggling against its own best instincts towards what can only be described as Gothic camp. If you’ve ever seen Blade II, you’ll know the particular look and tone I’m talking about. At its best, The Strain turned NYC into a neon-soaked cathedral of monsters and mutilations, a mode that it became more and more comfortable operating in as it progressed and moved further and further away the ‘real’ world. By the time later seasons introduce Rupert Penry-Jones as Mr. Quinlan, an immortal samurai vampire-human hybrid who walks around in broad daylight with a fucking broadsword on his back, The Strain has staked (natch) its claim and gone all-in on the ludicrous cartoon that was its best self.
But there were problem elements of The Strain that were locked in from the beginning, and the show never was quite able to shake them. Chief among them was Eph’s family drama involving wife Kelly (Natalie Brown) and son Zach (couple different kids), a storyline that hit with a dull thud in the first episodes and remained in prominence throughout the full run. Zach, especially, was every terrible cliché involving angsty teenage kids endangering themselves and making awful, stupid choices that has plagued more genre TV shows than anyone can count, all rolled into one and played out in excruciating length for almost 50 hours.
(Sidenote: Much of this badness has its roots in the books, where Zach also sucked beyond belief. It would have taken an absolute miracle of casting to overcome this, and neither of the Zachs were the kind of once-in-a-generation miracle find that would have been needed to pull this off.)
If I had to guess why The Strain never became the kind of crossover hit like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, where somehow audience enthusiasm has turned often confrontational works of otherwise-niche genres into cultural phenomenons, it’d be that The Strain never nailed down the soap opera dynamics that power those shows (and Lost, it should be noted) to such heights. For all the classy production values, extensive mythology, and shocking violence, those shows control massive audiences thanks to their bevy of interpersonal relationships and the twists and turns and shocking deaths that add so much spice to those relationships. The Strain, no matter how hard it tried, could never make that element of itself sing, and so instead it settled for going all-in on its most gonzo elements.
If you’re a fan of the show or someone considering jumping in, this box-set is the way to go. Being able to watch the whole thing in one giant go helps ease the show through its weakest spots, as consuming it as one massive journey greatly lessens the start-stop-start pacing that The Strain exhibited during its week-to-week schedule.
There are commentaries on scattered episodes, and enough behind-the-scenes stuff that digs into the origins and development of the show to satisfy ardent fans of The Strain. While The Strain went to some extremely bleak extremes, especially during its apocalyptic final runs, the sense from the various behind-the-scenes elements makes clear that the show was a labor of love for all involved, with a cast that took no small measure of delight in trying out whatever nutty new curveball Cuse, del Toro, and Hogan opted to throw at them.
The Strain was a wild little ride, but one well worth taking.