Posts tagged: The Strain

The Strain S02E13 “Night Train” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm
Writer: Carlton Cuse & Chuck Hogan
Director: Vincenzo Natali

Essential Plot Points:

• Eph, Nora and Zach try to escape the city so that Zach can be delivered to his grandparents and Eph can go back to Washington to work on his bio-bomb.
• But the strigoi derail the train, Zach gets Nora killed, and then he wanders off with Kelly. Jerk.
• Setrakian wins the auction for the Occido Lumen when Palmer freezes his assets leaving Eichhorst unable to bid.
• Eichhorst and the Master are a bit miffed by this so the Master turns Coco to remind Palmer who’s boss.
• Palmer cuts out Coco’s wormy heart.
• Eichhorst tries to recover the Lumen by sending an army of Strigoi to attack Setrakian and Fet in their van.
• But then Quinlan and co swoop in to save the day. The bread van is toast (see what we did there?) but Quinlan, Fet, Setrakian and Gus escape down the river in a boat. Cue portentous end-of-season monologue.

Review:

This bloody, bloody show. “Night Train” is in so many ways is a superb season finale, especially following such a slow-moving, misfiring, directionless season. Then it goes and throttles the life out of any goodwill you’re finding for The Strain again by taking one of the worst things about the show and making it even more monumentally odious than ever.

One word: Zach. But let’s deal with that after we’ve had a rare opportunity to rave about the show.

Action-packed, pacy, witty, surprising, shocking, gory… this is what you want The Strain to be like. Crucially, the characters don’t get lost in the accelerated plotting; they actually benefit from it. Robbed of the time to rely on the kind of indulgent, unsubtle dialogue scenes that have dogged season two, writers Cuse and Hogan instead have to sketch in the characters moments with economy and stealth… and it works. The verbal sparring between Setrakian and Eichhorst, and Fet’s general bewilderment bring them all more alive than they’ve been in weeks. Similarly Nora feels more natural and likeable in the few moments she has here than in a whole load of contrived flashbacks last week.

But let’s be honest, it’s the big set-pieces that make this episode. The Battle Of The Bread Van is high-octane stuff, genuinely exciting and tense, directed with some considerable style by Vincenzo Natali. The train derailment is superbly achieved and the following subway action is – up to the point when everything goes hideously wrong – gripping to watch. The auction (though we have some problems with it conceptually – see the “Bad” section below) is huge fun to watch. The final montage – showing you where everybody is left at the end of the season – may be a cliché but it’s an effective one, with some beautiful, emotive imagery.

So much to like, then. So much.

Then it goes and blows it. Not just with niggles (Quinlan is as flat as ever) but with a dramatic choice so jawdroppingly misjudged you can’t help thinking the writers did it just to be perverse.

Zach gets Nora killed then voluntarily walks off hand-in-hand with her murderer.

Bollocks to that.

Zach’s been whiny and loathsome all season but it turns out we may have been a little mean to actor Max Charles. It’s not his fault. Why bother trying to make a character like Zach sympathetic when the writers seem determined to make him the most colossal tit in TV history?

Okay, we can kind of accept – even after every awful, monstrous thing he’s seen the husk of his mum do this season – that he might still cry out when Nora attacks Kelly, thus distracting Nora and leading to her death. But then he watches Kelly use her stinger on Nora… and still goes off hand-in-hand with her? No. Simply… no. Not ever. Totally unbelievable. A product of scripting necessity and in no way justified on screen, emotionally or plot-wise.

Zach plays a major part in the books The Strain is based on so it would be difficult to get rid of him. But he’s been so appallingly handled on screen, we’re hoping beyond hope that Cuse and Hogan take a leaf out of the Game Of Thrones guide to adaptation: ignore the source material and kill the little scrote off in the season three premiere.

The Good:

• The Battle Of The Bread Van is about as exciting as small screen action sequences get. We especially like director Vincenzo Natali’s new twist on the “first person shooter” shot.
• Gus lives! Honestly we were fooled.
• The train ploughing through the strigoi is a wonderfully nightmarish image.
• The Master killing Coco was another high point. Honestly, we had no problem with Coco but Palmer did need his aura of smug brought down a peg or 20.
• Besides, anything that gets Eichhorst in a pissed-off mood is a good thing. He’s at his best when he’s pissed off.
• In which case, bonus points also for Setrakian in this exchange: “How ironic that our duel will not end with a fight but with a simple transaction in gold.” “I assure you, Eichhorst, that our duel shall end with a transaction in silver.”
• Fet’s bemusement the whole episode at only knowing about a tenth of what’s going is fun.
• The final montage is effective.

The Bad:

• Zach. Has there ever been a less sympathetic character on telly?
• Quinlan. He’s so stiff and lifeless. His Henry V moment falls utterly flat. Okay, the words aren’t exactly Shakespeare (“Today will spill white blood and change the future.”) but Rupert Penry-Jones doesn’t exactly bother making it sound rousing either.
• The auction business is an artificial piece of drama that hasn’t made sense ever since Fonescu went to Creem instead of waiting to see what Setrakian could offer him. We’re not sure what his deal was with Creem but we imagine he came away with considerably less than $323 million.
• Where’s Dutch? Okay, she said goodbye last week but we assumed this was a just dramatic sleight of hand and she’d be drawn back into the action. If she really has left the series, that’s Nora, Coco (in human form at least) and Dutch all gone in the space of two episodes. Not a great show to be an actress on, is it? (THIS JUST IN: We’ve found an interview with Ruta Gedmintas in which she says she’s back for season three, so Dutch hasn’t been axed – good. We’d still like to have seen her in this episode, though.)

And The Random:

• Did you spot that the workmen in the processing plant were employed by a company called Widmore? Perhaps owned by Charles Widmore, the industrialist played by Alan Dale in Lost, on which The Strain showrunner Carlton Cuse was an exec producers.

• Battle of the creepy smiles – Eichhorst versus Setrakian.
• And finally let’s spare a moment for those we lost in this episode…

• Bye bye Nora. But at least you outlived your usefulness as character by about a season.

• Bye bye Coco. You sided with the wrong creepy old guy.

• Bye bye bread van. You had more expressions than Zach.

Reviewed by Dave Golder

Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E11 “Dead End” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm
Writer: Liz Phang
Director: Phil Abraham

Essential Plot Points:

• Eichhorst plans to rape the chained-up Dutch (using his stinger tongue) before feasting on her. He force feeds her pineapple for seasoning.
• He’s also fantasising that Ducth is the woman who spurned his approaches during the war. Not that it was a match made in heaven; he was a full-on Nazi and she was a Jew. He even ultimately helped to cause her execution by hanging in the street.
• Dutch escapes using some mace she’s procured from the body of another of Eichhorst’s victims whom he neglects to tidy away. When Eichhorst gives chase, Fet, Eph and Nora turn up just in the nick of time to rescue her.
• Setrakian is tied to chair for most of the episode by Rudyard Fonescu, the guy who’s been keeping the Lumen all these years.
• Fonescu delivers the Lumen to Alonso Creem.
• Gus helps the Guptas out of the city with aid (in the getting-through-checkpoints department) from Quinlan’s associate, Eve. Angel stays with Gus to help with the fight against the Strigoi. Eve looks unimpressed. She clearly doesn’t watch Mexican horror films with fat wrestlers.

Review:

“Come on, let’s move it,” says a security guard at one point in the episode. You know how he feels. In The Strain events rarely move any faster than a narcoleptic snail in a superglue minefield, and this week things are more claggy than ever.

Currently in the main arc plot, Quinlain and his pals are gearing up to kill the Master, Palmer is about to use his significant resources to put in motion some big strigoi plan, Coco has just been brought back from the dead, Setrakian has finally set eyes on the Lumen and Feraldo is making no friends among Manhattan’s elite. So what do we get here? A sexually frustrated vampire trying to live out his fantasies through torture porn while reminiscing about what a git he wad during the war.

Admittedly, the Eichhorst/Dutch scenes take the show to new areas of horror. This is admirably strong, uncompromising stuff for television and horror should make you feel uncomfortable. The darkest moment is also the highlight of the show, and not just because is takes nauseous depravity to new levels. When Eichhorst prepares to rape Dutch with his stinger your stomach leaps onto spin cycle. Thankfully, Dutch has procured some mace from the body of another victim that Eichhorst carelessly left lying about; for once glorious moment it looks like she may be the kick-ass hero as she sprays Eichhorst in the face and unshackles herself.

But no, she just runs, steps on a nail, limps a bit, sobs a lot and gets caught again. The show tries to make out she’s being plucky and defiant by having her curse Eichhorst as he drags her upstairs by the foot, but the very image recalls decades of low-grade serial killer movies. It’s all so wearyingly familiar.

Yes, it’s unrealistic to assume that somebody in that situation wouldn’t be terrified and their first instincts wouldn’t be to run. But you can’t help thinking it it had been Fet or Eph in the same situation (hey, Eichhorst could have been sexually experimental) the writers wouldn’t have made them look quite so much like hapless Victim Johnny.

Elsewhere, there’s not a lot to see. Gus shags Aanya then delivers her family to safety in a plot with about as much dramatic tension as the skin on custard. Setrakian is tied to a chair until it’s time not to be tied to a chair any more at which point his bonds magically fall away. Meanwhile, Fonescu takes the Lumen to dodgy geezer Alonso Creem without even waiting to ask what Setrakian might be prepared to pay for it. Dolt. Quite why the scene leading up to Creem receiving the Lumen goes on so long is a mystery. Did we really need to see Fonescu driving to the meeting, dealing with underlings, namedropping the Cardinal (hang on… isn’t he dead?), etc, etc. It wasn’t like it was leading up to anything particularly significant. We’ve already seen the Lumen. It was a bit of a duff cliffhanger all round.

A real misfire of an episode, then. The idea was daring, it just didn’t manage to pull it off with any great style or purpose other than to gross you out with the idea of strigoi cunnilingus.

The Good:

• It’s admirably dark and not afraid to take the show into new uncomfortable areas. The attempted rape is very strong stuff and managed to make Eichhorst even more loathsome and vile than ever.

• There are some impressively effective shots that stay just on the right side of gimmicky. The blurry POV shots when Dutch maces Eichhorst have a real impact while the “through the brickwork” shot of Fet is the first time we can recall that masonry has been been used to frame a hero shot in such a way.
• The family snapshot of the Guptas is rather sweet. For the first time in the show you actually feel some affection for them.
• Great acting from Richard Sammel and especially Ruta Gedmintas who manages to keep a spark of defiance going even among the sobbiest, victimy of scenes.
• The human cocktail is a great idea; strigoi can enjoy alcohol by plying it to victims before they drain them.
• Good line: “Alright, how do we get inside?” “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” “Not the answer I was expecting…”

The Bad:

• It’s torture porn, whatever way you look at it, and no matter how much spunk Dutch may display she’s still a damsel in distress, ultimately saved by a man. For all that you have to applaud the show for going so dark, at times it’s just downright distasteful.

• The “youthful” make-up on Richard Sammel is very poor. He looks like James Marsters in very poor old-age make-up. They really should have cast a younger actor. Okay, he if he was turned into a strigoi soon after this, then yes, he should look about the same age as he does now, but it still has the effect of making it look like Helga has fallen for her granddad. What with this and the Coco/Palmer relationship the show is beginning to look like some extreme male wish fulfilment fantasy by ageing writers.
• The two B-plots – Setrakian’s and Gus’s – are inexcusably dull.
• The main plot revealed nothing new or vital in terms of arc-plot or character. If this whole detour had been excised from the season, what would we have lost?
• The cliffhanger is a damp squib.

And The Random:

• We think Eichhorst may be a Hannibal fan, the way he prepares his meal while listening to opera.

• Fonescu, meanwhile, is a David Gemmell fan, so he can’t be all bad.
• Franklin D Roosevelt did indeed use a secret railway under Manhattan as a way of disguising his disability; there was a platform he used under the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel.
• Why is Eichhorst holed up in a hotel next to National Guard HQ? Does he just like living dangerously? Or did we miss something?

• Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E10 “The Assassin” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm
Writer: Liz Phang
Director: Phil Abraham

Essential Plot Points:

• Eph tries to assassinate Palmer, fails and hits Coco instead.
• Palmer demands that the Master save Coco’s life. Despite Eichhorst’s mocking response, surprisingly the Master does so.
• Setrakian finds the Lumen after a very long and boring search. Then loses it when someone hits him over the head.
• Eichhorst kidnaps Dutch and forces her into Fifty Shades Of Grey cosplay.

Review:

The “Previously on” montage this week finishes with Eph vowing, “I’m going to kill Eldritch Palmer.” Remember how exciting that sounded when Eph first said it? That feels like an ice age ago, and now he’s finally getting around to the deed, it’s kinda difficult to work up any enthusiasm any more.

Plus he cocks it up. Perhaps he should have eased up on the booze. “Dutch, Dutch… remind me: which Eldritch Palmer am I aiming at again?”

Admittedly, missing Palmer and nearly killing Coco is an unexpected twist. As is Eph and Dutch being caught by the police. Suddenly, a talky, dull episode takes a turn for the better, helped by the nicely choreographed strigoi attack in the police station. But whenever things too get too exciting, the show reverts to form and insists on subjecting us to easily cuttable scenes of Setrakian wandering around a series of increasingly dull apartments. It’s a big ask of an actor to make searching underwear drawers and cursing at peeling wallpaper look exciting, and it says something that the highlight of these scenes is Fet discovering some vintage jazz mags.

The Master saving Coco’s life is an intriguing development. What’s in it for him? Is he really worried that Palmer will carry out his threat to stop co-operating? That seems unlikely. Presumably there’s going to be some catch.

As for the torture porn cliffhanger… eh? What’s Eichhorst’s interest in Dutch? Whatever it turns out to be, it surely a sign that the next episode is going to be a very uncomfortable watch indeed.

The Good:

• No Zach!
• No Kelly!
• The outcome of the bungled assassination is pleasingly unexpected.

• This smile. And this line: “You are demanding that the Master come here and uses his own divine and invaluable essence just so that you can continue fornicating with your secretary.”
• The scene in the cell with Victim Cop getting a tongue-lashing is pretty exciting.
• Feraldo is magnificent once again. You wouldn’t want to vote for her but watching her wind up the stuck up rich crowd in immensely entertaining. The Mayor looks like he’s going to have a heart attack.
• Dutch’s whinge about not being able to live in a ménage à trois is amusing too (though her vision of relationship bliss is rather dependent on Nikki and Fet being of a like mind, which is unlikely).

The Bad:

• Usual whinge – not enough happens, and most of what does isn’t particularly interesting, especially Setrakian endlessly searching through drawers and bookshelves.
• And when he does find the Lumen it’s thanks to one of drama’s dreariest clichés – a creaky floorboard.

• Plus, the Lumen looks like a limited edition version of The Lord Of The Ring (with suspiciously new-looking pages).
• How come Palmer doesn’t surreptitiously pay some cop to kill Eph, or let him get into a situation where he can kill Eph himself? If Eichhorst can bribe the cops, it should be a cinch for Palmer to do likewise. Palmer and Eph’s relatively polite little chat in the police station seems far too prosaic. Palmer would surely be out for blood. Perhaps we’re supposed to think that he arranged the strigoi attack, bit that doesn’t feel like his style either.

And The Random:

• Sorry, but this is exactly what this expression seems to be saying.

• How come it took this guy so long to attack Setrakian? Do strigoi need to go to the loo or something? Also when Setrakian, Dutch and Fet go the apartment with the partying strigoi, somebody buzzes them in. Did those strigoi think they were just late guests?
• Does anybody believe that Dutch looked anything other that drop dead gorgeous in her yearbook photo?

• Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E08 “Intruders” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writer: David Weddle & Bradley Thompson
Director: Kevin Dowling

Essential Plot Points:

• Well, you could argue there was nothing essential in this episode…
• Eph secures himself a rifle by saving the life of a shooting victim.
• Setrakian, Palmer and Eichhorst all try to get the Occido Lumen off the cardinal, by bidding for it, trying to steal it or killing him. Eventually Setrakian learns from the cardinal’s dying breath that Rudyard Fonescu, the sole survivor of the 1966 massacre in the Austrian nunnery, is currently in possession of the Big Book Of Magic.
• Gus and Angel drive and talk and try to get us to care about the family who own that Indian restaurant.
• Quinlan recruits Gus to help in his fight against the Master.
• Zach is very, very, very irritating and tops every irritating thing he’s ever done before by inviting his mum into the hideout.
• Unluckily Eph chases off his ex- (in both senses of ex) wife before she can kidnap the brat.

Review:

Did that really deserve 45 minutes of air time? Your answer might be yes if what you watch The Strain for Zach endlessly moaning about mum. Or for Gus and Angel driving round talking so much white noise. Or for really bad attempts at doing Casualty. There was enough filler in “Intruders” to plaster over the Grand Canyon.

Things start promisingly with a creepy teaser in which Eichhorst gives Kelly the  make-over of the century while making it clear he prefers the monster beneath. In fact, Eichhorst is one of the few characters to come out of this episode with any credit (Fet and Setrakian being the other two, though you could include Dutch for having the dignity not to show up at all).

But from the moment Zach turns up – and his very first line is a whinge about missing his mother – the episode takes a nose-dive. Quite why Eph takes Zach along with him on his mission to secure a rifle is unclear; the only reason can be that the writers are making a vain attempt to force us to care about him using a bit of father/son bonding. Then again, a couple of weeks back Eph spectacularly failed to bond with his son when they indulged in the more traditional pursuit of baseball. Maybe Eph thought taking him to an arms deal would be more therapeutic?

It fails. Even though Eph does his best Hawkeye Pierce impression with a bit of miracle field surgery, Zach just wails, “Why can’t you fix mum too?” At which point you really want Eph to use that rifle he’s just procured. Eph later moans about Zach to Nora, “We keep having the same circular argument,” and you want to scream at the screen, “LIKE WE HADN’T NOTICED!”

And so Zach lets Kelly into the hideout, there’s a really poorly directed scuffle, and the kid finally sees his mum do her Strigoi shtick with the tongue. Then Nora clocks her one with a handy hook-on-a-chain that takes half her false face off. Whether or not this has finally convinced the kid that mum’s not at home anymore is difficult to judge; Zach just gives us his usual vaguely puzzled expression, so who knows?

Gus and Angel, meanwhile, agonise over getting the Guptas to leave their restaurant with the kind of dialogue that could put anaesthetists out of business. Thank God Quinlan shows up to remind Gus what show he’s in but it’s too little too late.

Setrakian and Fet are more fun as they try to steal the Lumen from the odious cardinal only to find that Eichhorst has already given him a bad case of the worms. Setrakian gets the information he needs about the Lumen’s whereabouts in a wonderfully black moment, by promising the pontiff he’ll kill him quickly before the worms take hold so that his soul can go to heaven. You can tell that the grizzled old Jewish vampire hunter doesn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth; it’s a great piece of acting by David Bradley.

But there are too few such moments in “Intruders”. They probably add up to about five or six minutes of screen time. For the rest of the episode you may as be watching the Master cut his toenails.

The Good:

• Two moments of silence are particularly effective. Eichhorst’s withering final stare at Palmer after Palmer tries to needle him is just chilling. Later, all Quinlan need say to Gus is, “She’s very beautiful,” to get his point across, after which a perfectly framed and perfectly lit shot highlights Aanya’s vulnerability.

• The scene between Eichhorst and the Cardinal crackles with tension, danger and a touch of perversity. “It appears your almighty has better things to do,” must be the line of the episode.
• The opening scene with Eichhorst and Kelly is another gross highlight mainly because at the same time that he uses wigs, make-up and contact lenses to bring her back to (near) humanity, he’s delighting in telling her how her body will decay.
• Setrakian’s line: “I prefer to think of it as recovering a stolen artefact but yes, we’re going to rob the son of a bitch.”

The Bad:

• Pretty much any scene not involving Setrakian or Eichhorst. Most of it isn’t so much bad as monumentally dull.
• Zach is worse than ever. He’s stupid, he’s whiny, he utterly unbelievable. The thing is, it’s not all the actor’s fault. Zach is written as an embarrassingly one-note character. But the fact that the expression below is the best expression Max Charles can muster when asked, “You do understand that wasn’t your mother who showed up at the church, right?” really doesn’t help matters. He always looks like he’s trying to remember his next line.

And The Random:

• Handily someone shines a torchlight into Kelly’s right eye at this point to really highlight the difference a contact lens can make.

• What is Eichhorst doing to Jesus at this point? He looks like he’s trying to pleasure him.
• Palmer’s line, “So, when I see Bolivar again, what’s the protocol? Do I get down on my knees? Kiss his ring? What do you do?” is supposed to be dripping with innuendo, isn’t it?
• Is Fet turning into a critic of his own show when he says, “No stupider than helping the old man find the book with a magic spell to kill the master”?

• The irony of the Cardinal eating spaghetti shortly before he’s pumped full of worms might have been more effective if the show hadn’t pulled off a similar gag with Setrakian (when he revealed that he’s been elongating his life using worm juice) only a few episodes ago.

• We like a good vampire-impaling as the next gore-hound but what exactly was that Feeler impaled on? It wouldn’t get past health and safety, that’s for sure.

• Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E07 “The Born” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writer: Chuck Hogan
Director: Howard Deutch

Essential Plot Points:

• Setrakian meets Quinlan for the first time when the Master-hunting strigoi/human half-breed spectacularly rescues the professor and Fet from a bunch of feelers.
• All three have tracked the Master to his warehouse lair – Quinlan is less than impressed, though, when Fet’s dynamite fetish ruins his chance to kill the Master.
• Setrakian’s research reveals that Quinlan has been around since Roman times when his nickname was “The Born”.
• Dutch is reunited with old girlfriend Nikki. Fet goes into a sulk.
• Coco seduces Palmer.
• Eph returns from Washington and drinks New York dry before announcing he’s going to kill Palmer.
• Zach is slightly less irritating than usual and his permaconfused look actually coincides with a scene in which he’s supposed to be confused.

Review:

Finally Quinlan shows why Vaun was killed off to make way for him to enter the series. It’s a shame this episode wasn’t his debut because a) it’s a lot more impressive than cutting a wire fence and hitching a lift, and b) all his scenes from the past two episodes could have been replaced by one or two lines here with absolutely zero negative impact on the ongoing story.

So here we have Quinlan being cool in ancient Rome, using dirt for suntan lotion and wowing the crowds in the arena with some throat skewering. We have Quinlan being cool in 19th century riding a horse in a voluminous cape. We have Quinlan being cool in 21st century New York slicing up feelers and doing that patented, badass gun-in-each-hand shtick. And we have Quinlan looking like he’s throwing all his toys out of his pram when Setrakian buggers up his plan to kill the Master. Which isn’t so cool.

Let’s be honest – as respected an actor as Spooks’ Rupert Penry-Jones is, he’s struggling to give Quinlan the same cheeky charisma that Stephen McHattie gave Vaun. When he’s given kick-ass things to do, Quinlan is fine; when he’s just chatting, he’s a tad flat. Not terrible. Perfectly acceptable. Does the job. Just… Vaun had more personality, if not as much backstory. But if we get a bit less jaw jaw and a bit more gore gore from Quinlan in future then all’s good.

Speaking of that showdown with the Master, though… what was going on there? The Master clearly had no fear of Quinlan so what would have happened if Setrakian and Fet hadn’t blown the place up? Did the Master have a plan? Or was he just confident he could take Quinlan down in a fight? Surely Quinlan  – after centuries of cat and mouse – would have suspected some kind of trap or trick with the Master so happy to present himself for an open attack? The whole situation felt incredibly artificial. And that includes Setrakian’s request for Fet to dynamite the warehouse, a plan so full of potential pitfalls and opportunities for the Master to escape that it makes no sense at all.

Elsewhere, Eph spent the episode pissed, but, believe it or not, entertainingly pissed. His reaction to Nikki is a peach (“The track star!”); his philosophy on alcohol is worthy of the ancient Greeks (“The bar tender made me promise that I’d sip this…  booze is supposed to make you feel good not taste good”); and his reaction when Fet leaves the hide-out in a huff is wonderfully childish (“It’s not me he’s running away from,” he tells Dutch). Could Eph be the Fun Bobby of The Strain? Not that his final line of the episode is a laughing matter: “I’m going to kill Eldritch Palmer.” Damn, that might mean he’ll have to sober up if he wants to shoot straight.

Talking of Palmer, at the risk of sounding ageist: Coco and Eldritch? Eeewwww! It’s not so much the age gap as the fact he’s just downright creepy. Jonathan Hyde wonderfully captures the sense of how awkward a man of advance years who has never had a relationship might be around a beautiful young woman, but that hardly makes him much more of a catch. Are we supposed to assume Coco is primarily after his inheritance?

Overall, “The Born” is an improvement over recent weeks because it returns to what the show does well in a big way. Sadly there’s also a big dollop of what the show doesn’t do well; relationship drama. The Strain has a real problem when a main character is in love with someone that the other characters seem to hold in the same contempt as the audience. Let’s hope Nikki does another runner as soon as possible.

The Good:

• Quinlan killing the feelers: wonderfully gratuitous, over-the-top action that finally shows what he can do. The bit where he steps on the entrails of a feeler that he’s just sliced in two to prevent the top half crawling away is The Strain at its gory best.
• All the pithy little comments about Nikki doing a runner (“She hurt herself running away” ).
• The opening teaser showing Quinlan’s Roman past is excellently shot. The arena fight puts anything seen in Atlantis to shame.
• Fet’s expression when Dutch invites Nikki to come back to their hideout (in fact, Fet’s surly attitude throughout is fun, though you wouldn’t want a friend that moody in your own life).

The Bad:

• The idea that Ducth would fall back into Nikki’s arms is utterly unbelievable. No wonder Fet’s in a sulk. Nikki is such a non-character that Dutch is lessened by her through mere association.
• The Albania flashback is dull and blandly shot.
• The showdown with the Master is static and unexciting.
• Setrakian asking Fet to dynamite the warehouse is a bizarre plan to say the least.

And The Random:

• When the Master taunts Quinlan, “I’ll make you scream out in agony as I did your mother,” you have to wonder, is the Master Quinlan’s dad? (We checked and the answer is in the original novels but in deference to how spoilerphobic you might be we’ll let you Google that yourself if you want to).
• It’s notable that Palmer says, “Complacency is the enemy of empires. Just ask the Romans,” in an episode that features a Roman flashback. Did the Strigoi have a part in downfall of the Roman Empire?
• How come Nikki stayed in hiding so long after Fet and Dutch barged into her apartment? Didn’t she recognise Dutch’s voice?
• The lamp in Nikki’s apartment is an attention black hole – it sucks your eyes inexorably towards it whenever it’s on screen. We think it may be an Iron Chicken egg.

• Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E05 “Quick And Painless” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writer: Liz Phang
Director: J Miles Dale

Essential Plot Points:

• Eph shaves his head and – using forged papers – makes his way to Washington with the strigoi plague.
• Oh, and he kills his double-crossing old boss on the way. As you do.
• Dutch and Nora bargain for Fet’s freedom by showing Councilwoman Feraldo the quick method of identifying those who are worm-infested.
• Dutch and Fet then help the police rid an apartment block of Feelers, or Spider-Kids as the police refer to them (we prefer that name).
• Setrakian approaches a gang renowned for being able to procure things for money to help him search for the Occido Lumen.
• Cardinal McNamara tells Palmer that he will soon have procured the Occido Lumen.
• Zach is irritating.

Review:

So Eph is bald now. This might have been a good disguise if shaving all his locks hadn’t left with him a demeanour so shifty he may as well have had a big neon glowing sign over his head saying, “WANTED FUGITIVE”. Somehow he makes it to Washington, though only by killing his old boss when he throws him off a train. Considering how much Eph had been drinking all episode it’s a surprise he didn’t fall off the train himself.

Eph’s whole journey was a mind-numbing exercise in false tension. The writers had to make it look like the journey was fraught with danger, but the “peril” was as artificial as Piers Morgan’s sincerity. The result was a series of scenes that dragged pointlessly climaxing in a laughably banal fight scene between a drunk and a fat bloke.

Thankfully the audience was allowed off the train at regular intervals to enjoy some other action of the kind the show does a lot better. The first big set piece was an impressive fight between some cops and the Feelers – a superb piece of small-screen action/horror, and an excellent way to open the episode.

Fet was in fine fettle too; even in incarceration he appears to be enjoying himself with a game of poker, and once freed, he’s soon being employed by a grudgingly impressed cop to help him splat some Strigoi. In fact, Fet, Dutch and the Cop, Kawolski, make such a great team of vamp-busters, maybe Eph could stay in Washington and the show can concentrate on these three instead?

Elsewhere, both Setrakian and Palmer were closing in on the Big Book Of Vampire-Slaying Secrets, using wildly different partners to help achieve their aims. The aged Jewish hunter turned to a street gang while the boss of Stoneheart had God – or at least one of his reps – on his side: Cardinal MacNamara. It’s a fun juxtaposition, and rams home the show’s anti-establishments credentials: any business, political and, now, religious leader is corrupt as they come. Except Feraldo, who’s not corrupt so much as blinkered and a borderline dictator.

As for Coco coming onto Palmer with increasingly less subtlety… it’s so gross (and not because he’s old but because he’s slimy) it’s actually becoming hypnotic. Does the girl have some weird fetish for creepy old men? Their dance in front of burning apartment block – seemingly not much bothered if anyone’s in danger inside – is a wonderfully darkly comic moment.

You know, this show would be much better off without Eph and his Ephing son…

The Good:

• The police versus “spider-kids” battle right at the start of the episode was excellent – tense, excitingly directed and featuring some brilliant special effects with the Feelers leaping about and scaling the walls.
• Fet, Dutch and police officer Kawolski made a great team. The one-upmanship between Fet and Kawolski was especially amusing, with the dynamite-obsessed rat-catcher extolling the virtues of silver and Kawolski replying, “Why wouldn’t I just do this?” then shooting a strigoi in the head. “Fair point,” admited Fet.
• The look on Palmer’s face when he realised he’d just made a very bad taste joke in front of Coco was a peach (“Saves us having to bother with our fireplace,” he said when they saw an apartment block in flames across the street).

• Setrakian genuinely came across as being able to handle himself against a street gang – he’s actually pretty scary.
• “Denial is a special privilege of the rich.” Great line.
• Feraldo’s inability to euthanise her own nephew is an effective character moment.

The Bad:

• Eph’s train journey was simply very dull until he bumped off Everett Barnes, which was so badly directed it was like a ’3os screwball comedy. We half-expected a, “Wa… a… waaaaaaaahhhhh!” on the soundtrack.
• Nora is just a plot device in a lab coat at the moment, isn’t she?
• Hang on… was that the “amazing entrance” for Quinlan at the end of the episode that Hogan and del Toro killed off Vaun to make possible? It’s not particularly impressive.
• At the risk of sounding like our needle’s stuck in a groove, DEAR GOD CAN ZACH FIND ANOTHER EXPRESSION!? The only emotion that seems to be crossing his mind at the point below is, “What expression am I supposed to have right now?”

And The Random:

• Setrakian offered Alfonzo Creem two watches. A Patek Philippe 2484 fetched $5,500 in a US auction last year, while the Patek Philippe split seconds chronograph reference 1563 – of which there are indeed only three known examples in the world – is valued at between $850,000 and $1.5 million.
• The song Coco and Eldritch dance to is, “I’m glad I Waited For You” sung by Peggy Lee.
• Hang on – did that Feeler really use its tongue to try to grab Officer Dempsey by his nuts? It’s not totally clear but that’s what it looks like. In which case The Strain has managed to slip onto TV one of the most queasily subversive images ever. It’s just not right…!

• Read our previous reviews of The Strain

The Strain S02E04 “The Silver Angel” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Watch, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writer: Regina Corrado
Directors: J Miles Dale, Guillermo del Toro (Luchador film sequence)

Essential Plot Points:

• Eph and Nora release their vampire plague and it works. The Master orders the infected strigoi to kill themselves to stop its spread.
• Fet bombs a subway tunnel to stop vampire getting into Red Hook and gets arrested for it.
• Setrakian and Dutch visit Fitzwilliam and try to convince him to side with them. He refuses.
• Eldritch double-crosses a bunch of bankers who then become vampire food.
• In flashback, Eichorst offers Eldritch eternal life.
• Zach is irritating.

Review:

Okay – so a Mexican wrestling-themed B-movie horror black and white pastiche/homage? Yeah, that’s an entertainingly offbeat way to kick off the episode. Except, blimey it goes on a bit. Over four minutes. That’s a tenth of the episode. It’s okay for a while but not a good enough gag to warrant that amount of screen time, even if it is directed by Guillermo del Toro himself (you get the feeling no one else was brave enough to tell him it needed editing down), and especially when it’s introducing a new character who, by the end of the episode, you still don’t have a clue why the hell you should be interested in him.

Angel may develop into a great character, but if you’re going to introduce a new key player in such an elaborate fashion, the audience at least deserves to be given some clue as to why he’s important. Instead all we know after 40 minutes is that he’s a grumpy dishwasher.

It’s similar to Fitzwilliam’s reintroduction last week. At least this week we learn a little more about why he’s still in the show, though Dutch’s reason to seek him out seems bizarrely random, plucked from the thinnest of air. Equally random is Gus’s choice not just to have his first ever Indian meal but to go back to the same Indian restaurant after his encounter with his possessed mum. Things seem to happen in this episode purely because the writers need them to happen – Gus must meet Angel for some undisclosed plot mechanic – and they can’t be arsed to come up with a decent reason.

And the less said about the schmaltz-fest between Eph and his son the better. Zach in the same scene as a baseball bat…? The tension and temptation truly does bring out the Grand Theft Auto in even the gentlest of souls.

The flashback is fun – especially young Setrakian going on a strigoi-killing spree – but once again has little to add to the overall mythology. Eichorst offers Eldritch eternal life? Yeah, we’d figured that.

There are some great moments of black humour and gallows humour that save the episode, most involving Fet. The early scenes with Eph, Nora and Fet releasing their test vampire into the wild, then becoming exasperated when he doesn’t act as predicted is a wonderful lightness of touch the show could benefit from employing more often. Fet’s later monologue about about why heroes are stupid to walk away from explosions in films is another amusing highlight. He’s absent for the episode’s blackest moment of humour, though, when Eph and Nora watch the strigoi throwing themselves from a roof. It’s a ghoulishly perverse titbits like this that remind you what this show can be like at its best.

The Good:

• Fet: “They say one out of every four people are mentally unstable.” Nora: “Luckily there’s only three of us.” Fet: “Not unless you include my invisible friend Donny.”
• In fact, Fet gets some great scenes and lines throughout the episode.
• Gus’s chat with the Master, who’s using Gus’s mother as a vassal, is creepily effective.
• The strigoi committing harakiri to prevent the spread of the plague.
• Young Setrakian versus the vampires in the vaults of the nunnery is really well directed.

The Bad:

• Too many random scenes that don’t seem to be going anywhere, and random decisions based on who knows what?
• The weekly dreary Zach subplot is more odious than ever.
• The opening black and white horror movie homage goes on way too long.
• The way Eldritch deals with the bankers feels like a completely wasted opportunity – a whole plot strand dealt with in two scenes.
• Oh God, not another episode ending with Eh’s wife inching oh so slowly ever closer to tracking down her son.

And the Random:

• Guillermo del Toro directed the opening “Luchador/horror B-movie” sequence. The faux-film’s main credits listed slightly skewed versions of the main movers and shakers on The Strain: Carlos Cuse (Carlton Cuse); Carlos Jogan (Chuck Hogan and Gustavo Delatro (Guillermo del Toro).
• Oh look, a not so subtle hint that Gus (rather unbelievably) is a Luchador fan.

• Angel is a typical male – he puts the film Angel Contra El Vampiro Maldito back in a sleeve for the film El Señor de la Tiniebla (The Lord Of Darkness).
• One of the missing posters is for a girl named Shirin. There’s a Shirin Rashid who works on the show as second assistant art director. Wanna bet that’s her in the photo on the poster?

• Read our other reviews of The Strain