Take the shot, Eph!
What They Say:
The Assassin – Eph and Dutch work together to thwart the Master’s greatest ally; Justine runs into trouble with the Mayor; Setrakian tracks down the real owner of the Lumen.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The battle of Red Hook the last time around gave us some good action sequences, but it also reminded in a lot of ways what kind of small budget that the show really does work with. While it played with the extras pretty well and made it feel like there’s more going on than we’ve seen it also made it clear it can do only so much. Which is why I like that it tends to focus its time with the smaller cast of characters of our leads moving through different situations and interactions to try and achieve their goals. It simply can’t properly show off the scale of events going on and it’s better off leaving it to our imagination. The series really does straddle a line of what it can and can’t do and because of the way it jumps around so much it makes it one that really requires the viewer to make the leaps with it, and the imagination.
And you really do need some imagination to believe that relationship between Coco and Eldritch works. While I can go with his plea to her upon arriving at her third floor apartment that his life being what it was with the medical condition makes him difficult to deal with when it comes to people, the origin of their relationship is one that just doesn’t click. At least from her perspective because it’s hard to see what she’s really getting out of it. But that’s love, I guess. After all, why would Nora stick with Eph after seeing the way he’s poorly dealt with not only her but his son – and their boss by tossing him off of a train. Never mind his little sexcapades in Washington, DC. Relationships in this show a pretty much comical from top to bottom, though I’ll give Eph a bit of leeway when it comes to his son because it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to keep that kid around.
With the show splitting into groups at the moment, we get a few different things going on. Setrakian’s off with Nora and Fet as he’s tracking down the book, filling them in on some of what he knows of it and its past. That has him going to a past acquaintance that might have it after working through some other clues that gives us a bit of action. This trio is definitely fun to watch together since Fet is pretty loose with his dialogue while Setrakian is just intense and bold. But they’re also not as committed as Setrakian is, which comes into play as it goes on and things go south with others from the team and Setrakian is left by himself to search for the Lumen.
Dutch and Eph spend some quality time together, where they skirt around and crash into relationship troubles in their lives to kill time, as we see them trying to hunt down Eldritch to find a way to assassinate him. These two aren’t exactly the best team together in a way, but it at least has them trying to be proactive. The show also gives us some fun with Faraldo as she continues to make waves in the upper east side having instituted a price to be paid by residents. There’re some fun class warfare elements to it as it unfolds because she makes it clear that she knows people here won’t fight in the streets the way that the residents of Brooklyn did. Not that the Mayor knew what she was doing and it ends up complicating things in a big way for him – enough so that he calls in Eldritch to try and scare her off of this. This all comes together pretty well as Eph makes his attempt and gets a shot off, but his killing of Coco is just painting a huge target on himself. Suffice to say, Eph and Dutch make a bigger mess of things for themselves here than they expected.
And this is made pretty clear to Eph when he’s in jail and the cops clear out as Eldritch makes his way in to make it clear what a world of hurt he’s about to be in. With Coco alive but seriously hurt and likely suffering from severe brain damage, Eldritch has all the reason to be intense here but he actually makes a mild pitch towards Eph to stop resisting and just let happen what’s happening because it’s for the best. While Eldritch fully believes what he goes on about with his rationalization of what he’s done, it’s not something that will sway Eph after all that he’ lost here. The two men have a decent encounter here overall but you know Eph manages to get under his skin a bit on a couple of things, especially when it comes to what the Master will really do with Eldritch once his usefulness is all done and over with. But Eldritch is riding his own winning streak and even with Coco taken down he still sees a lot of importance for himself in the future.
The show at least gives us a bit of action towards the end with the strigoi assaulting the police precinct where Eph is at and it turns into a pretty good bloodbath. One that has a comical moment with one of the cops climbing into the cell with Eph since they’re able to be just out of reach – from a single angle. But it’s all for naught for the cop and Eph only survives because Fet and Nora arrive in the nick of time – and only because he’s there to find Dutch. With her being whisked off elsewhere, it just means another delayed rescue ahead but it’s almost something to be ignored in a way after some of the silliness of what just unfolded in the precinct. Not having the strigoi go to the side to attack is just bad, bad, writing or set design and then having one cop come back in and let them all go because everyone else in there is dead? Just terrible stuff.
In Summary:
While I continue to be able to overlook a lot of aspects of the show simply because I’m enjoying a kind of low-grade vampire invasion series, there are more problematic moments this time around than I can deal with. Sometimes just one poorly done sequence can throw off the whole energy of the episode and the jail sequence here does that in a big way. The bigger problem with this episode is that it just feels like even compared to other episodes less happens here. Even the assassination attempt on Eldritch feels inconsequential because of how it unfolds on top of the whole Coco thing and where they’re trying to go with that. The episode as a whole is pretty frustrating, especially with the way some of the better elements are kept out of it such as Kelly and her spider-kids. The show really needs to find a better footing here and that things mean something because episodes like this on top of some of the others are definitely hurting it.
Grade: C
