A little trip to the past is in order.
What They Say:
Belly of the Beast – Fet and Quinlan track a convoy carrying their prized nuclear weapon; Eph and Alex search for clues to uncover the Master’s plan for the fate of the human race; a familiar enemy traps Dutch, who encounters an old friend as well.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Strain has been doing its best to push me into not caring much as we work through the final season as we’re halfway through it and it’s not really accomplished a lot. Even in terms of basic setup for the season it works a kind of languid approach to things that does not serve it well. Things that could have been hammered out quickly in the first episode and then move forward to deal with. That ‘we’re getting such a slow piece for Dutch’s story alone when it’s so plain and simple to understand is just frustrating. Even to non-genre fans it doesn’t need this kind of lengthy expose and can just be hit hard and fast and get right into the fight back against things. So much time spent on understanding the threat when it’s already understood and just needs to be fought.
The cold open has us following Eph in Pennsylvania as they try to find out where the people have been taken to as part of the New Horizons things and that has them stalling out just at Quarreyville, a town where it looks like everyone just disappeared. It’s like an abandoned town that’s in good condition that they’re able to figure out a bit thanks to an abandoned phone that has a teenage girl leaving a vlog about what happened. That leads them into the girls’ house to find out more of what happened to this Emily since it could offer some clue as to their own journey. It’s a nice bit of quiet exploration without any immediate payoff but it does show some nice material between Eph and Alex as they go through it and get some crash time with just the right kind of awkwardness.
Fet’s team is finding that they’re getting further and further behind because the strigoi are working a solid plan in collecting the materials. To make matters worse they’ve got something new in the mix with a kind of feral strigoi called a mongrel that even has Quinlan being cautious. The whole thing is making the rest of Fet’s team wary of going further and Quinlan’s close to just going it on his own as he always has because of it. But there’s some decent material in this with Fet pushing him in the right ways and Charlotte intervening quietly and carefully to ensure they’re all still on the same page. Their mission is a solid one but they’re such a small group, especially with a weakened Quinlan, that they can do only so much at this point.
Dutch’s story has been the weakest of the batch but her discovery of the processing plant the last time around had some good horror to it. In the time since then, however, she’s been stuck in a cell until she’s brought down to see Eichhorst in his special little underground lair. With her blood type being so desirable that’s giving her a little edge in still being alive but there’s also just how Eichhorst is in that he wants to dominate and crush and control others that try to resist. There’s some decent material between the two as Dutch calls him out for his veneer of civility but it just allows him to talk about how special he is in what he does for the Master. What he wants is Setrakian to be able to truly enjoy his victory and that’s something he’ll go to some lengths in order to find out where he is. Which is, amusingly, right under his nose and close to death.
When the two finally do meet again there’s a certain deliciousness that you have to admire in how Eichhorst is so thrilled to have Setrakian in his hands again. The two of them have had such a lengthy back and forth over the decades and Setrakian has gone to great lengths to try and stop him – and live long enough to stop him – that it’s one of those key encounters. Especially since Setrakian is in such a bad position at this point. Setrakian does his best to stand firm against him and doesn’t give any ground, staying true to who he’s been in this fight that really does define everything about who he is. Of course, the match between the two gets delayed thanks to Dutch sparking a bit of an uprising within the facility as she’s been sentenced to a draining and that’s one of those moments where you hope the minor numbers that they have over those actually watching the facility will lead to some change in the fates and fortunes of those women.
We do get some fun action with this episode as Fet and his team work to take over the convoy and that has the nicely done truck rooftop fight sequence with Quinlan and one of the mongrels. It’s a mostly straightforward piece but it shows some of what Quinlan is struggling with at this stage but that he’s still pretty capable. The acquisition of nuclear material at least gives them a win overall even if their numbers are thinned. Some of this plays to the flashback sequence we get with this episode in showing us Quinlan in London Town in 1888 where he’s involved with a woman who wants him to help her brother that’s afflicted with syphilis. He’s not able to as it’s not a gift that he can give but he’s intrigued by the way that she’s engaging with him without much in the way of fear after the initial discovery she has of what he is. It’s worthwhile if only for the sequence where she works makeup on him to make him look normal, which even he finds quite surprising after nearly a thousand years of being one way. It takes an interesting sexual turn that’s expected when it comes to vampire lore but it does it in a way that fits with this series and its styling.
In Summary:
The Strain pushes several plot pieces forward but it’s something that doesn’t feel like it’s doing things with enough pressure and urgency as it should considering there’s only five episodes left. There are decent pieces among all of the subplots that we get here but none of them hit in as strong as a way as they should. I’m definitely glad we got a new flashback piece as it’s something that I definitely like in the show as they add something pretty fun and this one goes all in. With the reveal of what New Horizons is at the end and the Master having found where Eph is at this point, we’ve got enough to propel us forward but it’s just lacking the actual urgency to make it feel like it’s going.
Grade: C
