A little further down the rabbit hole with more curiosities.
What They Say:
Bad White – The Mater plagues Eph when he offers to return Zack; Dutch rejoins an old group of friends but wonders if it makes her safer; and Palmer seeks answers for Setrakian’s secret strigoi blood treatments.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Almost against my better judgment at times, the opening episode of the third season of The Strain was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Though I think the show works best in the heat of the summer when little else is on, I liked getting back into the rhythm of this particular world and what’s going on while reaffirming that it’s just been three weeks. Not all characters were accounted for but we got a good handle on how things are after the end of the second season and a little more on the state of the world and how governments and the public are responding to it. There are a lot of neat little areas but the show wasn’t able to deliver a strong point to make it truly compelling, especially as we get some more of the usual base manipulations going on, such as The Master in using Kelly and Zack against Eph.
While we’ve seen a fair bit of attempt by Eph and Nora to figure out how to cure or stop the strigoi transformation, the cold open here has another group working with a lot of strigoi that they’ve got to try and figure them out, creating extracts, and looking to get something figured out. It’s an interesting approach because, as they say, they’re not looking for a Nobel Prize but rather just staying out of jail as being the biggest thing they could get for it. That’s because they’re using live subjects for the experimental aspects of this, such as an elderly woman with vascular dementia. You can see them essentially grabbing all sorts of people just to have warm bodies to try this on and while it’s certainly unethical it’s also the kinds of things you’d expect to happen in a situation like this by various parties.
After seeing the way things went down with the SEAL team the last time around, it’s little surprise that they’re pulling out and focusing on DC, even though the Master is the one that needs to be focused on. Fet’s not taking the news all that well but at least he connects with a SWAT member named Kate and has quite the good time with her. It’s definitely very charming and Fet’s a delight to watch during all of this. He’s also there when Eph finally ends up connecting with him and Setrakian and filling them in on how bad things went with Nora and her death and Zack being taken by Kelly. He also gets to meeting Quinlan, which is definitely delightful as you almost wish Quinlan went all the way with just eliminating him so that the show could be a bit leaner. Eph’s not that bad so far this season and his having lost both Kelly and Nora kind of frees him up in a weird way as well so that his focus is all on Zack and defeating the Master.
This episode gives us a little catch up time with a few other characters we didn’t see in the season premiere. Dutch is rolling with her crew from before things went south and is struggling with the way that they can’t see that this is the end times, not a time to bring about the class changes that they were trying for previously. She’s on the right page in how to handle this world but they’re still mostly playing their games so she doesn’t quite connect with them all that well after all that she’s seen. Similarly, we see how Eldritch is struggling after screwing Eichhorst over on the Lumen previously and is falling apart slowly but surely without the white from the Master. Eichhorst is suitably cruel here about everything, especially with his precious little glass jar of hearts that has Coco’s in it as well. Eichhorst has always run this way and it’s good to see that he’s still very much who he should be.
One of my favorite scenes in this episode is when Quinlan and Eph get together to talk as both of them are trying to figure the other out. Quinlan’s got quite the history behind him and has seen so much that naturally someone like Eph would raise the hairs on his neck, so to speak, especially since it took Eph a week to find Setrakian and fill him and Fet in on things. The back and forth between the two is fun as they play their verbal spars and baiting while trying to get a clue about the other. Quinlan’s definitely one with a lot of potential as a character, even if he’s an easy one to pull a range of things out of the air to help it, but I like his style and his being both human and strigoi while not under the Master’s leash as he put it.
Another scene that works well is Eldritch setting up a meeting with Setrakian with Fet there in order to gain the formula for the White from him. It makes sense as Eldritch is struggling without it and he knows his taking himself out of the game will give a lot of advantage to Setrakian and the others. Naturally, there’s little trust going on here as Eldritch hasn’t exactly proven himself a reliable actor on this stage and it’s definitely fun to watch him hit another wall here. But the idea that Setrakian has a version of the White himself and that explains what he’s able to do? We’ve had that teased before but it’s nice to have it out in the open here and for him to explain it to Fet about it. It’s one of those little quirks that was intriguing but is, in the end, fairly simple. It’s also something that they can use to their advantage against Eldritch.
In Summary:
This episode is a nice reminder that I still want Zack to be killed as both of the actors for the character haven’t been great at all and the subplot is just tired and uninteresting. There are a lot of things to enjoy in this episode, especially seeing how Dutch is dealing with the end of the world and how poorly equipped people she trusted are for it, but it’s also really great to see Fet make out as good as he does here as I found myself wanting to see more of him and Kate as they’re definitely fun and without the same kind of drama that Dutch brings. The show works mostly in smaller moments overall with this episode and they’re good pieces to connect us to more of what’s going on here with the group and their different subplots. It may be moving slow but it’s putting a lot of things in place.
Grade: B
