The Strain, Season 4, Episode 10: The Last Stand

Last episode the terrible plan failed because Quinlan and the gang decided that the Master would face them in person rather than send a huge army. Because.... Why?

They do all manage to escape, albeit not before Gus sees his entire gang of POC sacrificed for the sake of everyone’s escape. And the death rate of POC on this show is pretty glaring, especially since Gus has been pretty much sidelined for most of this season and the show just doesn’t seem to have any plan for him at all

And why was Roman with them? Why? He’s not a gang member - he’s an expert on nuclear weapons. The one weapon they know can kill a vampire of the Master’s power. More than anyone else here, Roman is the most important character - yet this whole season has made absolutely no attempt to establish or use this. And to have him tucked in with Gus’s gang because they’ve all got dark skin (and don’t even try to tell me this isn’t the reason why they’re grouped together because there’s zero reason why Roman should have been left with Gus in a near suicidal last stand against waves of vampires.

Quinlan also stabs many vampires, taunting the Master for using his very useful army rather than, y’know, put himself at risk.

Everyone finally gathers together (well Gus & co later because the plot likes to ignore them) so Dutch can support poor Ephraim and his evil evil evil evil child who is evil.

Quinlan, meanwhile, has another new plan - but it may involve Vasiliy sacrificing himself to do it. Dutch is very upset by this because she has decided she loves Vasiliy and cannot stand to have him sacrifice himself. Yes, she’s back to loving him again. While this fills in with some big emotional scenes on the whole it’s somewhat filler and Vasiliy is not giving up his chance to sacrifice himself for the sake of his beloved New York (and we do have some nice scenes reminding us of just how much Vasiliy loves the city) by nuking it. Again.

In desperation Dutch turns to Ephraim to talk Vasiliy out of it. Which seems unlikely because Ephraim is hardly persuasive.

So what is Quinlan’s plan? It’s to lure the master underground while he fights the Master and Vasiliy pushes the button on the nuke, killing him, Quinlan and the Master

Which is basically the same as the last plan and has the same glaring flaw: the Master has an army of people he can literally possess and has absolutely no need to attend in person when there’s a nuclear bomb aimed at his head. Quinlan has adapted his plan by… oh… he hasn’t? No, for some reason everyone assumes that the Master is just going to show up in person this time for no damn good reason. Quinlan held a sword to the throat of the writers or something

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 9: The Traitor

Zach is back! Words about as welcome has your lover informing you of their raging syphilis infection or the fervent knocking of a Mormon/Jehova’s Witness interfaith troop at your front door at 8:30am on a Sunday morning.

Thankfully while Ephraim loves his son and wants to believe this is totally ok, even he isn’t that stupid. He’s torn though. No-one else is, but are polite enough not to say “you’re spawn needs to either be drown in the sink or thrown from a high window” and instead be nicely vague about it

Except Quinlan. Quinlan is very clear that he doesn’t want to see Ephraim screw everything up because his son’s polluting up the place. Ephraim asks if Quinlan really thinks he’s going to be that stupid because of his son. Quinlan is more than happy to beat you across the head with your own record.

Meanwhile Vasily and Dutch are questioning Desai who is convinced he is a hero for the people:

Dutch & Vasiliy: You had a factory where thousands of people were impaled on hooks

Desai: I am saving people

Dutch & Vasiliy: People. On. Hooks.

Desai: The world is a better place now!

Dutch & Vasiliy: PEOPLE ON HOOKS!

Desai: You kill people too!

Dutch & Vasiliy: NEW BORN BABIES IMPALED ON FUCKING HOOKS

Desai: Well, babies aren’t that useful…

To which Dutch beats him repeatedly because he is The worst

Vasiliy points out, very reasonably, that Desai NEEDS to believe this. He has to see himself as a hero because he is, basically a borderline awful person but he’s not an Eichorst or even a Palmer. He’s not an outright murder loving nazi. He’s a terrible person in way over his head and he needs to believe his own narrative otherwise he has to confront what he actually is

And for all the very very clumsy attempts to address collaborators throughout this season, this is perhaps the most powerful and telling. People who aren’t necessarily soul-deep evil will collaborate with truly horrendous evil.

Quinlan has no time for this nonsense and has kidnapped Desai’s wife, Selah and threatens to eat her if he doesn’t spill all about the Master (Quinlan doesn’t consider her innocent - she profited and lives well off the suffering of each others. Harsh but very true). He does because, as he declares to Selah, everything he does is for her.

She calls bullshit on this because he’s totally sleeping with his assistants.

People. On. Hooks. Selah. Priorities please.

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 8: Extraction

Last week we saw pretty much every woman and every POC be slaughtered. It was a pretty comprehensive massacre which cannot do anything but leave a bad taste in the mouth

This week we have some brief reflections on this loss - but this is, of course, eclipsed by a far bigger loss. Abraham

And, yes, it should be. Abraham has been a constant since the very first episode. He has been the heart of this show. He has been the centre around which everything on this show has revolved around. His death should eclipse all others - no-one’s death, no-one’s would ever approach the devastating impact of Abe

Except it does kind of emphasise another element of this - we lost the majority of the POC and women on this show last episode and I don’t even remember the names of half of them. Nor, for that matter, most of the other women and POC who have died on this show (and, again, there’s been more than a few). Even Dutch and Gus are not exactly on par with Ephraim and Vasiliy (though Dutch comes close).

But Abe is infected - Abe is covered in worms - even as Vasily and Quinn join them with the nuke (the whole blowing up the bridges delayed them all of 10 minutes), they realise they’re just in time to say goodbye. Abe desperately tries to pass on his new insights - including his new decision that they’re totally not going to nuke the Master, instead they need to target the collaborators because the book says so.

Um… ok, y’know I’d buy this if this were last season? I mean without Desai and Palmer last season? Yes that would have made all the difference. But now? Now when the Master is in control and the biggest collaborator we’ve seen, Desai, is at best a midlevel civil servant? When he has armies of strigoi? I’m not buying the idea that collaborators are really the key to his defeat or that the nuke is now a terribad idea.

After passing on his message, Abe then acknowledges he’s pretty much doomed, sharply cutting off any false desperate hope they others have that they may save him. He demands Quinlan finishes it - and Quinlan cuts off his head

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 7: Ourobouros

Ok… a lot happened here. And while there’s a definite epic moment, there’s also some Problems.

Vasiliy, Roman and Quinn have arrived in New York and fight their way towards Manhattan island, killing Strigoi and planning to cross the bridges. Eichorst has recruited Desai to help him catch his “terrorists” and Desai has the excellent plan of blowing up every bridge connecting Manhattan island to the mainland.

Okkkk so yes it will be hard for Vasiliy to sneak his nuke there now. But wouldn’t it be easier for the Master to… leave? I mean, he doesn’t actually have to be present anywhere to carry out his nefarious deeds. Why stay still at all?

Anyway, Eichorst praises Desai saying it was even better than what Palmer could have managed - which he then takes back realising the Master in Palmer’s body may take offense at this. The Master doesn’t - instead describing Palmer as a “quisling” to his own kind. Ooookkk… Desai is right there. What does that make him? And, hey, Quisling was a Norwegian ruler who betrayed Norway to the Nazis, so, was that a snipe at Eichorst too?

I am also concerned that Roman seemed… reluctant to engage the strigoi… which is especially an issue with everything else that happened in this episode.

The Master has not been happy with Eichorst this episode since he’s pretty much failed at everything. Eichorst makes a big dramatic display of sacrificing himself to the Master’s wrath - but the Master instead taunts him with Abraham winning and Eichorst giving up to chivvy him into getting back into the fight already

Abe and Dutch get Abe’s stuff back and hold up in a church - but Abe is clearly not feeling well; particularly after being experimented on when he was in the facility, he is feeling his advanced age. Dutch is duly worried, especially when Abe starts babbling and ripping up the Lumen so he can paste the pages to the wall… yeah that’s concerning. And then Abe collapses.

Thankfully this is when Ephraim and Alex arrive after spending a little time angsting about Zach (aaaergggh. No-one cares) which is helpful because Abe needs a doctor. Ephraim is an arsehole to Dutch about leaving Abe alone when he was the one who abandoned them while she and Abe were actually locked up in camps. She gives him hell for it, most appropriately

They need medicine so it’s off to Gus - yes everyone on this show is reuniting at last! Creem objects to them giving away medicine without trade but Gus stares him down again and joins them back when they go to help Abe

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 6: Tainted Love

Eichorst has now decided Vasiliy is totally someone he needs to hunt down- so finds their previous minions and murders all but one of them. This leaves just Eichorst and Benjamin who he expects to drive him after Vasiliy.

Because The Strain is not even remotely subtle, Benjamin is a Native American and Eichorst confirms his evil credentials by saying how Hitler was totally interested in the genocide of Native Americans because it was so “effective.”

Y’know, on another show this could be handled with a level of nuance and interesting examination. I mean, just examining the fact that Hitler admired the genocide of the Native Americans and the whole idea of how there is, rightfully, a cultural loathing of Hitler (among… most people? And why gods why do I have to put that question mark there? Whyyyy?) as the most uniquely evil person when so many similar atrocities are completely ignored, or the perpetrators even lionised (or have really ugly statues made for them)

But this is The Strain, instead his rambling rant about Native American genocide is just an easy plot point for Benjamin to sacrifice himself to turn on the radio and warn Vasiliy that they’re coming. So it’s not an examination of genocide and horror or even developing the Native American character, but just invoking Native American genocide as justification for another Native American character to die for the non-native characters.

Uh-huh.

Vasiliy, Quinlan, Charlotte and Roman are all heading towards an airfield Roman knows so they can get a plane and then fly to New York with their new nuke. Roman is coming with them. Quinlan vaguely questions this complete stranger’s decision to join them and… beyond “hey better to fly with the nuke than being alone”. Uh-huh.

Unlike Roman, Quinlan would like them to leave Charlotte behind because of his Victoria flashbacks. See way back then he was all playing happy families with Louise and her daughter Lydia. But then he runs into vampires and realises that The Master is in town. He drops his happy family, even with tearful little moppet begging him to stay, to go kill the Master. It’s a complete goodbye because if he wins he still dies as one of the Master’s progeny.

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 5: Belly of the Beast

The Strain is still suffering from having every character everywhere which is a bit of an annoyance. Bring the team together again - you can see how bad this has become for The Strain that I think many of these characters are just completely disappearing from the story entirely. Which is a good thing with Zach.

So Ephraim and Alex find an abandonned town which they find suspicious because there’s no sign of a struggle so presumably no vampire slaughter. Thankfully they find a phone left out in the snow with a suspicious amount of battery life left (I will believe in vampires. I will not believe in a smart phone that holds its charge for a full week) which basically explains that everyone has left to go to the Partnership’s new super farms of awesomeness

I am completely bemused by how many people are falling for this. Entire towns are buying this

After an awkward night in which they heavily foreshadow Alex and Ephraim getting it on, the next day they find a survivor who says that the farms made huge promises but gave her a creepy vibe

She’s also losing her hair which may be due to turning. Or possibly radiation poisoning.

Here ends their plot line - evil farms are full of evilness which is evil.

SHOCKED!

Cut to Dutch who is being a little more efficient - she was captured last week after the shocking revelation that the evil breeding cult run by evil vampires and evil collaborators is evil

Eichorst drags her out of her cell so he can play civilised. Dutch calls him on the pointlessness - he won, why bother with the make up and suits (because he’s a main character and the make up department doesn’t want to have to do full noseless vampire every time). But Eichorst is doing it because he’s better than the average vampire, the chosen one with free will and ability to speak to a tailor. That sounds pretty awful to be honest - I mean the only person in the world capable of an intelligent conversation. It’d be like spending your whole life at a Brexit tally

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 4: New Horizons

Hey it’s another episode of everything is awful and vampires are evil. Which, ok, fine… but we kind of need to go somewhere with most of these storylines. Or any of them.

Instead another go round of most of the cast reminding us that evil land ruled by evil people who are evil is evil is starting to smell a little stale.

Take Sanjay Desai who is living a wonderful luxurious life being a stooge to the Strigoi with Eichorst dropping in on him to remind him he has to do terrible evil things or he will be horribly tortured to death in horrible ways. You get to live a life of luxury only if you continue be evil (turning women into baby factories, forcing pregnancy as often as possible and c-section at 6 months - with no safety consideration for the mother).

I mean ok, it’s terrifying and awful but didn’t we already do that with the pregnancy farm anyway? Didn’t we know this?

So to that pregnancy farm and Dutch in a terrible situation. Sanjay Desai wants Dutch to play nice collaborator and reassure Sophie who is giving birth by c-section. Dutch keeps her calm and co-operative through the whole procedure so they can steal the baby with minimum fuss. If she doesn’t then she goes to a terribad place. And, as one fellow inmate points out, Dutch refusing to actually co-operate doesn’t actually stop the baby being taken. The alternative is another inmate who calls her a terrible evil collaborator.

Didn’t we do the whole collaborator storyline… every episode?

Dutch does the evil collaborator stuff, but when the doctors won’t even let Sophie hold her own baby, Dutch snaps. She holds a blade to Desai’s throat, kidnaps him and uses his keycard to follow the baby - to find a terrible holding factory. There people are impaled on hooks and have all their blood drained

Ok… horrifying? I guess? I mean… strigoi are vampires who kill people and drink blood? The addition of meat hooks may make for terrifying abattoir imagery. Maybe it’s because I read the books so knew this was coming. But I am not entirely sold that this is entirely more horrifying than, say, nuclear winter?

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 3: One Shot

We have a split storyline again and I’d say they all need to get together but I actually think it would be better if some of them were just nuked.

So let’s start with the vaguely could be interesting but wasn’t storyline:

Vasiliy, Charlotte, Quinlan, Roman and Minions are going to Roman’s missile silo (after Charlotte proves her badassery by shooting a deer) to collect a nuke, as one does. Quinlan also makes the point, when everyone blames the Master, that humans built nukes and humans fired them all over the world to create the nuclear winter: without humans the Master would still be hiding underground

Heavy handed theme #1 Humans Are Awful Guys

When they get there they find most of Roman’s fellow soldiers dead and a sniper shoots at them - hitting Quinlan and pinning him down for much of the episode. Vasiliy realises they have to take out the sniper but Roman refuses (only one who can use the nuke so don’t risk his life) the minions refuse because they didn’t sign up for this. Charlotte doesn’t refuse but she’s a delicate lady person who Vasiliy refuses

And yes I’m sticking to that. He pouts and stomps when Roman tells him no, when the minions tell him not but Charlotte tells him yes he’s suddenly all “nah, tunnels are my thing, i got this”. He might as well have said “don’t you worry your pretty little head”

So we’re treated to a long long time of sniper shots, Vasiliy trying to appeal to the man and Quinlan threatening him until Vasiliy finally shoots him and injures him. He asks why one of Roman’s soldiers are attacking him and is told, in case we missed it, that there are many human collaborators

Heavy Handed Theme #1.5 Collaborators are Totally the Worst

And Quinlan shoots him - because he promised he would if the soldier didn’t put down his gun. Quinlan does not make idle threats

Unfortunately this nuke won’t work without another part which has been removed

This whole section takes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long.

On to Ephraim

Do I have to?

Ephraim and new bestie Alex have come up with a clever way to kill vampires, rat poison

Rat poison

Really rat poison?

Rat poison.

Do you want to page this back to season 1?

So there follows a long plan on how to get rat poison into one of the blood tankers ( these red tankers don’t look refrigerated, but hey nuclear winter) by means of a convoluted car crash so they can sneak some poison in all sneakily

Wait, can we talk about how Alex the Revolutionary leader comes up with an idea and then Ephraim is all “oh you silly silly person, this is how it should be done”? Because this is a rapidly developing theme. Ephraim has actually been recruited into the revolution not because he wants to fight vampires but he wants to Smugly Correct Alex.

It works and thousands of thousands of vampires are squished by rat poison. Really, this could have been totally useful back in season 1. Who knew the best way to poison vampires was with poison?!

The Master is Not Amused but Eichorst is thrilled since these “terrorist” actions helps him pin down Abe & co.

They also find more evidence of Collaborators doing mysterious mystery things which are bad and mysterious. Collaborators are the worst. But the utter utter utter worst collaborator is the one who helped the Strigoi use the nuke on the statue of liberty - that’s a the worst, Alex is very clear

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 2: The Blood Tax

This is another episode of catching up where everyone is. All the while Partnership propaganda plays about how wonderful the new world is. Desai, one of the men Eichorst recruited, is starring in them.

The theme of this episode is, I think, collaborators. Either active participants or people just trying to keep their head down and live and easy life. Abe even paraphrases the “triumph of evil line”: talking about how we assume progress is safe, lower our guard and don’t stop the evil creeping back in and dragging us back.

Dutch and Abraham were together, trading with Gus (Augustin) who is now running what looks like a Black market, allied with Creem (the pair have put aside their differences somewhat in the aftermath. And, as Abraham points out, all of the wealth he’d acquired meant anything in Strigoi controlled world).

In one of their trips they return to find their home being raided - and on fire. Fearful of the Lumen burning Dutch manages to grab it and hide it somewhere it won’t burn - but both she and Abe are captured and taken to a prison camp: where families are separated

To Abe, holocaust survivor, that’s a stark reminder and he has to resist, even if futilely. They’re separated and Dutch, along with other women with B+ blood is moved into a facility. At every stage we see human collaborators, from the guards at the camp, to the nurses at the facility

And it is a medical facility for B+ women - to artificially inseminate them and have them pop out babies. Women who prove to be infertile disappear (they’re told to a better place but everyone knows what a lie that is). Of course Dutch plots to escape - but is frustrated by some of the women in there just being happy to go along with things or at least endure them - because it is better in there than it is outside. Not wanting things to be worse breaks defiance and rebellion as so many people passively accept their circumstances.

We also have the secondary theme - resistance without thought is equally useless. A woman losing her temper and ranting at the nurses and guards doesn’t achieve anything and Dutch quickly defuses the situation because she’s just going to get herself killed.

It does draw her to the attention of Desai who runs the facility. He wants to recruit her - and he’s a mess of conflict. You can see his guilt, his desperate justifications for how he’s totally making things better by working in the system (oh how often have we heard that before?) and resisting the system is just selfish rather than working to make it better (ignoring the inherent corruption and predation of the system). Oh he carries so many awesome messages and cautionary tales in one rant. All the excuses colluders tell themselves are there. Dutch, naturally tells him where to go.

She has her own plot to escape which ends up going wrong because both the guy she’s blackmailing is cowardly and inept - and she changes her plans half way through to rescue someone else rather than herself

The Strain, Season 4, Episode 1: The Worm Turns

I honestly started watching this episode and I couldn’t quite remember what happened last season - then I remembered. Zach is the worst. The utter worst. In a pouting fit he decided to set off a nuclear bomb, because THE WORST

This caused a nuclear winter and we see Ephraim moving through modern day Philadelphia. The city, and presumably a lot of the rest of the world, or at least the cities, is run by something called “The Partnership”. A happy propaganda video tells us that since the “illumination” strigoi can now walk around during the now dull day and be equal partners in this wonderful utopian world where everyone has all the resources they need, there are jobs for everyone and so long as you keep your blood donations up to date, you get fully comprehensive health care in the “freedom centres.”

Hey, I’ve seen worse healthcare plans.

We also see a big tanker which is clearly filling up with blood out of a tower block which is ominous

Ephraim himself has pretty much embracing defeat, doing black market doctor jobs (understandably, a lot of people are duly suspicious of the Freedom Centres) in exchange for trade items, though he still flinches when accused of profiteering but has generally lost all hope. He’s also still angsting over Zach

One of these trades ends up with him being captured by a Strigoi raid and transported away on a bus - which is then bombed.

Yes there’s a resistance. Ephraim objects fiercely to them blowing up a bus that contained human prisoners. I don’t know the name of the brother-sister resistance team but she has an awesome responds with:

“If we wait for the perfect moment to resist, we never will”. Which is brutally true. Her brother was injured in the explosion and Ephraim treats him… when he tries to leave she shames him for passive complicity with the Partnership. This clearly scores a bullseye (we’ve seen him struggling with the idea repeatedly, sounding out his fellow black marketeers about vague ideas of resistance while not willing to build up hope) and he agrees to stay.He claims for trade but we know he’s been pricked in the conscience

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 10: The Fall

It is the grand finale, we can tell this because Abraham has a totally dramatic voice over to prepare this big finale.

Eldritch meets Abraham to announce he’s stolen the Master’s nuclear bomb and totally filled Eichorst full of silver and isn’t this awesome. The plan is now to have Palmer return home and wait for the Master to come get him so he can get his bomb back – because his go-to-man Eichorst is out of the picture. When he does, Vasiliy, Abraham, Ephraim, Dutch and Quinlan will all pile on him and drop him in his silver box then drop said silver box in the ocean (where silver, being a relatively soft metal and trapping a very strong master, will eventually be worn away and the Master will be freed but that’s future generations’ problem).

It’s not a bad plan. Unfortunately we also have to deal with Vasiliy whining at Ephraim and slut shaming Dutch

Unfortunately the Master has a backup plan. Firstly, no villain is dead until you see the body. This is a rule. Eichorst is healed but doesn’t really join in the fight he goes off to play happy families with Kelly and Zack. Yes, alas, Zack is still around, playing with his creepy vampire bodyguard (as you do). Zack seems to be redefining Stockholm syndrome, is happy for his little vampire pet to kill people and in complete denial about Kelly. Alas, nothing killed him

So the Master pre-empts Eldritch’s party by arriving early (rude!) and when Palmer, back against the wall, points out only he knows the code to the safe where the nuke is kept, the Master is officially done with his nonsense and does a body swap: he takes over Palmer, has a whole new body and can easily claim the Nuke and hand it to Eichorst to play with with Kelly and Zach

This is not going to plan.

Thankfully he’s still evil so rather than just ignoring the gang or just filling Palmer’s tower with 8 gajillion vampires, he decides to take them all on on his own. And not even ambush them because he decides to taunt Abraham and Ephraim first so they know they face the Master

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 9: Do or Die

Everything has gone from bad to worse - Ferraldo tries to rally her troops, but they have been decimated and, ultimately all of New York is lost. She tries her last plan – they all fall back to a secure area, but most of her forces abandon her. She’s left with 7 people willing to fight to defend the city

Looking at that even she realises it’s time to leave

Augustin and Angel have the same idea. New York is lost.

Vasiliy seems to be joining in the despair, trying to convince Abe and Dutch to leave the city with him (not Ephraim though). Ephraim is super happy Dutch decides to stay and fight because he decides it’s all about Dutch staying with him because she can’t possibly have any other motive. They’re more than a little nauseating together.

This attempted escape goes poorly when Feraldo’s escape vehicle ends up stuck in traffic. At night. Being stuck in cars at night in a vampire infested city isn’t good.

Feraldo’s group is attacked – seen by Angel who insists he and Gus go and help (much to Gus’s disgust and disagreement). There’s a battle as they all try to escape, people around Ferraldo are taken down one by one… and then her aid is killed who has been there from the first.

And Ferraldo is infected. Angel is bitten. In the end only Augustin escapes. Everyone else dies (epicly in Angel’s case with a shining silver cross harkening back to his wrestler days). While part of me will never be happy at the death of a strong female character and the awesome, disabled Latino Angel on a show that hasn’t been good to either POC or women, part of me also recognises the power and meaning of this. The importance of these characters is established because their deaths is supposed to be a shock and a symbol – their death is the death of New York. Their loss is the end of hope for New York. Their loss is symbolic of the end of the city and hope for victory

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 8: White Light

It’s time to reveal what nefarious thing Eichorst and the Master are building in Eldritch’s factories. Sadly, it’s the same as in the book

It’s a big plant where humans are loaded up, exsanguinated and their bodies incinerated and they want it to work faster (and human lackies are apparently willing to work on this).

Uh-huh

Why?

Is speed of exsanguination a problem?

Is killing humans for food in vast and quick numbers even a viable

This is obviously scary scary genocide because we’re reaaaaaly trying to stretch that with some desperate and frankly offensive comparisons and thematic links to the holocaust and Abe.

But not only is it insulting to compare the very real horror of the holocaust to this story, but it makes no sense. The vampires cannot possibly wipe out their primary food source, that’d be utterly ridiculous. This whole factory makes no sense – the vampires don’t have a problem killing and feeding on humans.

Now an extraction factory that took a lot of blood from people but left them alive, basically vast warehouses akin to what we saw on the Matrix, humans bound in cells from birth and constantly bled but kept alive (which provides both blood and stops them being turned by being bitten). That would be horrific and make sense. This? Does not make sense. This is a mutual extinction machine.

A now healthy Palmer, buzzing on the White, gives enough information to Abe and Vasiliy to allow them to track down the crate that was delivered. There’s a gun fight but in the end Eichorst manages to escape with the crate and its mysterious cargo. But they also learn about the death factory

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 7: Collaborators

Eichorst has been badly injured losing a hand. And apparently the vampire cure for unexpected limb severing is to burn the stump then plunge it in water. Ok

Eichorst is going to get a lot more irritated because Palmer is pushing more and more against the control of the Master. He is determined to find out what’s on the ship in his name – but when he gathers his own force of men to invade the ship (which is what he takes, so low has his authority sunk) he finds his own men slaughtered and the ship empty.

Meanwhile, Ephraim and Dutch are joined by Quinlan (with lots of awkwardness) to leave the Safe Zone to go to the airport and find the plane that started this whole thing to try and find a recording of the Master’s communication without a whole lot of background noise. This involves going through parts of New York that have been reduced to an utter war zone, looting, murder, robbery in the street and everyone carrying weapons – it’s a complete ruin.

But here we get to the meat of the plot – Vasiliy and Abraham

There were times this episode where I questioned why we needed this episode. Did we need the history of Vasiliy’s grandfather? Did we need a scene of the two going to stock up on more silver?

But we’ve had a rift between the two. They were very close in early seasons of this show but have drifted apart as Abraham studied the Lumen and Vasiliy took the fight to the vampires

Vasiliy is shaken now. His fight has lost, completely lost. The vampire victory destroyed Vasiliy’s confidence and Abraham spells it out – you can’t fight a war against an enemy that can quickly restock their numbers over night.

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 6: The Battle for Central Park

This is a grand battle episode – Christine gathers her forces to help get Vasiliy into the Central Park nest hoping to destroy all the strigoi there and stop any further incursions in Manhatten. This includes sending strike teams for support – including drafted prisoners Gus and Angel – while Vasiliy and new love-interest Captain Kate Rogers go into the tunnels to unleash Vasiliy’s silver bombs

With extras who you know are there to die dramatically so we can have tension

Along the way they pick up Ephraim and Dutch so they can continue to study Strigoi communications – well, in theory – but in actuality it’s so Dutch can get all jealous over Kate, of course it is.

I am giving Kate a 30% chance of being dead by the end of this season. 2 established characters with a rocky romance go through an “out” period and new competition arises? She is so dead so Dutch and Vasiliy can get back together. The tropes are strong with this one.

Gus and Angel are forced into battle by 2 cops who are not only inept but also sadistic – insisting that new prisoner (scrounging for things to trade for food got her arrested) Maria go down a strigoi tunnel alone since Angel and Gus were so determined to protect her. Gus and Angel aren’t having that, capture one cop at gunpoint and both cops end up dead through further ineptness. Yup, no-one’s crying over this one.

They then run into Vasily for reunion time! (And Vasily not being thrilled by the whole drafting thing), Angel gets Maria to safety, her role of damsel in distress and plot object now complete, while Gus join Vasily to kill all the strigoi. I’m glad to see the teams merging, The Strain can get awfully distracted at times

We also catch up with Zach who, alas isn’t dead and…

Wait. Why isn’t he? Why is he not dead? Why does the Master care about him? The only reason was leverage against Ephraim – but Ephraim’s plague failed? Why would the Master even remotely care about him – what is so special about Ephraim that the Master would put Kelly, one of his valuable sentient vampires, in charge of baby sitting, having Eichorst visit the kid and even assign a Feeler (the freaky child vampires) to be his bodyguard/pet/friend? Why is he worth this effort?

Anyway Zach is evacuated by Eichorst because he is That Important.

The Strain, Season 3, Episode 5: Madness

This episode begins with the opening spiel that really should have happened about a season ago – Abraham describing how the Strigoi were now taking over many cities across the world, countries after county desperately struggling (and also Africa. Which. Is. Not. A. Country.). Now we finally have a reason to see this as a global threat rather than a problem confined to just one city

It would also have helped to actually have seen some of the power apparently being thrown uselessly at the vampires.

Vasiliy is continuing the fight against the Strigoi – actually putting tracking devices on vampires to try and track their lairs and see they are continuing to invade the safe zone. Because the vampires are still attacking places Christine thought were safe and she’s getting increasingly frustrated and desperate.

The vampires are digging tunnels which shows a disturbing level of intelligence – and under Central Park there is a huge nest of literally thousands of vampires – Christine decides they have to target this nest. That will definitely go wrong. So very very wrong

What may help is Dutch and Ephraim who are now happily experimenting on strigoi, capturing them, taking them back to the lab and then dissecting them, torturing them and experimenting on them. The way this is depicted is interesting – because Dutch and Ephraim are clearly desensitised (and even damaged, and possibly drunk) to the brutality of what they’ve done. But the brutality is still clear – they even talk about their experiments as torture. The starkness does a lot to show these characters

They do discover ways to try and cut off the communication between the strigoi – which also reduces the vampires to mindless animals which would give them a huge advantage, especially now vampires are showing more and more intelligence. Including the aforementioned tunnelling – and a captured vampire able to pick locks