TV Review: THE STRAIN Season 1, Episode 11: THE THIRD RAIL

My God, if you ever wanted to know how to derail a show so close to it’s endgame, “The Third Rail” is the golden standard. There are three story lines here and only one of them is any good. Let’s get the bad out of the way first.

A good portion of tonight’s episode is devoted to Gus. He comes back home to find that his brother, mother, and landlord have turned. They try to place a great deal of emotions in these scenes but find many ways to bungle it. We’re supposed to be sad when he kills his brother, but they’ve only ever shown his brother in one or two other scenes and always as a screw up. Before he turned, there were never any moments of closeness or bonding between the two that say “From Dusk Till Dawn” had with the Gecko brothers, so we don’t really give a shit when Gus kills his brother. Then he finds his mom and it is really sad because she’s shown to be a loving mom and he’s shown to care for her, until it’s undercut by the next scene where it’s shown he didn’t kill her. Finally we see him kill the landlord, who is supposed to be a thorn in Gus’ side. We’re supposed to cheer on his death like he’s some major villain but the only thing he’s ever done is ask Gus to pay the rent on time and be a little neater, you know, landlord stuff. This would all me somewhat acceptable except that it doesn’t lead up to anything. Gus doesn’t run into the team at the end and join forces in the fight against evil, he just runs into Zach in the grocery store and tells him to be careful. Which brings me to my next gripe…

There’s an okay emotional moment at the beginning where Eph leaves Zach to go fight the Master in the subway and you think “Yeah, alright, let’s go watch ’em fight vamps!” and then the utter disappointment when the following scene continues with Zach and the demented Mrs. Martinez who sends the young man outside of the safety of the pawnshop basement to get her cigarettes. All of this sequence just served to piss me right off. Zach blatantly ignores his dad’s wishes to get this demented old lady her smokes and nearly gets killed in the process. Then when he returns, the music is all ominous making us think that she’s turned, which would actually be an interesting turn of events. But no, it was just a tease. Both of these story lines could have been ditched for some actually interesting characters. We haven’t seen Gabriel in a while nor have we spent much time with Eldritch Palmer or Thomas Eichorst lately. We could have had a follow up on the tales of the Luss kids and their nanny with the weird SWAT team of vampires lead by Stephen McHattie introduced oh so long ago, but no. We get to spend time with an annoying little boy and an even more annoying old Mexican lady. If we’ve got to stretch episodes out like this so close to the end, I have little faith in the finale.

What did the episode get right? Well the team’s trek through the subway was tense and cool. The scenes where Fet was being chased by the in the tunnel was great and the train coming and throwing them off the path was a nice touch. Too bad it was undercut by the fact Eph and Fet constantly bicker. The showdown between Eph and the Master was sub-par because I still don’t think the Master looks scary and you can barely understand what he says. The ending with Setrakian getting furious at Fet for losing the Master was great and it was great finally seeing him being let loose like that. Hopefully there’s more of that in the next two episodes and less annoying kids and senile old ladies.