TV Review: THE STRAIN Season 1, Episode 12: LAST RITES

After last Sunday’s sleeping pill of an episode, I was really hoping that tonight would be be a little more exciting, and for the most part it was! This episode technically fulfills all of my burning questions like “Where has Gabriel Bolivar been?” and “What’s up with that vamp SWAT team?”. I say technically because they really don’t answer anything. More on that in a bit.

The episode is bookended by scenes with a bedridden Eldritch Palmer. The first of which shows him upset at Eichorst that the Master hasn’t arrived to grant him immortality. The final scene has the Master arrive to drop magic water drops into Palmer’s mouth, extending his life enough so that he can laugh maniacally in the rain. If you hadn’t yet realized that Eldritch Palmer is Saturday morning cartoon villain, this should have clinched it for you. It doesn’t do anything for this week’s episode except give us a little face time with our big bad villain who we haven’t seen much of in a while, and set up for the coming season finale.

Aside from that, We’ve got quite a lot of story here: The best subplot tonight is the continuing adventures of young Abraham Setrakian, who is now a middle aged Abraham Setrakian. He and his crippled wife live a humble life in the Romanian countryside, dreaming of a life with two adopted children (a boy and a girl) and settling down. But first there’s the matter of vampires to take care of. Abe knows of a nest of Strigoi and plans on eradicating it and his wife Miriam tells him to be careful. Already she’s signed her death ticket, and we the audience already know her fate, but the good bye scene is crucial here to at least establish some emotional investment for a character we’ve never even seen before. While in the cavern below a well, a vampire mouthpiece for Eichorst makes him realize he’s been set up and his wife is in danger. He returns to climb out of the well when he looks up to see Eichorst mock him, and his rope has been cut. After a Batman like escape from the well he finds his horse disemboweled and his wife turned. There’s an added level of darkness here as when Abe returns home, she’s joined by a boy and a girl vampire, their “adopted” kids. Usually these flashbacks just seem shoehorned in, but tonight it works well as it serves as an emotional connection to when Nora has to kill her newly turned mom.

The main plot centers on the CDC team (I’ve failed to come up with another name for the team, only two people from the CDC remain) hacking into the Emergency Broadcast System to alert the city about what they know about the outbreak. Dutch returns to help out and thank God for that because she’s the only fun character on this show. Her chemistry on the rooftop with Fet was really nice. They pull off about 30 seconds of airtime before getting shut out, but it may just be what helps them defeat the Master. Afterwards, Gabriel breaks in and turns Nora’s mom. It’s the first time we see Gabriel in forever and afterwards he just vanishes, it could have been any other vampire, it didn’t really matter that it was him. Nora then makes her emotional mercy kill. Emotional for her, not us. We’re thrilled that the most annoying character is being removed. This show isn’t great at placing it’s emotional points. If you want us to feel sad that she has to kill her mom, they should have made her mom an interesting character, rather than a repetitive, senile parrot.

The only other plot going on involves Gus robbing a criminal named Creem (last seen after Gus stole a vehicle, so that plot did pay off after all!) and taking his guns. Not much happens here except when the two of them are surrounded by monsters and the Vampire SWAT team comes to save them, and then kidnap Gus for whatever reason. Where have they been this whole time and what do they want with Gus? We’ve got one episode left of the season, so hopefully we’ll find out next week