TV Review: THE STRAIN Season 1, Episode 3: GONE SMOOTH

Hour 3: Things start to get exciting!

We begin with an excellent scene of a vampire person putting on his face, literally. After applying contacts to hide alien eyes, a wig to mask baldness, dentures to cover up those fangs, some makeup to make his skin more human, and a false neck to disguise a gross vagina neck thing, we learn we’ve been watching the morning routine of none other than our villain Eichorn himself. I love scenes like this where we see our villain as the monster they truly are, not unlike seeing Darth Vader under his mask.

A lot more attention is given this episode to three of the survivors: Ansel the meek husband and father, Gabriel the rock star, and the pilot, who is under careful watch at the CDC. As I write this, I realize another small flaw of this series: The characters names. The only ones I find myself remembering are Abraham Setrakian, Ephraim Goodweather, Jim Kent, and Thomas Eichorn, only because they’re the only ones that they say with any frequency. Anywho, the survivors all have the same vampyric side effects: Cravings for blood, hearing demonic voices, sharpened teeth, bloodshot eyes, lack of penis. You know the drill. The scene in which Gabriel’s junk falls into the toilet and he turns so that we see he’s about as anatomically correct as a Ken doll is particularly squirm inducing, hence the tile of the episode. There’s also a particularly haunting scene where Ansel’s wife catches him drinking blood from a steak using his weird vampire appendage.

Back at the CDC, things have gone terribly wrong. The captain, who was supposed to go in for surgery to determine the root of his infection has gone missing. Jim finds him in the basement kitchen eating raw meat and the captain attacks him, but a voice in his head tells him to stop. The voice in his head does not prevent him from attacking Nora. She’s saved when Eph shows up to bash the captain’s head in when he shows off his fancy new vampire blood sucker appendage.

There are some nice emotional moments shown in the episode as well. We get to know a little bit about Abraham at his court appearance, such as the fact he’s a childless widower. Nora corners him after the hearing and he explains that all of the bodies of the deceased on the plane must be burned along with anyone who has come in contact with them. There’s also a pretty funny moment with Vasiliy trying to find a rat in the room of the mayor’s daughter, where he acts very playful with the girl but butts heads with her dad. It’s a short sequence but pretty funny. We also get a little moment with Jim and his wife as she finds out she’s been accepted to a trial for a cure for her aggressive disease, although it comes at the price of Jim’s loyalty to Eph and the team. There’s also a little continuation of the ongoing Goodweather custody battle.

This episode definitely kicks it up a notch for the series. It pushes the story forward a lot more than the previous episodes and the inclusion of Jim’s Faustian deal with Eichorn for his wife’s medical trial ups the stakes for our heroes. The episode ends with the gang realizing that what they’re dealing with is no longer human in nature, which was definitely a “finally!” moment for me while watching, so I’m glad that the series is starting to resemble what I was excited for in the first place.