TV Review: THE STRAIN Season 1, Episode 4: IT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

I really love the opening of episode four for a strangely simple reason: It starts where the last episode ends. I realized that not a whole lot of shows do that. You have shows like Breaking Bad and The Bridge which would have episodes that end on cliffhangers and the following episode would begin with some incredibly cryptic scene that would be explained later on. But not the Strain! Last week we closed with Eph beating the recently vampyrized captain to death with a fire extinguisher and tonight’s episode we get straight to the heart of the matter. The team looks over the former captain, branded a “monster” by Jim and panicking about what to do if he were to get up. Eph’s advice: “Run”

A cringe inducing autopsy sheds new light on the biology of the survivors. Hearts shrivel up, genitals vanish, lungs atrophy, brand new organs appear with little information about their functions, although Eph does state that the vagina-neck is most likely used to vent heat out of the body. Then they examine the “Stinger”, the proboscis like appendage that the vampires have been using to suck blood with. Ephraim pulls the stinger out of the body’s mouth like a twisted version of a party clown’s handkerchief gag to reveal that the organ is about six feet long. They come to the conclusion that the organism is re-writing human DNA to reproduce and survive.

Meanwhile, Ansel continues to get worse as his wife takes the kids to her mom’s house so he can recover in peace. She comes back to find Ansel has locked himself in his toolshed after realizing he’s become a monster after eating the family dog. Then after finding out that her neighbor has been beating her dog, she tricks him into going into the toolshed and becomes food for Ansel. This plotline is pretty slight, but it is entertaining. It’s fun to see the devout Christian Anne-Marie turn heel pretty quickly and send her neighbor to his gory death.

The Eldritch-Eichorn plot is pretty thin here too, but it looks to set up an important plot device. The two of them meet up with a hacker who promises them to bring the internet to a standstill (and the hacker is a female, what a shock!). If that seems a little ridiculous, that’s because it is pretty ridiculous. In a show about vampires, a hacker making the internet “Slower than dial-up” is the hardest time I’m having suspending disbelief. Later, after she’s successful, Eldritch Palmer has a meeting with a politician who’s career he helped foster named Maggie. He needs her on his side for some reason. In the middle of the meeting he collapses and tells his doctors (one of whom I’m 99% sure is Lance Henriksen, but the credits don’t include him) that they have his permission to do whatever it takes to keep him alive.

After dissecting the corpse, Jim reveals that due to his financial problems and wife’s illness that he was payed by a company to allow the box through security at the airport and that he’s at fault for the outbreak. He didn’t mean any of this to happen, but Eph slugs him in the face anyway and declares he’s dead to him. After shaking Jim loose from the team, Eph and Nora realize that they must go to see Emma, the little French girl from the plane, and get her to the doctor. They find her alone in her room listening to “This Old Man” in an incredibly creepy scene. I love scenes that pit horror set pieces against innocent kids music, it always creeps me out! They’re attacked by her and her father, but fortunately Abraham is already there to save the day! After debating with Nora about the merits of killing these beasts or trying to cure them, the episode concludes with Eph and Abe pairing up to burn the bodies.

This episode finally allows for a lot of great character growth, especially Ephraim. At the end, for the first time in his professional life, he’s not the one in control. He has no idea what he’s doing or what he’s up against as he relinquishes all his power to Abraham. The only part of the episode that didn’t really click was the plot line with Gus. He makes amends with his mother and then later goes out and steals a car. The only time it ever connects to the main plot is when he returns to Abraham’s pawn shop to return the clock they stole in the first episode. It’s not un-interesting, but it doesn’t really do anything for the story as a whole.

This is so far the strongest episode of the show. By the end, it definitely becomes the story of a guy fighting vampires, which is what we’ve been waiting for this whole time!