TV Review: THE STRAIN Season 1, Episode 9: THE DISAPPEARED

After last week’s incredibly thrilling and intense hour, I kind of anticipated this week to be a bit of a breather. There wasn’t nearly as much vampire killin’ as there was last week. We pick up right where we left off, with the gang arriving at the former Goodweather house just in time to save young Zack from an attack by the newly minted Matt vampire. They do something really interesting here when Eph destroys Matt’s head, they frame it so that the kitchen table obscures the violence, almost like it’s from the perspective of the kid, hiding the gore from us and him.

The team splits it’s scenes between Nora and Eph at his house and the rest of the team at Setrakian’s pawn shop where Nora’s annoying mom has been waiting this whole time. Fortunately she’s only briefly annoying this time around. Nora and Eph spend their time there burning Matt’s body and eulogizing Jim and then having sex while trying to figure out where Kelly went. The other camp spends their time just planning. Nothing super interesting happens, but young Zack and Abe do form a sort of grandfatherly relationship which is kind of sweet. Also, Dutch reveals her role in bringing down the internet and realizes she’s in a unique position to help Abe bring down Eichorst and Palmer. The fact that Abe responds so calmly to her revelation shows how different he and Eph are.

While the episode is pretty focused on the CDC team, there are a few scenes in Poland and a few moments with Gus and Felix. The Gus sequences are pretty open and shut. As He and Felix are being transported to Riker’s, Felix has his final transformation, Gus mercy kills him and escapes. Knowing the way the show goes, Gus is probably going to meet up with our gang soon.

The Poland scenes are interesting. There’s a great scene where Abe has a confrontation with the Master. For whatever reason, the master allows him to live, but it was a pretty intense scene and dealt with the whole belief in God thing.. As the prisoners are digging their own graves, the Allies show up and Abe escapes. Distraught, Eichorst takes refuge in a bunker and not a second after he asks “Why have you forsaken me?” the Master shows up and turns Eichorst into the vampire we know him as today, and we finally get to see the masters face. Unfortunately, he’s kind of goofy looking.

This episode suffers from being the episode after last weeks, but also it’s just kind of slow. This show does a great job of introducing a bunch of cool things and never following up on them. Remember that mystery dude from two weeks ago? I hope the showrunners didn’t forget because that was the most interesting thing to happen in a while. Remember Gabriel, what ever happened to him? Hopefully soon all of the cool plot points this show brought up will be wrapped up soon. Hopefully we get those next week, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, the previews made it look like we’re gonna catch up on what Kelly’s been up to this whole time.