Flashback to begin – waaaay back this time, to the
Conquistadors arriving in Mexico.
In the present, Santanico is with Richie’s wounded, maybe
dead body. And by “with” I mean writhing gratuitously over it while still
wearing not much of anything” because Reasons. She lets Carlos know that Ranger
Freddie is still alive and she’s isn’t happy about it. The problem is that,
whatever they need Richie for, it has to be his choice and desire.
When Richie wakes up he backs away from Santanico,
horrified. He blames her for the women he killed and mutilated.
In the main club there’s a showdown, Seth has a knife to
Freddie’s throat, Jacob’s upset about Scott being missing and has a shotgun to
Seth’s head to stop him killing Freddie, Freddie has visible bite marks and
they’ve already seen people turn and Freddie claims to know a way out. Lots of
tension. Jacob calls on a vote for who wants to leave Freddie behind – and Katie
votes for death, as does the professor. Jacob is shocked, they’re sensible –
someone is bitten, they turn, they attack you.
They tie Freddie to a stripper pole before opening his “way
out” the trap door to the grinder. They work their way down to a side passage,
working carefully pas the grinder (Professor Sex Machine drops their weapons in
it. Not useful – but, hey, if they were still drinking blood from the fountain
they could get a splinter).
Freddie frees himself from the pole and grabs the Eye
Knife to free his arms. But before he can join them through the trap door,
Carlos arrives. They fight, Carlos with sword, Freddie with Axe (Carlos claims
to have made Freddie stronger – I think to explain why Freddie isn’t dead in
seconds). The fight looks well done but the cameraman has a bad case of random
jerking. Freddie manages to disarm Carlos – but the axe to the face just causes
wounds that heal instantly. Carlos rams Freddie onto the bar, salts Freddie’s
wounds, drinks some tequila then bites him. Freddie apparently has a special
blood line. Proved by him throwing a stick and impaling Carlos before stabbing
both his hands to the chair – Carlos laughs.
Santanico continues to try and seduce Richie and convince
him she’s a nice vampire and he stabs her. She doesn’t give up and we get a
flashback when she was a mortal among the Inca. She ran rather than let people
be sacrificed in her name; since she refused to spill blood, she was cursed (as
we saw in the pilot) to have an
insatiable need for blood. The hunger drew her to the temple where she
would be enslaved (presumably to the Lords of the Night). He’s still not overly
sold on her plea to free her.
Meanwhile, Professor Sex Machine expositions the fact the
vampires have visions (Seth objects – he’s with them on Temple of Doom but draws the line at Crystal Skull. Seth, all right thinking people draw the line at Crystal Skull). Also underworld may be
mentioned. Meanwhile Katie takes comfort in the belief that if she dies she
will go to Heaven with her mother. To which Jacob basically prepares to spill
some big terrible secret about the dead mother and, presumably, why she isn’t
in heaven. This causes something to growl. I’m with you unseen monster, bad
mouthing the girl’s mother when she’s desperately using the memory to be brave
is totally not cool Jacob. Never mind losing his faith, this man is a
monumentally shitty pastor. Can you imagine going to see him for comfort? “I
take comfort knowing my mother’s in heaven!” “What? Your mother? Hah. Well you
can take comfort that she ain’t cold at least!”
Anyway, I digress, they run from the angry vampires,
Katie and Jacob falling behind because Jacob has a bad leg. But Seth can’t
leave them behind and helps them behind the door they found just before the
vampires get them. Professor Sex Machine was willing to leave them behind and
Katie gives him a very appropriate kick.
Their little sanctuary is full of all the various cargo
the vampires have stolen over the years. And they find a very agitated man with
a shotgun who has been hiding down there for a rather long time – though he’s not
sure how long. However he’s, perhaps, a little affected by his experiences and
demands they spin the “wheel of misfortune”, a little cardboard game of life or
death he’s set up. Which Seth wins, earning a shopping spree! And the
revelation that the man has been to the very centre of the temple and seen bad
bad things.
Scott isn’t dead, he’s in some uber scary catacombs full
of scary noises and glowing green eyes. So, not in a good place either – he comes
out in Santanico’s lair, watching her trying to convince Richie to trust her
Freddie wants Carlos to tell him why Santanico needs
Richie and Carlos responds with a flashback – he was one of the Conquistadors.
Hearing of the killing and abuse of the Incans – and the forcible conversion of
them; Carlos isn’t so interested in the latter, wanting gold more than
anything. So his commander decides the best way to do both is find their gods –
which are probably gold statues. The Incans took him to a temple, a step
pyramid with the Eye Serpent symbol with lots of gold – and a chained
Santanico. She starts to bite him – and he cuts off her chains
Becoming her servant (and creation) which he has been ever since; keeping the deathlords happy and both of them alive. He lured his fellow conquistadors to the temple and killed them.
See, kill your villains, don’t wait for them to exposition!
Santanico tells roughly the same thing to Richie only
says Carlos doesn’t love her – he worships her. He’s also greedy, always has
been – and makes a profit from working for the lords which means she doesn’t
think he can pass the “trials” needed to free her.
Carlos continues his exposition with the news that Richie
has only killed one person at their behest, the bank teller (we’re ignoring the
police he shot, apparently) the other serial killer victims were not his. He
also dismisses the people who regularly die in the Titty Twister because he
doesn’t consider them “innocents”. He adds more talk about who Freddie is, a
white hat, the price he’ll pay and how he’ll never see his family again –
before a vampire sneaks up behind Freddie and knocks him aside.
The vampire is Scott, bitten by Carlos. Carlos is freed
but Freddie escapes down the trap door. Carlos again assumes Freddie is dead.
And Scott, who was spying on Santanico, tells Carlos she chose Richie over him.
Back in the catacombs, the team gets their 10 minute
shopping spree to load up on weapons. Katie makes another attempt to recruit
the man as well. The man, Sergeant Frost, is a soldier – and the last time he
went inside the mind messing powers of the place made him flashback to horrors
he saw in Iraq. He warns them what’s in your head is the main enemy. He closes
the door behind them.
As they go on, Kate has a vision, she sees her mother, in despair, committing suicide, coming back to reality screaming. She backs away from the group in shock – and is grabbed by a vampire and pulled up into the catacombs.
She wakes tied to a slab with an eye symbol on it – but the
other three arrive before the vampires sacrifice her and kill the vampires. The
professor is all impressed that they’re maintaining the old rituals. But many
more vampires arrive – but so does Sergeant Frost, with explosives. He helps
them – then gets mobbed by vampires
Back to Richie and Santanico – and Richie can’t agree to
her because he can’t leave Seth and Seth will never be a follower, he’ll insist
on leading. She offers to free him and he asks what will happen to him – and she
bites him.
I like the exposition – the show has pretty much reached
the ends of where the film could take them – so now it has to branch out on its
own. We need more than “oooh vampires”, we need origin story, we need history,
we need lore and legacy and plotting and motives and agendas – and we’re
beginning to see all of that
We’re beginning to see all of that through a vast amount
of exposition info dump. A fair bit of it delivered by Santanico who, at some
point, really does need to be given some clothes.
Not sold on even the hint that the Mayan vampires communicated with aliens. I know it’s a minor thing in the whole show, but there are still a lot of ongoing conspiracy/fool theories about the Egyptians/Mayans/Aztec being visited by aliens basically because of the disbelief that these “savage brown cultures” could have achieved what they achieved.
Also not impressed by Sergeant Frost being introduced to
be killed off so quickly. And they need to be planning on making something out
of Scott’s transformation.
