Opening flashback – 1932 Romania with a young Abraham
being told a story by his grandmother, the story of how the Master gained his
huge body – by hunting down and transferring his vampirism and soul into a man
with gigantism, his vampiric nature removing the frailties of the condition
(the whole process is monumentally disgusting). As a bonus, Yusuf Sardu, the
giant man who was infected carried the sword cane that Abraham now carries.
In modern day Manhattan Abraham remembers his failure to
kill the Master despite it being broad daylight to ensure we remember the last
season. He’s hunting where the Master fell and went to ground despite being
tired and out of breath himself. There he is found and captured by the Hunter
Vamp who Hunts Vampires.
Abraham is introduce to Gus (Hunter Vampire has no time
for their bickering). Hunter Vamp takes them to where the 6 Ancients are all
kind of nailed up to their pedestals, asleep but understanding. Hunter Vamp,
Quinlan, speaks for them and tells them The Master is the seventh Ancient. He’s
normally hidden from the other six though – and those Six want to ally with
Abraham to kill the Master (though not teach him how to kill an Ancient, for
obvious reasons). Abraham decides it’s time to talk about literature – wanting to
know if a book called the Occio Lumen exists. This is apparently important.
The deal is Abraham lives if he can find the Master and
inform them. Then they are told to leave before the Ancient’s wake looking for
food: and a man is dragged in to be lunch. Which is pretty brutal.
Meanwhile we have an overpass of New York with lots of
fires, alarms, sirens and gun fire which I think indicates the growing dystopia.
Vasily is busy vampire proofing their base while Ephraim feels the need to
remind us the Master isn’t dead and how wrong Abraham was. Because Ephraim still
needs to be eaten. It seems a pretty clear attempt to, yet again, push Abraham
out of the leader’s seat
Vasily has his own plan – he will secure his base. Then
secure a little wider area, then wider still – slowly claiming more and more
safe land. Dutch doesn’t like Ephraim any more than I do and gives him snarky
attitude he richly deserves for assuming she’ll babysit Zach, his kid. Ephraim
and Nora head out
They head to a pathology lab, planning to set up there
with all the nifty equipment though they have tokill a few vamps first. Nora
still feels sad for the victims. They’ve set up shop to figure out a medical
solution to the vampire plague. This involves Nora applying science and
brainstorming and Ephraim drinking too much and pointing out how wrong all her
ideas are (she’s right, but he’s awful about it because he’s an awful person
who should be eaten). He’s also defensive about his drinking despite Nora not
objecting – it’s not her job to police the manchild who should be eaten.
Abraham returns just before Vasily decides to go out
looking for him after night time. Vasily tries to scold the old man for making
him worry but this is Abraham. Vasily the demands he eats and is worried at
Abraham’s lack of growling. Abraham has another plan – for them both to grab
something from his storage locker – Vasily is relieved Abraham has a plan and
tries to reassure him.
Ephraim decides to try and parent his son over his
vampiric evil mother. It doesn’t go well and I still don’t really care. Ephraim
turns back to drinking, this time with Dutch who is tinkering. During their
verbal sparring she seems to give him an idea
Dutch does a better of connecting with Zach
He wants to create a plague to kill the vampires –
unleashing a vast scale biological weapon.
They all go to a trip to Abraham’s storage locker
(Ephraim is arsehole about it, of course) and in between finding some refugees
hiding in the storage centre they also find Abraham’s stash of weapons and
research. The power then goes off ominously and vampires appear – fighting retreat
(PLEASE SOMETHING KILL EPHRAIM). They fight and escape but both refugees are bitten,
scratched… Vasily prepares to kill them but Ephraim wants to keep them for his
virus research. Alas, Ephraim is not bitten.
The Master isn’t in the best shape having been badly
burned by the sun. He tells his Nazi minion Eichorst that his body is dying.
Which means he needs to prepare – preparations which require Bolivar (one of
the first vampire minions) to fetch “the loam” (possibly the soil he used to
transfer his body) and Eichorst to fetch some kids. That’s never a good thing.
Eichorst goes into a meeting with Palmer who is far far
too cocky for a human minion with a little power in his veins. He still thinks
of himself as an equal partner with The Master. Sniping aside they meet with
broker Coco Marchand to discuss a property deal – one that involves a building
capable of moving lots of liquid, which is ominous.
Now back to the whole “kids” thing – at a school for the
blind, the whole population of kids are being put on busses ostensibly to leave
the city – at the command of Palmer.
Ominously they’re collected and taken to Palmer – and all
of them are turned into vampires. Eichorst collects Kelly (Ephraim’s ex-wife,
Zack’s mother) and makes her a vampire that than think and talk (like Eichorst),
unlike most of The Master’s creations. She is to lead the newly blind vampires
who have special vampire 6th sense.
Palmer also increases his PR by offering a vast amount of
credit for the city to help them come what may. He also learns he has managed
to buy his property with the help of Marchand with lots of almost-flirting but
certainly more humanising dialogue. He also offers her a job – and gives her an
offer she can’t refuse.
I kind of love Vasily being mother-hen to Abraham. He
manages to hit the balance – he clearly respects Abraham’s skills and
leadership so in no way is his care depicted as condescending or belittling. He
also pulls off being both the big tough manly-man, best fighter and most
dangerous and practical man among the group with worrying that Abraham hasn’t
eaten and hasn’t called to stop him worrying – it’s a nice subversion of some
pretty strong gender tropes there.
I still hate Ephraim. Can something eat him now? I also
find his little family drama to be somewhat contrived on the show – when fighting
to save the whole human race, do we really care that much about what a crappy
parent he is and the angst in their little dynamic? It’s not like it’s
necessary to make him a more compelling or human character.
I actually find Palmer and Marchand somewhat interesting.
She clearly knows to get in big with such a major contact while the normally so
business-like Palmer seems to be enjoying a new lease of life. His comment to
Marchand about never having been to a baseball game points to a very sheltered,
restricted life due to life-long ill-health… and now he seems to be much more
enthused about life and ready to enjoy it more – even if it’s so simple as
conversation and discussing his ties (or even flirting).
I'm leery of the psychic-blind-mindless vampires. The blind person with super-sight is something of a trope and this one isn't even empowering - they're Kelly's mindless minions
