Kelly is continuing to become one of the Master’s more
intelligent vampire minions with her own personality – Eichorst teaches her how
to look more human, the skills she must learn and how her body will change. All
so she can reach Zach and, through him, Ephraim
At base Ephraim and Vasiliy plan how to kill Palmer – and
Ephraim wants a rifle to snipe at Palmer, relying on Vasiliy’s contacts to get
him one.
While Nora would quite like to know what happened to
Barnes, their old boss, and how he fell out of a train – the same train Ephraim
was on. Oopsie! What a coincidence! He acts all ignorant and adamantly refuses
to talk about what happened in DC
Ephraim takes Zach with him to buy weapons (because he’s
father of the year like that) and pauses along the way to remind Zach his
mother is totally dead and now a raving monster (as I said, father of the
year). But the gun dealer Ephraim knows has had a disagreement with a client
and is now all injured and bleeding.
Time for Ephraim to play doctor and have his son play
surgical nurse. Father of the Year.
Having patched the man up they get a gun easily but
co-operation between father and son ends because Zach is still sure Ephraim can
save his evil mother.
At team evil, Palmer wakes up in bed with Coco. But evil
mastermind business calls Palmer away – particularly he has to meet the
Cardinal about his evil book. He also has to see Eichorst who Coco hates
because of all the evil – and because he smells of fish. She wants to know
about him and isn’t a big fan of Palmer trying to keep her in the dark. Makes
me wonder if she has an ulterior motive.
Palmer meets up with the Cardinal selling the evil book –
who spends a lot of time dickering over the price without closing the deal. He
has another bidder – Abraham – and wants to see what he will pay. They’re
interrupted by Eichorst who wants to know what Palmer is so eager to buy – and again
Palmer completely fails to realise he is not the power in this relationship and
throws lots of outrage at the vampire nazi. While he may not have the power and
Eichorst may be dishing out the orders, Plamer still manages to twist the knife
about the Master choosing Bolivar to be his vessel rather than Eichorst.
Vasiliy drives for grumpy Abraham and marvels at how much
Feraldo has turned the city into a police state. Abraham is not impressed, ever
impressed. We also learn that Dutch is taking Nikki to find a place to stay
since she’s not comfy around them and Abraham, in his usual diplomatic fashion,
demands Vasiliy “get his head out of the skirt and into the game” and actually
focus on fighting rather than his love life.
They’re going to see the same Cardinal that Palmer met,
the priest living it up in extreme luxury and disdainful of the fact they’re
clearly not. Yet despite that, Abraham doesn’t hesitate to agree to a price tag
of $750,000 - $250,000 more than Palmer’s bid. They warn him that Palmer will
totally kill him and steal it.
Of course Abraham doesn’t have the gold but he has
absolutely no hesitation about stealing it from him both to Vasiliy’s shock and
childish glee.
That night the Cardinal gets a visit from Eichorst – and he
is not dickering for money. Threats are much better currency. He quickly cowers
the Cardinal and leaves him cowering while Eichorst mocks his faith and rather
than question him about who has the Lumen he just bites him – soon the Cardinal
will become a vampire and they’ll know what he knows
Which is when Abraham and Vasiliy attack. They drive Eichorst
off and quickly get the Cardinal to tell them who has the book before killing
the Cardinal before he becomes a vampire.
Palmer watches the news later and sees that the cardinal
has been murdered. Coco has lots of questions and Palmer angrily silences her, offending
her in the process. She storms out.
Despite all the security checkpoints, Kelly still gets
across thanks to a distracting sacrificial vampire and her new make up.
Back to base and Ephraim and Zach return. Ephraim laments
that he’s completely failed to get through to Zach to Nora who informs him he’s
a terrible father (ok in gentler terms, but still). She also pushes him about
the secrets he’s keeping about DC and he cracks – telling her how he totally
failed and got 4 people killed. While they’re arguing Kelley arrives and talks
to Zach through the glass
Zach, of course, lets her in (please kill this kid). There’s
a battle between Ephraim and Nora and Kelley and the little spider kids and
Zach finally seems to grasp that monster mummy isn’t his friend and smacks her
in the head with a hook turning the tide of battle. Kelly escapes. I’m sure
more angst will still follow.
Over to Gus and Angel who are looking for ingredients –
and discussing god and leaving the city, something Angel won’t do without the
Guptas and the Guptas won’t leave because they’ve sunk everything they have
into their restaurant. Underscoring the need to leave, they seem more wreckage.
They return to the restaurant and try to convince Mr. Gupta to leave.
Together they manage it and Aanya Gupta invites Gus to go
with them with a kiss… but they have a visitor, Quinlan the super living vamp.
He quickly makes it clear he’s infinitely more badass than anything ever and gives
Gus an excellent recruitment pitch including, among it, the need to protect
Aanya
I think the best parts of The Strain are all the times when Zach and Ephraim aren’t on screen
I did like that Gus and Angel spoke Spanish. A lot of the
time on TV we will see characters who clearly would not speak in English to
each other and, because they’re alone, they have no reason not to – but we
still hear English because of the choice of actors or because of so many
audience’s hostility to any non-English language (and definitely to subtitles).
I want to know where Coco’s character is going. I hope
she does have an ulterior motive because she seems destined to be ingénue or
inevitably victim.
I want to see Aanya be more than the lover interest who
inspires Gus to action
I want Dutch to be more than Vasiliy’s complicated
romance who makes him jealous. And, yes, I hail that she is bisexual and it is
depicted, but she wasn’t even in this episode!
I want Nora to be more than Ephraim’s love interest/confidant/advisor.
I don’t want Feraldo to be the only woman whose storyline
isn’t predominantly defined by her romantic life (even Kelley!)
