Roman isn’t dead from the monstrous attack – and not only
has Annie saved him by bringing him to Johann, but she also brought the monster
that attacked them for some fun autopsy. Yes, Johann has some fun hobbies. He
pretty much concludes that the monster that seeks out and attacks Upir is an
Upir – only one possessed with a freaky tumor/parasite thing that controls them
and makes them hunt and eat their own kind.
While Roman continues to check in with his detective,
Annie conveniently runs across his sketch book of Spivak in his scary
manta-ray-lizard-thing for and she recognises it. Apparently it’s a Omul Negru,
a scary upir bogeyman that Roman would have known about if he hadn’t been so
completely ignorant of all things upir
Including the local upir community that roman knew
nothing about. Nice, suburban people with pretentious blood tasting and tawdry
little love affairs. They have some useful info about the Omul Negru – or Jormungandr
as they’re also known as basically big scary rivals to the Upir which are
supposed to be extinct, though clearly not quite
The nice civilised upir who so kindly want to take Roman
under their wing don’t do well when a whole pack of infected upir show up and
begin slaughtering all the nice suburban upir. Roman, being considerably less
civilised and a whole lot more brutal is less easily taken down and he and
Annie manages to escape the whole gutting and slaughtering thing.
All this slaughter and angst causes Roman to tearfully
tell Annie about him raping his half-sister-cousin Lethe and her having a baby:
though he blames the whole thing on Olivia and says he was raped as well… that’s
not quite how I remember it and it feels a little like a redemption/retcon to
be honest. Annie pretty much knows all the secrets now
That detective keeps looking into Spivak and sharing the
whole info about him being super-old but no-one really cares any more because
being super-old is pretty much mundane by now and everyone has other worries. Even
Olivia is far more focused on the missing Shelly – to say nothing about why she
can’t feed any more (possibly she’s infected?)
Shelly’s found a homeless commune in one of her dad’s old
buildings where she meets Aitor Quantic (he'll always be Sketchy to me) who feeds the homeless, spreads random
facts and parables and is generally quite eccentric. He seems genuinely
intrigued by Shelly, though she’s not even slightly inclined to accept that she’s
beautiful, no matter what he says. I’m going to assume he’s a weremole or
something.
While Johann Pryce continues to grow more… worryingly
eccentric. He seems to spirallying towards breakdown, becoming obsessive,
careless (wiping Upir venom into his eye) taking up the drums and having
dishevelled hair (the universal symbol of a break down everywhere – mentally ill
people are allergic to combs, it is known). His insight into Spivak does,
through a series of odd clues, lead to an ominous depiction of experiments on
rats with what looks like the upir virus
And over to the Romanceks whose storyline is all about
criminality with a smattering of woo-woo because they’re Rroma and this show
absolutely loves grossly stereotyping them. Peter is growing every more
disappointed in Andreas – especially since his new heist involves stealing
drugs which is where Peter draws the line (something he declares all Rroma draw
the line – drugs are a super-no-no). Andreas is enraged at Peter playing “no
true Rroma” with him, and insults Peter’s Rroma-ness before turning on the
charm
I think I’d be more intrigued with them arguing over
Rroma identity if this show had spent even 10 seconds in the last three seasons
depicting the Rroma AS an identity rather than a criminal gang with a sideline
in fortune telling
Despite said fortune telling prowess, Destiny is completely unable to divine that Andreas is an arsehole and is still heading down the aisle with him
Is it just me or is the main storyline – the upir, the
virus and the jormungandr – really interesting and I want to see a lot more of
it – but everthing else is kind of… lacking? I’m not sure I care about Olivia
any more, she’s too abstract. Shelly is, again, a little too separate and in a
very odd situation. Johann’s devolution is going to go nowhere good and Peter,
Andreas and Destiny already started in a bad place and there’s no way it’s
going to get better
