In this episode of The Strain…Kelly girl, you have a worm in your eye.
“Loved Ones,” outside of a mostly superfluous Vasiliy/Dutch subplot that could be basically summarized in one sentence — Fitzwilliam, Eldritch’s guard you probably forgot existed, is sort of a good guy! — is another episode that mostly focuses on one story. That story is Kelly’s metamorphosis into a vampire, told in flashback, even as Eph searches futilely for her, finding some of her personal effects and staring balefully at them. It wasn’t the show’s best episode, thanks to all of that staring, but it was sort of interesting for being so different. I mean Kelly was infected early in the day and draining her BFF and her nosy son later that night! But after we’d already seen the four plane survivors experience their metamorphosis. It seemingly took a few days for those initial four to start shooting blood-sucking tubes out of their faces. Did the Master fast-track her or something? Does getting a worm in the eye accelerate the turn? There is lots to sink your teeth into in this episode so let’s get to it!
Mommy’s gone and I’m oh so sad!
Turns out, Kelly did manage to escape infected boyfriend Matt – though in her frantic fight with him, some of those nasty translucent worms managed to crawl into her eye. (Ew.) Sadly, thinking of Jim’s fate in “Creatures of the Night” immediately reminds us that Kelly is screwed. Once those worms get inside you, they reproduce so quickly that no amount of intervention will matter. And so a lot of the tension goes out of the episode at that point. Knowing as we do that Kelly is going to wind up sprouting a stinger and going after her friends and family, everything up until that happens feels regrettably tedious.
“Where’s my son? Where’s Zach?”- Kelly
It also doesn’t help that, though Natalie Brown is a terrific actress, Kelly hasn’t been properly fleshed out as a character. Consequently, watching her transform doesn’t pack the emotional gut-punch that the showrunners and writers surely intended it to. There are still a few moving moments despite that. Kelly bent over her steering wheel in pain, silently begging for her life, is tough to watch, and the character’s grating pleas to see her son are perfectly vocalized by Brown.
The tension is strong with these two.
In non-Kelly-finding news, much of the rest of the episode focused on Vasiliy and Dutch (Hacker Girl) on a mission to infiltrate Stoneheart and get the internet back on track so that Vasiliy could download some blueprints to the city’s tunnel systems. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Zack was getting online intermittently back a home, so I’m not sure why a trip to a heavily guarded corporate fortress was necessary. I guess blueprints are pretty big files, or maybe Vasiliy just wants to stream Game of Thrones or Twilight.
In addition to yielding some quality screen time for Vasiliy’s chompers, and their ever growing sexual tension, their trek also highlighted some of The Strain’s frustrating problems with pacing and relevance. Let’s recap what the pair did: They took a drive in the bread van and had a quick flirt session. They talked to a nice lady at Stoneheart’s front desk and convinced her to let them in. Vasiliy’s line “It’s all about confidence.” leaves one wondering if he’s confident in what he is doing or the fact that there will be a female secretary that he can charm with a few nice words and those big brown eyes. Phew! Did it get warmer in here?? Back to business, they were stopped by security and submitted to a lengthy search, and then Dutch was summoned to see Palmer. And then Palmer’s security team let them go. Whee! It wasn’t the most thrilling B-story, and the net gain was the “reveal” that Palmer’s security team isn’t down with their boss’s plan to turn the world into Vampland. But we slogged through several unnecessary scenes to get to that point. We definitely did enjoy the many smoldering looks, flirtation, and all around building of the sexual tension between Dutch and Vasiliy!
The boss is in.
The Master, so far, is kind of a flop as the season’s Big Bad. He struts around in his cape and occasionally lets giant worms out of his arm. But he mostly just hangs out behind the scenes and lets others do his grunt work. Eichorst is far more engaging as a villain at this point. But there’s something intriguing in the idea that The Master is 75 steps ahead of everybody else, and that gets some added fuel in the scene where he calls Kelly to his side so she can behold her glorious destiny. (She mostly stands there and wobbles back and forth.) But this obscures the true awful thing here: Once you’re a vampire, you apparently have to start hanging out with The Master whenever he wants. And this guy seems like a really self-involved boor! Imagine running into him at a family reunion, where he can’t stop talking about his plan to … well, what is his plan anyway, besides kill all humans?
“Rejoice”-The Master
For The Master to feel like anything other than the boss monster in a video game — the bigger, badder version of the regular monsters that just takes more shots to kill — he’s going to have to develop something like a character. Instead, he just prattles on about his own gloriousness to a newly born vampire. C’mon, dude. Let it go.
FINAL VERDICT
“Loved Ones” moved The Strain‘s story forward a few more inches, as is becoming a common occurrence for the series. There are simply too many unnecessary scenes, too many repetitive info dumps, and not enough plot progression to call the show great. I’ll keep watching for the gore and summery fun, but my brain might take a nap while I do so. I appreciate the beauty of the cinematography and the writing that pulls you in even with it’s touch of repetitive nature. Del Toro once again brings us into a stories that we aren’t all that familiar with and draws us in until our hearts are broken with the rawness of the stories and characters themselves. It was a slower episode but I will definitely tune in for more of Del Torro’s writing.
Questions, Comments, Concerns…
- Dear Writers Room: I appreciate all of the sexual tension that is developing between Dutch and Vasiliy but fighting Vampires has to be exhausting and hot work.. So I’m just throwing it out there that is he took his shirt of I think it makes perfect sense. #JustSaying
- Is she seriously going to leave in the middle of the night AFTER Vasiliy begged her to stay!?! Seriously?!?! Who would say no to that!!?? #RealTalk
- Can we all just acknowledge that Eph is a douche and move on.
- Vasiliy teeth will light the way through this dark night!! Like Woah!
- For working for the CDC Eph really doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that disease is passed from person to person, ya know through, blood!!! #GoodLord
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