Oh, The Strain. I wasn’t totally sold on this show last season, but now I think I’ve reached my limit. The second season has convinced me not to return, so this is the first time I’m reviewing a show that I’ve officially dumped. Good-bye Strain. You provided some adequately disgusting monsters at times, but no well-developed or interesting characters, so that in a nutshell explains why I’m dumping you, but I guess I’ve got to go a bit further here.
The second season started out with some bad developments right off the bat. First of all, they recast Eph’s (Corey Stoll) slightly annoying kid Zack with an even more annoying and much worse actor, for what reason I’m not exactly sure, but it sure as hell wasn’t to the benefit of the show. Zack proved to be a horrendous addition to the cast, both in terms of acting and character, seriously rising up to challenge the reigning queens of awful TV kids like Dana Brody and Tessa Johnson. But I think purposely endangering everyone you live with, over and over again, because you can’t accept that your dead mom is now a vampire puts you in contention for person who most deserves to die in your entire cast. Yeah, I hate him, but believe me I’m not alone.
The little shit was hardly the worst part of the season though. The Strain remains hamstrung a bit by its premise, which asks us to accept the idea that New York City could be so overrun that it’s essentially self-quarantined, but somehow without the government or the National Guard getting involved in any way. That’s bullshit right there- if you wanted a city the rest of the world would simply abandon to eat itself alive you should have chosen, I don’t know- maybe some place in Florida? This just makes no sense. What else makes no sense is the scale of the crisis at hand- sometimes people are perfectly fine walking around, eating in nice restaurants and continuing to work at their jobs and go to school. But other times? It seems to be the apocalypse, with vamps running around taking out whole neighborhoods and citizens occasionally fighting back to no avail. People are dying disgusting deaths around every corner, and then suddenly we’re in Happy Town, New York City with not a care in the world. Sorry, but that’s kinda distracting.
But now we move on to the real reason this show sucks, because let’s face it- there are all kinds of dumb genre shows out there, and you never get stuck on the logistical contradictions or the mythology not making sense, unless the characters on the show just aren’t compelling enough to keep you invested in them personally, so your mind starts wandering to what else is going on in the background. And that’s just about every character on this show, sadly. Eph is a whiny, annoying idiot, Nora is just as dumb and struggles a lot with simple line readings, and Zack...well, we covered him already. Pest control guy Fet (I finally started remembering these people’s names just in the latter half of the season) is pretty cool, but stuck in a horrible waste of time love triangle with British hacker girl Dutch and her suddenly re-appeared girlfriend Nicki- seriously, who thought that was a plot that deserved air time? The writing for these characters ranges from subpar to awful, with dialogue that actually had one cop state out loud that his officers were performing “decently well,” a phrase I had to rewind to make sure I’d heard right. Yeah, he said that.
Old Man Zatrakian’s ongoing battle with the Nazi Eichorst remains intriguing, were it not for the fact that these now seasoned vampire hunters can take out every vamp who comes at them except this dude, even when he’s by himself and outnumbered five to one. That’s a little bit contrived, and so was Zack’s dead mom Kelly continuing to track him down non-stop, except for the time when he was conveniently left alone in their hideout apartment for what must have been three days while the others were busy, and yes, Kelly knew exactly where he was but for some reason decided never to make a move. And did I mention how Eph managed to take the train down to Washington D.C. to try to sell his bio-weapon but still finds time to have a one-night stand while there (umm, wtf? Rethink your priorities dude), gets shot, and stumbles all the way back to New York on foot, a journey that while presumably bleeding out, seems to take only a few hours. I’m sorry but there’s TOO much stupidity and TOO many plotholes, contrivances and flat out dumb actions on this show to invest in what’s actually going on.
I forgot to mention my least favorite subplot of all this year- Eldrich Palmer’s affair with his secretary, a girl named Coco who’s about 50 years younger than him. BLECH. The less said about that the better, frankly. It’s not to say there weren’t some good moments scattered throughout- like Dutch’s Shining-esque adventures being trapped in Eichorst’s hotel dungeon nightmare for one episode. That was pretty scary. But these moments are few and far between, and there’s not enough good stuff in the interim to keep me interested. So, I’m out on this one guys. Hats off to those of you who want to stick with it, but The Strain has strained my last nerve.
Grade: D+
