The Strain Season 3 Episode 7
The last few episodes of The Strain have gone pretty big. We’ve had the attack on Central Park that saw the deaths of thousands of strigoi while thousands more poured out from beneath New York and took the city by force. We’ve had the confrontation between Quinlan and the Master that led to the Master losing his body. We’ve had a flashback on Setrakian’s ultimate revenge against a former Nazi doctor. All these moments were sweeping and huge, but this week, The Strain goes small and in doing so, presents the best damn episode of the season. If you’ll remember, in the first season of The Strain, we met Fet’s father. A stern and loveless man who rejects his brave son because Vasiliy chose a life as an exterminator. This paternal rejection explains why Fet has embraced Setrakian so much. The old vampire hunter has become like the father Fet never had. We haven’t seen Papa Fet since that moment, and in truth, this episode would have been even more effective if the elder Fet was mentioned at least now and again. We haven’t seen curmudgeonly hide nor curmudgeonly hair of Vasiliy’s dad in a few years. This absence did lessen the impact of this week’s shocking episode, but only by a smidge. Last week, Fet and Quinlan realized the only way to defeat the Master is to build a silver and lead coffin. This week, that construction begins. While on their way to a rival pawnbroker’s business, Fet decides to top and check in on his parents. There, he finds his parents dead. The two were infected by a strigoi and took their own lives. Fet feels his father is a coward but Setrakian isn’t so sure. This revelation also serves to make Eichhorst that much more revolting, as if that was possible. I’m so glad Dutch cut your hand off last week, you murderous Nazi sunnovabitch. Ahem, anyway, Fet’s family horrors brings Setrakian and Fet closer together than ever before as the two hunt for a way to contain the Master. This episode is a stark reminder that evil takes many forms, but so does the will to survive. Sometimes, the two even merge to become interchangeable. Powerful, powerful stuff with themes and character work that you usually don’t see much in the survival horror genre. There is more action to be had elsewhere as Eph, Dutch, and Quinlan continue the search for the secret of strigoi communication. Not much moves forward with this storyline this week except for Quinlan getting to use his bone sword and Uzis on human and strigoi alike. That’s always fun. With Quinlan serving as a body guard, Eph and Dutch seek out the black box of the fateful flight that brought the Master to NYC in the first season. It’s really cool that story elements from the first season are beginning to come back into play. It’s been so long since the series begin, so long since the main players of the series were Eph, Nora, and Jim, that it’s very welcome to return to the beginning of the series and the Master’s arrival. Dutch secures the black box so now our hero’s possess a copy of the Master’s voice. But all of this is secondary to the tale of Fet’s family’s darkness. A tale of generations of suffering due to an act of survival, and ultimately a tale of forgiveness as Vasiliy, due to the promptings of Setrakian, finds forgiveness in his heart for the generations of his family that had to live through and pass on so much pain. Perhaps that forgiveness will give Fet the strength he needs to be the front line soldier humanity needs against the strigoi.
