"The Strain" Recap: "By Any Means"

Written by Scotty

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

It is hard to imagine being away from your family when the world starts to fall apart.  Not being able to know their whereabouts or situation would be the worst feeling anyone could ever have.  If you have the means to communicate with them and make sure that they are ok, it will make you feel better, but once that is cut off, you are left fearing the worst has happened to them.  Make a plan for when it all hits the fan, a location that you will be able to meet up at, or make a way that you can contact them just in case, because when it all comes down to it, you need your family to love and protect you during your final days.

Fet and Dutch are trolling the neighborhood, looking for any of vampire strongholds to take them out.  Entering the local pool/spa, the two find that in the depths of the building the undead are hiding during the lighted hours.  With a plan and some of Abraham’s silver bombs, the two are able to take out the menace with little effort and Fet is ready to continue his hunt.  Dutch is full of energy when the affair is over and tosses her cloths aside and takes a dip in the pool.  Fet is beside himself but joins the young beauty and gets a lesson of a lifetime…and learns to swim while doing so.

Eph and Nora have their test subjects in place and even though they have promised the couple they rescued from the storage facility that they could help, Eph comes clean and asks them to stay.  Needing to find a way to infect the infected, Eph and Nora run tests against the vampire blood to see if anything will latch on and kill off the virus, but none of their ideas are working as the blood is stronger than anything they have ever encountered.  When the husband patient sees his wife in pain, he begs Eph to end her days, but the former doctor is not going to let either of the couple die before he is able to run his experiments against them.  Tying the husband down against his will, Eph has made his decision and humanity has gone out the door to make sure what he needs to happen will do so.  As the two slowly start to transform, Nora is on the next shift and watches as the loving couple start to die together.  Without giving them a choice in the manner of their demise, Nora is having second thoughts about their methods and it is starting to tear her apart mentally.  But when she sees that Eph has given up on the trials, she finds something that they might have overlooked and with a successful test, the two might be able to fight the virus after all.

Eldritch Palmer is looking to stay on the city’s good side and with his new employee, there is no doubt he will stay in the city's good graces.  Asking his new assistant to write a speech for him for the opening of a new food bank to feed the survivors in the Big Apple, he finds that he has hired the right person.  Palmer lets out his emotions and tells his fellow survivors to not worry, they will prevail.  Requiring names, addresses and most importantly, blood types from his customers, Palmer is creating a list that will tell the vampires where to hunt and while he is kissing babies and shaking hands, a hand from the past touches him once again.  Abraham Setrakian has made an appearance at the food bank's launch and wants to find out some vital information that only Palmer has.  Using Fet’s explosive know how, Abraham has a means of escape with what he knows as Palmer is taken to safety away from the hazardous streets.

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Thomas Eichorst is ready for the Master’s plan to take effect and is looking for his own transformation as well.  Cleaning out the coffin and preparing it for the next body the Master deems worthy, Eichorst is telling the former rock star Bolivar everything.  Knowing that when the Master changes his body, his ruling power diminishes, he needs a leader to keep the vampires together and following the same tune as his power returns.  Since Kelly has been released from the Master’s grips, she has a band of ‘feelers’ that she needs to have complete control over and when choosing the only ones that will serve her without issue, she has returned home and found some of Zach’s old clothes and sent her little minions into the night to find her son.

More is reveled about Abraham Setrakian’s past in this episode.  As Professor Setrakian is teaching history in a university, he is approached by a wheel chaired man that is willing to pay for his research efforts in to finding and killing the vampire threat that has been flying under the radar for hundreds of years.  Giving the Professor a lead on Sardou’s cane, a young Eldritch Palmer is ambitious about finding the infected as well.  Abraham finds a cane in an old antique dealers shop and pulls another memory from his past of the man that runs it since he is an old Nazi doctor.  Chasing the man, Abraham his able to recover the great artifact, but he finds out that there is a greater treasure from Palmer, a book that can tell him how to defeat the vampires once and for all.  Coming back to present day, Abraham is feeling his age and knows that his mind is not what it used to be.  Blowing up at himself and making a mess of his books that the group risked much more than they bargained for to retrieve, he is able to make the discovery once again that there is one final solution against the vampires, but it is housed in the very book that he was not able to acquire so many years ago.

It was good to see one of the original New York vampires come back in this episode since Bolivar has been absent for a long while now.  With the fear that the new vampires will not respect the Master when he undergoes a body change, you never know if Bolivar may be a vital role in keeping the peace.  Fet and Dutch have bonded, in more than one way and will be joined at the hip after what happened between them, that is nice and all, but what happens when one of them falls…it will not be good.  Nora has fallen back into her old mind set and I do not like seeing characters that took a season to grow do this.  She is questioning everything she does and with her friend Eph making the hard decisions she is not ready to make, there will be another blow up between the two, and of course, Eph’s drinking is really starting to become a problem.  Although Zach is a major part of the story, I am getting upset with the character since he has been reverted back to a past character as well.  Seeing firsthand what these creatures can do, he does not want to see them killed…he wants to see them cured.  This is not one of the strongest episodes of the series by far, I have a problem with the book that Abraham tried to buy at auction coming back into play that the Ancients purchased a week ago and him not remembering this.  And the characters regression leaves a bad taste in my mouth, it took them so long to get to a place where they understand what needs to be done and then they don’t want to do it? Just not a good episode for a fan of the series, but I hope they make it back with the next episode.  Stay Scared.

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