I thought about that too. How often does master dog-face need to eat? And did he need to eat an entire plane? It’s presumably an eight-hour flight or so. Does he need to eat dozens of people each day?
Anyone read the books? Is the show close to the books?
Looking forward to the next installment anyway!
I think mom is going to kill the leader, she is going to have a flashback and recall her son, and set it off!
I wonder if the “ate the entire plane” thing, while stupid, is an intentional parallel with Dracula, where he arrives on a ship that’s empty since he ate the entire crew.
I love how QT3 pick apart TV shows. I am as guilty as the next guy. It is really part of the charm of the forum… But But But.
It is a show about Nazi Vampires, and the chef vampire slayers is going on 90 year old Holocaust survivor, so a few plot holes are kinda of expected.
I’d also point out that Walter White stop being likeable about season 2… (Eph is no Walter White for sure.)
…or rather, Corey Stoll is no Bryan Cranston (and probably never will be).
I hate the “it’s fantasy, it doesn’t need to be internally consistent” argument with the heat of 10,000 suns.
He may have become corrupt and nefarious, but he was never boring and annoying. The same can’t be said of Eph.
I’m watching the show and enjoying it, but it does make me long for a horror show as carefully crafted and thought provoking as a Breaking Bad or The Wire.
Once you accept the premise that for instance hacker girl is both cocky enough to think she and her mysterious team can bring down the internet and they actually mostly succeed, that establish her as character with a great deal of swagger. So it’s not crazy that her character would do something foolish like confront the rich old guy at his building. Likewise I don’t think it is at all implausible that the turning into vampire takes different times for different people. Ebola “only” kills 60% of the people and the time people are sick varies greatly. Maybe some of the folks are immune to the Strain, like old vampire hunter.
I am not saying there haven’t been plenty of eye rolling moments, I am just saying that I’m willing to give the writers a bit more slack the more outlandish the premise. The un-Navy like behavior of the ship officers in the Last Ship made me almost give up watching. If they had done stuff like that I NCIS I would have stopped watching. I am enjoying Strain despite the plots holes.
Good point. Although I also have to wonder if he needed to take a larger vessel in order to carry the half million hoodies he needed for his converts.
On the plus side (and I can’t believe I didn’t mention this when I brought it up before) that scene was actually filmed in my Best Man’s basement (as was the previous basement scene, I think, just gussied up. Not sure that someone thinking your house would be an ideal vampire den is a positive though.
I don’t believe she went there to confront the old rich guy. She was hoping to sneak in and get access to something, though what she wanted to get was never revealed – lazy writing again. Well, she wanted internet access but it was never explained why she had to be there to do it. She and ratman got nabbed, though, and were brought up to talk to old rich guy.
Pretty cool about your Best Man’s basement used for the filming, Desslock.
Yeah, they just drove through the area and knocked on his door - he had nothing to do with the show and didn’t apply, or anything. They first asked if they could check out the basement first - they did not identify the show, initially, not that the name would have meant much at the time. Coincidentally, his wife works at WHO in a CDC-type job.
Minor (maybe?) spoilers regarding the book. Nothing earth-shattering.
I read the books and have been re-reading them recently so they’re pretty fresh in my mind.
For the most part the tv series has been keeping in synch with the books. The entire airplane entry story was pretty much straight from the books. The only part they left out is that they went back onto the plane and found out where the Master was hiding (there was some sort of upper level/crew sleeping quarters they went into and determined that’s where he was). To my recollection, they didn’t explain in the books why he took a commercial flight over, why he infected everyone or why those 4 people were special (well… there’s still a bit of storyline left with regard to the 4 ‘survivors’ still). In the books Jim Kent got sick earlier and died in a hospital (or maybe he died and his body was stolen, it’s a big foggy).
The books don’t have a hacker chick. That’s the one big area where the TV show deviates from the books. They didn’t have any big standoff at a convenience store either. There are similar types of scenes though, so I excuse that (plus, that scene allowed Sektarian to relate how the Master can extert some control over the hordes instead of the book narrating that fact).
One other difference I noticed was that in the description of the Master (and of all the vamps/zombies) is that their hands transform - the middle finger grows longer and talon-like, with a big fingernail. The rest of the fingers lose their nails. Not a big deal but that explains (to a degree) what they did to the Master’s hands when they were showing him in close up (they didn’t go far enough, though).
Aside from the hacker chick, the TV show has been pretty faithful to the books.
On the commercial flight, the idea seems to have been a good way to get the infection going. The Master wanted/needed 200+ vampires ready to go when they hit NY. Admittedly, you’d think he’d be able to do that once on the ground, too, by chomping on a church BBQ or something. Still, it’s not a terrible premise (diverse set of people that will spread out, long-ish period of uninterrupted turning, etc.); though it does seem like a bit more publicity than would have been good for the plan.
If anything, the Strain’s form of vampirism seems too effective-- too easy to turn people, too hard to take out, too hard to reverse. It seems to be a too effective parasite/virus and should have wiped out its host species and itself a long time ago.
Too bad she’s like the addition of Jar Jar Binks.
…though much less racist and much better looking, one must admit.
Honestly, she doesn’t seem much worse than most of the other characters.
She was obviously added to be a Hot Chick™ love interest for Mr. RatCatcher, and the writers spent not one iota of brain power coming up with a decent reason for her to exist in the story apart from that. The actress is doing he best she can with a really crappy role.
Tonight’s episode was an improvement, though Eph continued to be annoying for a bit. We also saw just how much kids value their iPhones. The latino guy was nice to see again.
So how many more episodes are there?
Tonight’s episode was tense as hell. Again, seeing the Master directly is less impressive than having his horrific appearance implied, as was the case when Old Sick Rich Dude met him, or when young Setrakian gets his hands crushed by him in the concentration camp.
And Mark, next week is going to be the season finale.