With some
series, there will be many episodes of buildup in plot and then one in payoff
for all of the buildup. For one example, many people, including me, will say that
about The Walking Dead. Sometimes in
that series, I do feel that the payoff was worth the buildup. However,
sometimes I can’t say I feel it does. I won’t quite say that the past episodes
in this season are buildup, and this one way payoff, but it almost felt like
it.
In this episode
of The Strain, Agaustin Elizalde
(Miguel Gomez) and his friend, Felix (Pedro Miguel Arce) go about some of their
business on the street as Efraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and Nora Martinez
(Mia Maestro) see to what the captain has become and what this virus really is.
Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde) does some of his business in his building,
which doesn’t seem very fleshed out so far.
Eldritch’s
storyline felt a bit slow, but interesting. Agaustin and Felix’s storyline didn’t
seem to match the primary story, but I enjoyed watching it. What happened with
them seemed like character development. Nora and Efraim’s storyline in this
episode is full of intensity, intrigue, and thrills. Despite me saying that 2/3
of the storylines were not action-packed, this episode was very fast-paced and
never dull. I really enjoyed the entire episode.
The thrills
and scares are done well Keith Gordon. Like David Semel’s, his direction did
not compete with Guillermo del Toro’s very well, but it’s good nonetheless.
This is a very well-made episode. The color scheme is very good, as well as the
cinematography. Everything is bright enough to look good and seem real. The
colors might not have been as vibrant as they were in proceeding episodes, but they
are still good here. The shots are also all very well framed and I found that
the type of shots used was chosen very well. Gordon’s direction is good in that
the episode did feel well-made, and
the camerawork was handled well. There were some parts of tension building up
in this episode, and there definitely were thrills.
The script
for this episode is not fantastic, however. Not that I’m saying that as a flaw,
I just didn’t feel like the dialogue was great. It was definitely not bad and
it was functional for the episode. I want to say that the episode was smartly written,
but there’s really nothing special about the script of this episode that I found.
I guess that the plot of the episode was handled well. I guess that the narrative was focused. The script was fine, but I didn’t
stick out to me as great.
I do have
one flaw with the episode. It’s very small, though. During one of the scares,
there’s a reveal of the “monster”, and it comes off cheesy. As soon as the
monster talked, I instantly thought “That actor’s wearing makeup and that line
is dubbed.” It came off scary and not cheesy. But since this episode didn’t
have a $100 million budget, I don’t count it as a huge flaw to the episode. It’s
only in one scene, and very minor. The makeup work in the other scenes was
actually very good.
This episode
of The Strain has character development
with some characters and action with others. It serves its purpose well and
made me interested. I was invested in what was going on and never felt that
there was a dull moment.
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