I think it’s
safe to safe that in the first four episodes of The Strain, we got a small variety of different types of episodes -
buildup, payoff, buildup and payoff, action-packed, more slow, etc. I always
think it’s good to not have a monotonous repetition of pacing in every single
episode. That eventually makes the show boring. But for an episode to be all
over different genres, that can be bad and unevenly paced. However, it’s pulled
off smartly here.
In this
episode of The Strain, Efraim
Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley) continue to go
find other passengers and kill them. Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro) goes off to
personal matters. Vaslily Fet (Kevin Durand) further investigates what’s going
on with all of the rats. We also some of the other “survivors” from the plane
continue to change. And we do see some of Abraham’s past.
This episode
is several different things. It’s an action/thriller with Efriam and Abraham.
It’s character development on Abraham and Nora. It’s a bit of a mystery with
Vaslily. It has horror elements with the small storylines of the survivors from
the plane. However, they are mixed very well. The script is able to combine
them well, and the director and editor are able to make them flow well
together.
Although I didn’t
find anything truly special about every line of dialogue, this episode is very
well written. While the dialogue isn’t excellent, it’s still good dialogue that
serves its purpose. What’s great about the script is the direction it takes the
story in and the way it does that. The order of which is places all of the
scenes really makes the story flow well, and it’s paced so that we won’t have
too much character development or too much action at one time. The script also
does a good job with the character development. It makes us really feel for and
relate with the characters more. And some of the dialogue did feel well
written.
I find it
funny how Peter Weller, the lead actor in Robocop,
directed this episode. Recently Weller has been directing some television, and I
have to say that he does a great job here. The start off, this episode looks
terrific. The color scheme is really vibrant. But the episode just looks great
overall. The cinematographer did a great job here as well. Weller also framed
the shots very well. There is a fair amount of close-ups, but many wide shots
are present as well. Not a single shot seemed miss-framed. The directing style
in this episode was also very different… but very functional and somewhat
inventive. The horror scenes were also very well directed and some actually got
to be slightly disturbing to me.
Like the
direction, the editing for this episode is slightly unconventional and very
good. The assemblage of shots made the episode very enthralling; and the
choices the editor made of when to cut very definitely good choices. The
episode just feels very well made
from beginning to end, and part of that is because of the post-production. The
editing job on this episode seemed to make it better and really show some of
the director’s skills as well.
This episode
of The Strain had very good character
development on top of very thrilling action and slightly disturbing horror
sequences. It was very well written, greatly directed, fantastically shot, and
very well edited. I think it’s the best episode since the first. It delivered
in every way.
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