TV REVIEW: The Strain Season 1 Episode 3 “Gone Smooth”

By Clinton Bell

“Gone Smooth” is the most fun I’ve had with The Strain so far, largely because it gives the supporting cast room to shine. While Eph and his team remain laser-focused on getting to the bottom of the mystery, two of the infected slowly realize that something strange is happening to their bodies.

Gabriel Bolivar, the rock star that was previously quarantined, spends most of the episode inching towards the end of his transformation from human to vampire. Unlike hospitalized Captain Doyle, we see nearly every beat of Gabriel’s transformation, whose body is literally falling apart.

Another plane survivor, Ansel Barbour, is also morphing into a vampire, and can’t resist drinking the blood from a raw slab of steak, even as his wife watches him from the doorway. What’s interesting about Gabriel and Ansel’s transformations is that neither of them seem panicked. Ansel’s wife catches him drinking steak blood, and then he slips out of the room without a care. Gabriel’s penis falls off—yes, literally—and he is seemingly unfazed. For whatever reason, the transformation seems to not affect either of them on an emotional level. Perhaps they are embracing the transformation?

But it’s a different story for Doyle, who is quarantined in the hospital, and worried that he’s about to die. And, it turns out, he’s right. At the episode’s climax, Eph and the hospital staff realize that Doyle has disappeared. They find Doyle drinking blood in a dark, empty part of the hospital—now a full-fledged vampire. He attacks Jim and Nora, but Eph swoops in and bludgeons Doyle to death with a fire extinguisher.

It took three episodes, but Eph and the gang now know what they’re dealing with. As for us, we now have a better idea of the shape the series will take. I was surprised, and pleased, with the amount of humor in this episode. Rat exterminator professional Vasiliy Fet provides some laughs, while Gabriel’s dick dilemma reminds me of something out of Evil Dead. It’s humorous in a schlocky, B-movie sort of way.

Jim and Nora, two characters that haven’t gotten much attention thus far, come alive a bit more in “Gone Smooth.” We learned that Jim is assisting Thomas’ vampire group so that they’ll help his cancer-stricken wife, though it’s obvious Jim wants out of the arrangement. As for Nora, she tracks down Abraham, whom she suspects really does know what is going on. I was pleased that Nora actually got to step out of Eph’s shadow and take action on her own. Also, now that Eph and company know what the pathogen is capable of, I think they will now add Abraham to the team.

“Gone Smooth” wasn’t perfect. The scenes where Eph attempts to gain joint-custody of his son fell flat. Eph, ultimately, does not get joint-custody, but the scene, sadly, didn’t have enough weight to it. This is largely due to the fact that the show hasn’t spent a heck of a lot of time showing us Eph with his family, and thus, it isn’t very involving. And that also happens to be why Eph’s son thinks his dad should only visit on the weekends: because he’s too busy to have joint-custody.

But “Gone Smooth” was a fun episode, and one that has me feeling a little bit more optimistic than I was last week.

Additional notes:

– If WikiPedia is to be believed, then it looks like Peter Weller (yes, RoboCop) will be directing two upcoming episodes. Hmmm. [Ed: Yes, the rumours are true. Weller directed both “Runaways” and “Occulation”]

– The cold open, with Thomas putting on his human makeup, was pretty cool, especially since I had no idea who I was looking at until the very end of the scene.

– The makeup/practical effects on this show are fantastic, as evidenced in the climax in the hospital. And the, um, worm-sucker thing that comes out of the vampires’ mouths are cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before in other vampire movies/shows.