TV REVIEW: The Strain “Creatures of the Night”

By Clinton Bell

“Creatures of the Night” is my favorite episode of The Strain so far. I am an absolute sucker for bottle-type episodes—episodes restrained to a few characters in a single location—and “Creatures” works extremely well as a focused, contained hour with high stakes.

This week, there’s no sign of Nora’s mom, no mention of Eph’s custody battle, and no Stoneheart group—just a lot of time spent with the characters that matter the most. It starts off like a normal episode of The Strain, with Eph and crew scrambling to figure out what to do next. They bump into Vasiliy, for the first time ever, when going to retrieve some UV lamps to fend off the vampires and survive the night.

Things get wild when the group is overwhelmed by a horde of vampires, and must retreat into a gas station. With cell phone networks down, there’s no way to summon for help, and they must fend for themselves. It gets progressively more nightmarish as the night progresses. The vampires take out the power and begin to use tools to break into the gas station.

Jim gets bitten by a vampire, and Eph must cut the worm out of Jim’s face before it reproduces. The procedure appears to go smoothly, but they later discover that they weren’t fast enough, and that Jim’s body is infested with worms. The group must make a tough choice: kill Jim or take him to a hospital when they can. Jim worries that he’ll be a threat to the people he loves if he turns, and asks to be killed. Eph and Nora, however, think that’s a terrible idea and want to attempt to cure Jim, even though they were unsuccessful in their attempt to cure Captain Doyle. While Eph, Abraham and the others argue over what to do, Vasiliy takes matters into his own hands and shoots Jim in the head. After Jim dies, the group makes a run for the van parked outside, and barely get away in time.

While I was surprised by Jim’s death, I didn’t feel it as much as the show probably would’ve liked. But the show deserves credit for putting its characters in a difficult situation. I don’t know if the series will benefit from Jim’s departure, but “Creatures” did benefit from the drama.

In the early portions of the episode, I was concerned that it was just going to turn into an episode of The Walking Dead, only with vampires as opposed to zombies. But we then learn, over the course of the episode, that there are some pretty major differences between the two. The vampires of The Strain “see through the eyes of The Master,” as Abraham puts it, and the “chosen ones”—Eichhorst for example—retain parts of their past selves, and are able to speak and have personalities. Unlike zombies, these vampires think, but all of them share one mind—that’s why they’re so threatening.

My biggest issue with the episode is more like a nit pick. The female hacker hired by the Stonegroup, Dutch Velders, just so happens to be at the gas station at the same time as Eph and the gang. While it isn’t impossible for them to cross paths, it is pretty unlikely that Dutch would be there at the same time as the others. Obviously the writers want to add Dutch to the group, and this is the way they decided to do it. Not a big problem, but it is a bit of a lazy cheat by the writers.

Hopefully the quality of “Creatures” indicates that the show is improving. It is a lean, focused, and tense episode, and proof that the show is capable of putting together an episode devoid of the messiness that marred the first half of the season.

Additional notes:

– The commercial break right after Vasiliy shoots Jim really disrupted the tension. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why it was hard to feel sad for Jim.

– This is the first episode that gives us a good idea of how threatening the vampires can be in large groups. New York is screwed.

– We’ve met Dutch before, but still don’t know much about her. She doesn’t make much of a lasting impression here, yet I assume the show is planning on doing a lot with her. She’ll take Jim’s place in the group.