Dr Goodweather, Nora, and Jim discover the disease is changing the host's body after dissecting Captain Redfern's body, Ansel is changing into a full-fledged vampire and doing some pretty horrific things, Emma attacks Goodweather and Nora, but they all get saved by Abraham, and Gus steals a car.
One of the things I've really enjoyed about this television series, and the comic, was that there's a lot of side-stories going on that all weave everything happening in the show together. There's some great moments here where we see Eldritch hiring a woman to essentially cripple the Internet and cell phone services to move forward with their plan. We get a book end with that as well as Eldritch tells a senator that this was all the military's fault to make the rumblings of a disease seem more like a conspiracy than anything else. The show does extremely well at building up the main story with these little pieces of the puzzle. Unfortunately, for those who have read the comic, it comes off as a tad slow.
If you're looking for something suspenseful that does horror pretty darn well, then this is a show for you. There's lots of smaller moments here that can give viewers quite the shock, like seeing Ansel run out at Anne-Marie for the first time, or seeing Emma trying to sting Goodweather and Nora (shown below). By the way, that scene is easily the best of the episode.
There's some weird problems with this episode in general. Lots of little things rubbed me the wrong way. First and foremost, Jim Kent (played by Sean Astin) is way too squeamish for someone who works at the CDC. As Dr Goodweather and Nora start to dissect Captain Redfern's body, Kent makes numerous comments about how he wants to get out of there and that it's too much for him. His wife has gone through numerous cancer treatments, so undoubtedly he's dealt with side-effects of chemo and he works with the CDC. This shouldn't be a shock to him.
A lot of time is spent with Gus and Felix and how they steal cars to make money. There's no real closure to any of this and it leaves us all wondering, "how does this tie into everything else?" Seeing Gus' homelife is a breath of fresh air, at the same time. It's nice set up to show the viewer that people from different incomes and different cultures deal with this vampire plague, when we actually get there.
Finally, there's a moment where Anne-Marie is out front of the shed, where Ansel has chained himself up so he wouldn't hurt people, and their neighbor comes over to complain about their dog. Now, this guy is a bit of a jerk, so what happens at the end of the scene is understandable. However, when Anne-Marie lets the neighbor into the shed, he takes his belt off... He's going to beat the dog with a belt. This scene would have worked so much better if he didn't do that. Don't establish the fact this guy beats animals. Make it ambiguous. Make Anne-Marie more of a grey character and not a animal vigilante. That moment is laughably over-the-top.
The Strain "It's Not For Everyone" is a bit of a let down compared to last week's episode, but overall, it's still an awesome series. There are some phenomenal moments here, but overall, the episode moved slow and there were quite a few silly things that stuck out like a sore thumb. The show does a great job at genre mixing, giving us a show about vampires not filled with love triangles mixed with Outbreak and one dash of a zombie flick. While this particular episode didn't wow me, the series, as a whole, has been. This is the vampire show ADULTS have been waiting for.
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