Warning: Spoilers ahead for the whole dang episode!

Vasiliy, Ephraim, and Abraham develop some new weapons as they hunt down The Master. Nora's mother may be a bit of a hindrance. Nora chooses to leave her mother behind while they go out hunting for the Master. Eph leaves Zack at Abraham's at puts him in charge. Zack finds that watching Nora's mother may be a bit of a task since she doesn't understand what's going on. The outside world delves into chaos and people begin looting and rioting. Nora's mother is getting worse and she goes out to the gate, in front of the shop, begging people to help her. Zack says he'll get her cigarettes if she goes back inside. Zach finds a shop to grab cigarettes and as he's there, a couple of looters come in. Zack runs to the basement to hide but there's a vamp down there, so sack crawls his way back up and bumps into the looters. The vamp kills them, then Gus walks in and tell Zack to get out of there. Zack gets home and gives Nora's mom her smokes.

Meanwhile, Vasiliy, Nora, Eph, and Abraham head into the subway tunnels. Vasiliy warns them to stay to the right so they don't touch the third rail, which will electrocute them. They continue through the tunnels and find signs of Strigoi everywhere. They find a room full of sleeping vamps, and must sneak through them because if they wake, they will alert the Master. Eph thinks he sees Kelly. It's not her. As they walk, Eph thinks there's a train coming but Vasiliy says that's not possible. Then, a train flies by them. They keep walking and see a vamp walking next to the rails. It touches the third rail and dies... Again. They discover tunnels, within the tunnels, where the Strigoi may be crawling around. Eph starts hearing Kelly's voice and Abraham tells him to ignore it. Nora heads down the tunnel while Vasiliy holds off the Strigoi. Vasiliy crawls through the tunnel and gets stuck. A Strigoi starts crawling towards him and Nora gets him out, then places a UV lamp in the tunnel to stop them from coming through. Eph keeps hearing Kelly's voice and it leads him to the Master's coffin. The Strigoi surround Eph and the Master makes an appearance. The Master grabs Eph by the throat and says a bunch of random stuff to him. Vasiliy and Nora come to the rescue and throw a uv bomb. Abraham is mad that they wasted the uv bomb and takes all his aggression out on the coffin that he once carved. Abraham wants to follow. He finds the trail but all they find is a room full of thousands of vamps.

Gus heads home, after escaping the transport van to Crispin has turned. Gus has to take him down. Gus tries to get a hold of his mother but finds she has not made it to work yet. She is gone. Gus hears a scratching and rustling inside a closet and he seems to fear the worse. It's his mother, who is obvious infected but not conscious. Gus gets changed and his mother wakes up from her slumber. He does not kill her. He just leaves. He grabs a fire axe and sees his landlord has turned. He decapitates him with ease.

The overall episode was a ton of fun and incredibly suspenseful. There was nothing in the episode that kept me more on the edge of my seat than when Vasiliy was stuck in the tunnel and a Strigoi was coming after him. Yeah, I was pretty dang sure he was going to make it out, but the chase, along with the cramped and tight conditions of the tunnel, really had me freaked out, especially with the look on the vamp's face. This episode played really well with the elements of horror, which felt a bit lacking in the past few episodes.

I have one question. How did the UV bomb get there? Towards the end of the episode, the UV bomb destroys a bunch of vamps, and it's a pretty large piece of equipment. Sure, they could have carried it around no problem, and maybe I missed that but how did they get it through the tunnel? That tunnel was tight and the bomb was easily bigger than that. Riddle me that, The Strain!

The Master still looks stupid. But moreso than that, it is impossible to understand what in the heck he is saying. His voice is very whispery and it gets drown out by any other audio. I had to rewind the scene a few times to hear what he was saying and I still don't understand half of his conversation.

The Strain continues to be a thrilling mixture of suspense and horror. "The Third Rail" moves the story along nicely and raises the stakes by showing everyone that there's a lot more vampires than we knew of and maybe this war is already lost. The Strain just continues to be a solid show and it has me completely roped in.

FX is totally on a hot streak the past few years. The Strain, The Americans, Sons of Anarchy (last season), Jusitifed...

And even though I don't watch most of them, their comedy stuff is pretty awesome too (so I hear)

Totally underrated network imo.

I thought the master looked cool. Hoping something happens to noras mother, beside vampification, because she is a seriously super weak link in the chain.sub titles help with the soft voice of the master.

This episode was awesome

This show is hit or miss for me. I'm still watching it but it's very inconsistent week to week. I couldn't understand a word the master said either, except at one point mentioning Eph's son (I think so anyways). The tunnel scene was great, but I thought it was outrageous when Abraham flipped on the group for using the UV bomb. They saved his & Eph's lives, and yeah I understand he was frustrated because the Master escaped but if weren't for the UV bomb both he & Eph would have died. Eph's son quest for cigarettes was the weakest part of the episode, however it was nice when Gus showed up (he seems to have adjusted to the world pretty quickly). I thought the final scene was creepy, but it ended so abruptly. This was a solid episode for me but the show still struggles a lot. Only 2 more episodes to go

I know it was kind of the point, but the old lady was driving me nuts.

The stuff with Nora's mom and Eph's son was the only aspect of the episode I really didn't enjoy. I've said it elsewhere but I'll say it again. I kind of expected more out of this show. It started out great for me with the first episode. Since then no episode has been better than 4 stars and a majority would be 3 stars for me. As a massive fan of Del Toro, I was expecting a bit more, even with his direct involvement not being very high. Back to this episode specifically, I agree with the review. I loved the scenes of them crawling through the tight tunnel. Seeing the vamp slither through it was actually quite creepy. Totally agree on The Master looking stupid. I almost expected him to just be a massive worm face with limbs and such. What we got instead is a letdown.

Can't wait for next weeks episode with The Born!

Seriously.

I love the show and just finished reading all the books, I hope the show does well because the third book was intense and I hope to see that make it to TV

do they upload the episodes online? ever since i moved to college i haven't been able to watch.

Best moments in the episode were Gus meeting Zach in the store and the pipe crawl, the organic aesthetic of it was one of the most Del Toro things we've seen on the show, despite not being overt.

Nora's mother needs to die, leaving Zach with her was just stupid.

I thought The Master was really creepy. The eyes do it for me.