The Strain - S1E6 - Occultation

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Previously on The Strain, ‘Runaways’

When the scene opens on a soundproof room, you know it’s a bad sign. Nothing good goes down in a soundproof room. Thomas has been holding on to some poor guy in his drawers. He’s chained at the neck and begs for Thomas to kill him. Thomas, not wearing his outside face, tells him that’s what he’s doing, but he needs him around for a few more years. Years? Did he say years? He drains the guy until he’s pale and passes out.

What I tell you?

Vasiliy

Vasiliy tries to educate two mouth breathers about the creatures in the sewers - he even has an illustration - but they’re busy being ignorant… and eating bacon. To be fair, bacon is delicious.

He heads into work and finds the offices empty and the phones ringing off the hook. In one room he finds his boss, completely infected. Vasiliy’s no dummy and immediately opens up the blinds letting in sunlight to charbroil his ass. The girl who was crushing on is infected too. She also gets the sunlight treatment.

Vasiliy goes to visit his estranged parents and finds only his dad is home. He tries to warn pops that shit’s jumping off and that maybe, just maybe, he and moms should get the hell up out of New York, but his dad just assumes that Vasiliy’s low-level job of killing vermin has made him crazy. Vasiliy knows a lost cause when he sees one and leaves.

Gus

Gus’ sparring is interrupted when one of Thomas’ henchmen tells him he’s being summoned. Gus agrees to go, but tells Felix they’re only going to put an end to this summoning shit once and for all. They’re led to the tunnels under The Stoneheart Group where Thomas greets Gus with, “Aw. You brought a friend.” He says this like when your friend shows up with a pizza. He wants Gus to help dispose of a refrigerated body (Redfern) in the basement of the hospital. Gus refuses and that’s when Thomas has decided he’s had enough of Gus’ shit. He bounces him off the tunnel walls and easily disarms Felix, who isn’t all that fast anyway. He tells Gus that he can be his salvation or his downfall, and that he pretty much needs to do what the fuck he’s told. Welp.

Gus, Felix, and Jim take Redfern’s body to the river and nosy-ass Felix decides to open the body bag and loses his entire shit when the stinger rolls out. Gus doesn’t want to ask any questions. They dump the body.

On their way home, Gus and Felix walk down an alleyway - as you do - and encounter the infected medical examiner (more on him in a bit). Gus takes him out, but not before Felix is infected by the worms. Of course the cops show up NOW to arrest the Latinos, but not when a crazy fat white man was running around sucking necks.

Nora

Jim calls Nora and gives her a heads up that shit has jumped off so she doesn’t answer the door when the feds come calling. She packs a suitcase for her and her mother. Later, Nora rips a page from the Yellow Pages (remember those?) and heads into the subway, presumably on her way to Abraham’s shop.

Abraham

Abraham shows up at this really nice house where they’d obviously had some kind of memorial service for someone on the plane. I’m beginning to wonder if any poor folks were on that flight. Anyway, he makes his way down to the basement where there are about four vamps feasting on a body. He chops off one head, but he’s no match for the rest when his heart starts acting up. He barely makes it upstairs before deciding to set the whole damn house on fire. I’m okay with this plan. He should have tossed a Molotov down there when he saw all the blood on the walls. There were no survivors down there, dude.

Abraham is riding in a cab, on his way back to Harlem. He wants to get indoors before the eclipse. When the cabby starts talking about how the whole town is going to shit, Abraham asks if he’d like to help clean up the city. Abraham is that desperate for help.

Eph 

The FBI are looking for Eph, so of course they try his his wife’s place first. Their visit is enough to worry her and when Eph does show up, stupid-ass Matt calls the FBI because he’s a bitch. After the feds cart Eph off, Matt and Kelly fight. She basically relegates him to side-piece status even though he’s been renovating her house and wearing his big boy clothes. She cuts the fight short because she has a job to go to, and he pretends that’s how he intended the conversation to end.

Eph is being questioned by the worst FBI agents on TV. I mean, really. WHY are they so adversarial? “Now I own you.” Really? They decide to leave Eph locked up for a few days before questioning him further.

Eph tries telling the truth, but they don’t want to hear it. He tells them they can go to one of the passengers houses if they don’t believe him. Finally, he says he knows where the bodies are and he’ll show them.

Meanwhile, Kelly is day drinking with Fran Drescher, who is giving her the WORST ADVICE EVER. Kelly basically admits that she’s using Matt and wonders if she SHOULD get the hell out of town like Eph said.

As the eclipse approaches, Kelly gets ready to view it with Zack. She tells him an eclipse is a bad omen because that’s totally okay to say to your son and not scary at all.

Remember the missing medical examiner last seen in the middle of a vampire circle jerk? Well, Eph spots him running down the street as he sits in the backseat of the feds’ car. He’s infected as fuck and trying to carjack people… or something. The feds intervene and are attacked. Eph tells one, “I warned you,” as he uses his keys to ditch the handcuffs. It wasn’t quite “I told you so,” but it will have to do.

Matt’s in the break room at work when one of his coworkers comes stumbling in with a neck wound. Matt tries to play hero and confront the two creepy figures at the end of the hall. Matt. You work at Sears. Settle the fuck down.

Matt is so dead, y’all.

Eph shows up at Abraham’s and is “ready to talk.” He’s happy to see Nora. Abraham informs them both that he has a new plan.

I hope his new plan is to set the entire fucking city on fire.