The Strain Recap ‘Quick and Painless’: Going Incognito

In The Strain recap, Eph takes a dangerous trip to Washington D.C. Nora befriends a powerful councilwoman and Setrakian gets one step closer to the Occido Lumen…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

No television show is perfect.

Even ‘The Sopranos’, which I would personally consider the best achievement in television of all time had a couple of questionable or possible ‘throw away’ episodes during its legendary run.

The latest episode of ‘The Strain’ certainly doesn’t qualify as a throw away by any means, but at the same time this week’s offering titled ‘Quick and Painless’ as well as last week didn’t seem to offer up much in terms of the continuation of the overall storyline as humanity battles against vampires for control of New York City.

The vampire agenda in large part has been forgotten. The Master was searching for a new body, but that hasn’t been mentioned in weeks. Eichorst has been completely absent outside of a few flashback scenes and even Eldritch Palmer is too busy wining and dining his assistant to worry too much that the police in the city are seemingly beginning to win the war between the living and the dead.

So it’s curious why midway through season 2 of ‘The Strain’ has the series decided to focus completely on a few minor stories while virtually abandoning the strigoi or even the Ancients who were hunting for The Master. It’s a small quibble because this week’s episode was still great, but it just didn’t offer up much in the way of new information other than Corey Stoll finally discarding his weave in favor of a much more recognizable bald head.

Maybe that was worth the price of admission alone actually.

With that, let’s recap ‘The Strain’ this week titled ‘Quick and Painless’:

A Capitol Idea

Eph procures new ID’s for himself, Nora and Zach so they can all travel to Washington D.C. together to present this new strigoi killing agent to their friends in the military, who can hopefully deploy the weapon and destroy the blood sucking dead things plaguing New York City currently.

As excited as he is to go on a family trip, Zach doesn’t want to go anywhere cause he’s a moody little bastard like always. If I hear the phrase ‘what about mom?’ one more time this season, I might feed him to the strigoi myself.

While far less whiny about it, Nora actually agrees with Zach and says that they shouldn’t travel to D.C. together because Eph already has one of the most famous faces on TV after his boss at the CDC turned him into a fugitive. Eph finally relents and agrees that the safest way for him to trek to D.C. is to go it alone, but he has to go in disguise.

So out come the scissors and the clippers and between that and about half a bottle of Scotch, Eph cuts off the locks and looks mysteriously like that guy from ‘House of Cards’.

Eph is able to weave his way through security using the CDC badge he made earlier in the day but once he gets on the train, he finds a much bigger problem awaiting him — namely his old boss Barnes from the CDC, who forced him to go on the run in the first place several weeks ago.

Eph tries to drink his way out of the problem because downing a few beers always helps, but despite his best efforts to avoid Barnes, they eventually come face to face. Barnes tries to reason with Eph, telling him he had no choice, but he forgets how well his old employee knows him. Eph calls his bluff and tries to run away, but with the option of either being trapped and arrested or chucking his old boss off the train while going 70 miles-per-hour, he chooses the latter.

Eph arrives safe and sound in Washington minus one dead boss and a mission to get to his friend in the government who can hopefully help disperse this new biological weapon in New York to wipe out he strigoi in one fell swoop.

The Harsh Reality

With Eph off in Washington, Nora teams up with Dutch to go get Fet out of jail after he was arrested by Councilwoman Feraldo’s police squad when he blew up the subway tunnel to stop more vampires from invading the city.

When they arrive, Nora and Dutch find dozens of people upset that their loved ones are being quarantined for two weeks under suspicion that they are infected. Nora finally approaches Feraldo and tells her that she will show them a much better, safer and faster way to test to see if someone is infected in exchange for Fet being released.

Feraldo agrees and Fet is given a get out of jail free card.

Meanwhile, Nora — who earlier said she’s being hunted as well for being a known associate of Eph’s — continues to stroll through a government police building while testing everybody inside with her UV light to see who might be infected. This method is much quicker and doesn’t require anyone developing a stinger to prove they are a vampire.

Unfortunately one of the people infected is Feraldo’s own nephew.

He was part of a police raid the night before to clean out an apartment building in Brooklyn before he got nicked during a gun fight. The battle ensued after the police found a strange group of ‘spider children’ that could move around the room at lightning fast speeds that saw them even avoid gunfire. The ‘spider children’ are of course Kelly’s creepy little band of bloodhounds out on the hunt to find Zach.

The reality of his infection hits close to home as Nora has to help Feraldo kill her own nephew after he was infected with the strigoi strain.

Meanwhile, with Fet free and the cops down a couple of men, they team up and engage that same building to try and rid it of the remaining strigoi and possibly find out what these ‘spider children’ are all about.

Where Did You Get Those Wonderful Toys

Fet and Dutch have to clue the cops in on some of the weapons that can hurt the vampires just as much as a bullet to the brain — UV lights, silver bladed weapons and even silver grenades — will help kill strigoi just as quickly and potently as any gun.

Once they get inside the building, the extermination begins but it takes Fet’s special brand of rodent hunting to track down one of the spider children hanging out in the wall.

He eventually coaxes it out before Dutch has to cut off its stinger and Fet stabs it in the head. They finally killed one of the spider children, which doesn’t please Kelly at all when she reconvenes with her creatures later that night and one is missing.

Mommy is pissed off now.

The Good Book

Setrakian spends this week’s episode in hunt of the Occido Lumen as he peruses any number of warehouses and shady enterprises trying to track it down. He encounters one group of ‘business people’ who have piles of old books and ancient artifacts to dig through, but unfortunately the Lumen isn’t among the possessions.

Setrakian offers up a couple rare antiquities he’s held onto for decades in exchange for the broker to find him the book he’s looking for. On his way out of the warehouse, Setrakian can’t help but feel a pair of eyes on him as he walks down a darkened street. When he finally pulls out his blade to confront the stalker, Setrakind sees Fitzwilliam as he agrees to join the battle against Palmer and the strigoi.

Setrakian just got some much needed help to find the Occido Lumen, but the problem is he’s not the only one looking for it.

That same night, Eldritch Palmer is in Manhattan on a dinner date with his assistant Coco Marchand.

Even with the vampire apocalypse going on around them, the super rich are still able to enjoy a ridiculously overpriced meal and it’s clear Palmer wants to impress this young woman. He also happens to run into a prominent cardinal from the Catholic church in New York and he might have information on a certain religious artifact that Palmer has been searching for quite some time. Palmer quickly brushes him off because his assistant/date doesn’t need to know about his more nefarious dealings.

Still it’s clear Palmer has the clergy looking for the Occido Lumen and now the race is on to see who finds it first.

When they make it back to his penthouse, Marchand is concerned when she notices a building burning just a few blocks away from the Stoneheart headquarters, but Palmer is more concerned with the bright light the fire provides them on this romantic evening. He starts to make his move on the girl who is probably 50 years younger than him, but instead of kissing, she offers him a dance.

While they are waltzing the night away, at an airport in New Jersey just a few miles away, Homeland Security are seizing a plane who landed on a runway without permission. With this new plague running rampant in New York, the airport has restricted any planes landing there to prevent more spread of the infection.

But once authorities arrive on the scene, the pilot and his co-pilot have some bad news — the person who hired them to fly the plane there in the first place has already left.

They give chase but it’s rather futile and a few moments later we catch a glimpse of a man carrying a bone on his back and a hood over a face that looks awfully familiar. It’s almost the same kind of face as those vampire-vampire hunters working for the Ancients to bring the Master down. With Vaun and his crew exterminated while trying to kidnap Palmer a few weeks back, maybe the Ancients have called for backup and he just arrived.

Tune into the next episode of ‘The Strain’ next Sunday night at 10pm ET on FX.