In The Strain recap, Eph looks to finish off Eldritch Palmer and Setrakian’s never ending quest to find the Occido Lumen finally bears fruit….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s a rather ominous warning when a cast member from a television show tells you in almost prophetic terms that nobody is safe and just because someone lives or dies in a book the series is based upon doesn’t mean it will translate to the screen.
Kevin Durand — who plays Vasiliy Fet on The Strain — said in an interview we released on Sunday that no one in the cast was ever comfortable based upon the books written by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan because changes would be made for the TV version of the story and that means any character could be killed off at any time.
It seems Durand was right on the money as Sunday night’s episode titled ‘The Assassin’ unfolded but it wasn’t his rebar wielding vampire killing character that got threatened, but instead his computer hacking cohort stuck between loving two people at once after she got caught up in Eph’s revenge fantasy against Eldritch Palmer.
Dutch isn’t dead but her capture and subsequent torture at the hands of Eichorst probably won’t end well and while the strigoi have been beaten back all season long, the undead army isn’t going down without a fight and there will be casualties.
Pretty blonde casualties it seems.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The Strain titled ‘The Assassin’:
Taking Aim
The episode this week kicks off with Eph and Dutch stationed in a building just across the street from the Stoneheart group where they are working with some high tech equipment to hopefully eaves drop on Eldritch Palmer to eventually plot an assassination to take out the vampire money man.
Dutch has borrowed some listening equipment that captures reverberations from the windows in Palmer’s office and then translates them back to voice. The sophisticated spy tool came thanks to some friends of Dutch who owed her a favor. Eph is quick to curiously ask what kind of friends she has, much less the favors she’s done for them.
While Eph stares blankly at Palmer’s empty office, Dutch waxes about her love life and how she’s desperately in love with two people and damning monogamy at the same time. How is it reasonable to only love one person at a time?
Eph’s only contribution to the conversation is to say that he never cheated on his wife with Nora until they were already separated. If there was a lie detector nearby, something tells me Eph’s pants would be engulfed in flames right now.
While Eph and Dutch are waiting for Palmer to arrive and show his hand, Setrakian gets Fet and Nora to help in his search for the Occido Lumen. When the cardinal who was brokering the deal to sell the book died thanks to Eichorst, Abraham found out that the man who had the mythical text was the same little boy he rescued from a convent in Austria decades ago.
Thanks to the phone book (those still exist?), Setrakian and the others begin searching for the four different Rudyard Fonescu’s living around New York. One of them has to be the person who is in possession of the Occido Lumen and thus holds the key to defeating the Master and the strigoi army.
The One Percent
On the east side of Manhattan, the mayor rolls out his long awaited plan to extinguish the vampire threat from the richest part of New York with Councilwoman Feraldo leading the charge with her strigoi stomping squad. Feraldo isn’t lost on the fact that this entire mission is being undertaken because the millionaires and billionaires living on the east side represent the best chance the mayor has to be re-elected or maybe even pushed towards governor one day.
So Feraldo makes her grand speech to the gathered crowd (inside a Nieman-Marcus store no less) and then reveals what she wants in exchange for saving the city — she requests every person living on the upper east side donate one-percent of their total fortune to help fund the campaign to eliminate the vampire threat. Of course the rich assholes are highly offended by this proposition because all those dollars will surely save them from a strigoi tentacle, right?
The mayor freaks out because he championed Feraldo as the savior of the city and so he needs help to put this monster he created back under his thumb.
Across town, Palmer is visiting a not so friendly looking neighborhood but his purpose there is clear after a knock on the door — he’s trying to lure Coco back into his web after she jumped ship following a trail of lies and secrets that kept her at arm’s length.
He finally convinces Coco to come back to work for him and he won’t ever lie to her again. She agrees and they head back to the penthouse at the Stoneheart building.
Once they are inside and the conversation begins to flow, Eph and Dutch take notice because their secret spying equipment is translating every single word.
In the middle of this talk, the mayor shows up unexpectedly and asks Eldritch to please go have a talk with Feraldo about her financial plan that’s currently pissing off his biggest donors. Palmer says its long overdue that he met the outspoken councilwoman and he agrees to act on the mayor’s behalf. He tells Coco to call the car and alert the press that he will arrive promptly at 3 o’clock.
That gives Eph and Dutch just enough time to set up a perfect shot to bring Eldritch Palmer down once and for all.
Hey Man, Nice Shot
The ongoing search for the Lumen finally brings Setrakian and the others to the third Rudyard Fonescu on the list and his place is packed to the brim with books, which immediately convinces the age old vampire hunter that he’s in the right place.
Over on the east side, Palmer finally arrives about 15 minutes late where he starts answering questions from the media about his impromptu meeting with Councilwoman Feraldo. As he’s talking, Eph is aiming up his sights and waiting for the exact moment to take his shot. Dutch finally urges him to shoot because there’s a brief window when Palmer isn’t surrounded by innocent bystanders.
Eph shoots, everybody drops and a splatter of blood is seen on the door behind them.
Eph and Dutch quickly run down the fire escape to jump on a motorcycle and make their getaway, but unfortunately the cops swoop in and capture them both before the can get very far. Back at the store, Palmer gets up off the ground without a hair mussed on his head, but Coco wasn’t nearly as lucky.
She’s been shot in the chest and bleeding out in a hurry.
No One Will Remember You
Palmer takes Coco to his penthouse because why the fuck not? He has better medical care there with doctors on standby apparently as they operate on his assistant/lover to safe Coco from dying. Eichorst shows up in the middle of this and almost taunts Palmer about his muse being shot. Palmer fires back that the Master needs to show up and bestow his gift of life to Coco or their deal is officially off.
Eichorst agrees to take this to the Master but how he responds is anybody’s guess.
Back at the jail, Eph and Dutch commiserate on a job they believe well done, even if it means they are about to get sent up on murder charges. The cops waste no time pulling Dutch out of her cell and dragging her to parts unknown while giving Eph a punch in the nose for his trouble.
The precinct empties out and like a shadow creeping across the room, Palmer appears — alive and well — much to Eph’s surprise.
Palmer explains how Eph failed again and the only person he hurt in all this was an innocent young woman. Palmer knows that if he died, the city would have celebrated his life whereas when Eph dies he will barely be remembered.
Back at Fonescu’s house, the search for the Occido Lumen is going nowhere, but things take a turn for the worse when the radio alerts them to an assassination attempt on Palmer’s life and two suspects — a man and a woman — were taken into custody. Fet knows it’s Eph and Dutch so he and Nora sprint to the nearest police station to check on them. They try to convince Setrakian that Eph and Dutch are more important than some book, but he disagrees and stays behind anyways.
At the police station following Palmer’s exit, a loud noise is heard outside and then gunshots. A moment later, strigoi flood the precinct as they attack the cops, killing or stinging all of them. One cop was smart enough to get locked inside a cell with Eph, but even he makes a mistake of stepping a little too close to the bars, and the strigoi get him too. Eph now stands alone in the middle of a cell with a dozen vampires all snapping away at him with their tentacles falling just a few inches short of infecting him.
At just the right moment, Fet and Nora arrive and eradicate the strigoi and free Eph from his cell. The detective who arrested him and gave Palmer entry to the precinct in the first place is stunned when he sees that all of his friends and fellow officers are dead. Fet isn’t worried about his shock as much as finding out where the cops took Dutch after she was pulled out of her cell.
The detective reveals that she was taken to the Mayfair Hotel….
Meanwhile, Setrakian’s search seems fruitless and just when he’s about to give up, he hears a hollow sound beneath his feet and a loose floorboard under a rug. When he lifts them up and searches around an open hole in the floor, Setrakian finds a book wrapped in cloth.
He unravels the book and it’s covered from front to back in silver. Setrakian unlatches the lock and when he opens it up, the words Occido Lumen greet him like a savior granting him eternal salvation. Setrakian thumbs through the pages with his eyes as wide as saucers, but his attention was so enthralled with the book that he didn’t notice the person entering the room behind him.
A thud rings out as Setrakian takes a hit to the back of the head and falls unconscious to the floor. A second later, a hand pulls the Lumen from his grasp.
Who stole the book is still unknown, but it wasn’t Palmer as he was back at his penthouse caring for Coco when a sudden breeze blew through his home. The Master arrives and grants Coco the same vampire saving juice that brought Palmer back from the brink of death. A second later the color returns to her eyes and Coco is alive and well, her wounds nothing more than superficial injuries.
Coco sees the Master for a moment before he jets away and Palmer greets her with a smile. He promised no more lies so Palmer tells Coco he has a lot of explaining to do.
And finally there’s Dutch — a collar around her neck attacked to a chain that’s pulling her closer and closer to something as she struggles to hold on. Finally as the room is revealed, we find Dutch inside Eichorst’s special torture chamber where he would routinely kidnap humans and keep them there for his own enjoyment until he drank them dry. It seems Dutch will be his latest treat and unless Fet and the others arrive in quick fashion, the vampire hunters will be less one in just a matter of minutes.
The Strain returns next Sunday night at 10pm ET on FX!
