Finally Finished Watching FX's The Strain this Weekend and...

The Strain first aired on FX back in 2014, and I started watching it but I never got pasted the first season because I had other things going on; mainly life, but I decided over the last few weeks I would finish it because it was an interesting show and I thought it was a different take on "vampires" that was a nice change of pace from the traditional bloodsuckers we all know and love to watch. 

For anyone not aware of the show, this is the part where I tell you about the show and if you don't like spoilers, you should probably stop reading right now because I will disclose some things that could potentially ruin the show for those who don't appreciate spoilers as much as I do. I know it's weird, but I have to know. 

Anyway, The Strain follows the life of Ephrem Goodweather, a doctor with the CDC. The show picks up as an international flight lands in New York and all the passengers are seemingly dead. Ephrem and his team are called into investigate the situation. They board the plane, search for clues, and find that 4 people survived the "accident" but no one can explain what happened to the rest of the passengers. 

Ephrem decides to quarantine the remaining survivors which turns into a media circus. While all this is going on, a man by the name of Thomas Eichhorse is moving in the shadows working against the CDC to remove cargo from the plane and take it across the river. At the time, the CDC team thinks the unlisted cargo is just dirt in a box, but when a mysterious old man comes to the airport to warn the CDC of the danger that is looming, Ephrem starts to question what is actually going on. 

The old man who warned Ephrem is named Abraham Setrakian, and he's been hunting Thomas Eichorse since he encountered him and the mysterious disease back in WWII. Setrakian is taken to jail, and Eichorse sends someone to take the cargo across the river. Once the cargo crossed the river, the people on the plane who were supposed to be dead suddenly came back to life. 

Over the next few weeks, Thomas Eichorse, and the one he calls the Master, embark on a plan to take over the city with the help of a rich man named Eldritch Palmer. Palmer is a sickly man and has been his entire life. Barely clinging to life, he made a deal with Eichorse and the Master to gain eternal life. The four survivors from the plane start turning, and when the outbreak starts to hit the streets, Palmer works with his contacts and a hacker to keep everyone confused. They break the internet and spread misinformation regarding what is actually happening. 

Once Ephrem starts to catch on to what's actually happening, he starts working with Setrakian to fight back against the Master. Along their journey they meet Vasiliy Fet, a city exterminator who on his own, came across the creatures and decided to fight back. Together the group formulates a plan using UV lights to fight off the monsters. They get stuck in a gas station with the hacker who broke the internet named Dutch. 

While this is happening, Goodweather's wife gets turned by the Master and becomes a pawn to help lure out the doctor and his friends, but Ephrem's son Zack, doesn't know and believes his mother is out there looking for them. This leads to problems later in the show, but I'll get to that shortly. 

At the end of the first season, Zack season his mom is still alive and it causes tension between Zack and his father because Zack wants his father to save her instead of killing her. Zack begins to grow distant in the second season and eventually the Master ends up using Zack's love for his mother to steal him away. Ephrem and his team have come face to face with the Master at this point and they've even managed to hurt him and force him to take a new host. 

At the end of the second season we get introduced to a half human, half vampire warrior who wants nothing more than to see the Master slain as well. He eventually teams up with Goodweather and Setrakian to stop the Master. Palmer, the sickly man enleague with the Master, got tired of being treated like a hump, and decides to make the Master respect him which doesn't go well. The Master ends up killing Palmer's new found love, thus turning Palmer into a secret enemy. 

As Palmer's health starts to decline he meets with Setrakian to strike a deal to help take down the Master. Palmer starts getting information on the Master and even ambushes Eichorse. This action leads to the Master being fed up with Palmer. He eventually take possession of Palmer to find the location of a nuke the doctor and Setrakian stole and hid. 

When the team meets with Palmer for the final plan to take out the Master, they realize during the exchange that it isn't Palmer they are talking to and a fight ensues. They trap the Master in a lead and silver box to drop him to the bottom of the ocean. Goodweather, injured during the fight is patching himself up when Zack and his turned mother enter the office. Zack's mother attacks Goodweather and he kills her in front of Zack. 

Seeing this Zack tells his father he hates him and pushes the button for the nuke. The blast stops the group taking the Master to the ocean in their tracks and the Master gets away. Eichorse finds Zack and takes him to search for the Master. This ended the 3rd season,

The fourth season picks up after the blast and the vampires have taken over the city. The blast blocked out the UV rays from the sun thus allowing the vampires to freely roam the street. With their human collaborators, the vampires have come up with a "partnership" with humans to live in harmony but it's really just a plan to turn the human population into cattle for the vampires. 

Ephrem and the team are separated. Eph is in Philly; Fet is in the wilderness looking for a nuke with Quinlan, and Dutch is captured and taken to a facility for women with B+ blood type to produce babies. Setrakian was also caught and taken to a facility where he is being experimented on. 

Ephrem meets up with a resistance group in Philly when they blow up a bus he was on being transported by the vampires. He helps one of them because they suffered an injury during the explosion. While staying with the Ephrem finds the will to fight again and comes up with a plan to mass poison the vampires blood supply. 

After they poison the blood supply, Eph finds information about a facility that the vampires are shipping large amounts to something to certain places. His journey leads him to what look like work camps. He then resolves to return to New York to fight the Master and save his son. Meanwhile, Dutch is cooking up a plan to escape and Fet and Quinlan find the nuke they are looking for. 

The team reunites in New York to make one final play against the Master. Knowing that the team is on the hunt for him, the Master sends Zack to the team to sabotage their plans but the group is suspicious of Zack because he's been with the Master for so long, and willingly at that. They decide to lock him away until they know they can trust him. The group questions Zack, after which, Goodweather decides to take his son outside to the roof and talk to him. He gives Zack a soda on which he cuts his finger opening. Goodweather takes Zack back inside and asks him why he cut his thumb on the soda. Zack lies, and tries to cover his real intentions, but Goodweather isn't buying it. 

Zack finally admits that he's there to stop them from killing the Master and that if he gives up Zack will tell the Master to let him live, but Goodweather turns and leaves Zack in the room telling him that he made his choice and now he has to live with it. 

The team flees the hideout, and when the Master gets their he takes Zack with him to lay another trap for the team. Quinlan decides it's best to spring the trap, but when he arrives there he finds that the Master is no where to be found. In a last ditch effort to stop the Master, the team takes the nuke underground with a plan to lure the Master below ground and set off the nuke. Fet volunteers to stay behind with Quinlan to see the plan through, but as the fight carries on, Goodweather takes the elevator down leaving Fet on the upper level. 

Quinlan and the Master fight while Goodweather is unconscious in the elevator. The Master gets the upper hand on Quinlan, but not before Quinlan inflicts a lethal blow on the Master. With Zach and Goodweather being the only ones for the Master to take, he approaches Zack to try to take possession of him but Goodweather interferes. The Master then possesses Goodweather. When Goodweather wakes he only has a moment to prep the bomb, but before he can do it, he turns. Zack embraces his father, and while doing so he is able to reach and set off the nuke killing himself and the Master. 

Alright now that we've made it through the condensed recap, I guess it's time to get into the stuff I liked and didn't like. I'll start with the stuff I liked. 

I really did like the story because I thought it was something different and unique, but it wasn't overly cheesy. What I mean is that it didn't use any clichés that didn't make sense and the way the Master tried to take over the city was very practical and methodical. Hiring a hacker to break the internet to prevent the spread of information over the internet was a nice touch.

I also really enjoyed the characters and their backstories. They were all different people from vastly different walks of life, but they came together to fight a common enemy, and again, it wasn't done in an overly cheesy way. They didn't always get along or have some cheesy leader. They fought with each other, they betrayed each other, but ultimately they relied on each other to get the job done. 

Okay so, the only thing I didn't like about the show was the relationship between Zack and Goodweather. I get the idea of using Zack against Goodweather, but it got kind of silly because when Zack's mother finally was able to take him, Zack started doing some pretty messed up stuff. He let his pet vampire kill a human who was trying to help him, and then he killed a girl that he liked because she had a boyfriend. At this point Zack was old enough to know better, but he didn't care. He just wanted what he wanted, and he didn't care what was happening to the rest of the world including his own father. 

Eventually I got to the point where I was hoping that Goodweather would deal with Zack, but as it turned out, Zack was the one who saved the day which really made me mad because he was the one who selfishly killed millions with the nuke and the other two I mentioned, but he is the one who ends up saving everyone? Why? What changed between the time he tried to shoot his dad, and the time the Master possessed him? Absolutely nothing. They barely even had any sort of heart to heart while down in the tunnel save for the fact that Zack admitted he couldn't kill him. If I'm being honest, I wish they would have wrote it so the Master possessed Zack instead of his dad and Goodweather saved everyone. That would have made the end make way more sense in my opinion, but what do I know, I'm not a TV writer...yet. 

Anyways, it's a decent show worth a watch, and I don't regret watching, I was just frustrated with Zack from the second season on, but outside of that it's good. I would recommend it as something to watch, but I will say that there are far better things to watch. This is something I would say to watch while you're waiting for the next season of your favorite show to come on. It's only 4 seasons, so it won't take up too much of your time.