TV REVIEW: The Strain “For Services Rendered”

By Clinton Bell

While last week’s “Occultation” had a more satisfying climax than this week’s installment, “For Services Rendered” is a more solidly built episode, largely because it spends most of its time focusing on the characters that matter the most.

That doesn’t stop the episode from introducing us to a new character right off the bat: Joan’s husband Roger, played by Battlestar Galactica vet Aaron Douglas. Roger arrives home after being gone for a while. It’s oddly quiet in the neighborhood, so Roger has a feeling that something is wrong. His suspicions are validated when bloodthirsty vampires spring out from nowhere and attack him and his taxi driver. Roger retreats into his home, where Joan—who has finally completed her transformation—attacks Roger. It’s a solid opening that also manages to do a good job of capturing the visual style of del Toro’s pilot, which is not something every episode has done successfully.

We then meet up with Eph and company, and learn about the “new plan” Abraham mentioned at the end of last week’s episode.The new plan involves using Jim as bait to get closer to The Master. Abraham tells Eph that if they can kill The Master, then the rest of the infected will also die. Eph doesn’t quite understand how that is possible, but he knows that Abraham is the real expert here, so he goes with it.

The real star of “For Services” is the sinister Thomas Eichhorst. A few weeks back I grumbled about the flashback scenes, which featured Eichhorst and a young Abraham. The scenes were dull and didn’t seem to have anything important to reveal; this week we got more flashbacks, but the scenes are, thankfully, much more worthwhile. The bulk of the flashbacks deal with young Abraham building a special box—yeah, you know the one—for Eichhorst. The flashbacks work because it sheds light on their complicated history, and adds more depth to both characters.

In the present day, Abraham and Eichhorst briefly cross paths in the subway station, but the episode doesn’t quite make a meal of the encounter, unfortunately, probably because they aren’t ready yet. I expect to see more flashbacks of Abraham’s past throughout the season, and we’ll probably learn more about his wife in the process.

The episode concludes on a strange note. Vampire Joan attacks her own kids (and the kids’ babysitter), when suddenly a group of humanoid creatures appear out of the nowhere to kill Joan and save the day. If you’ve read the book upon which the show is based on, then I assume you know who these guys are. For those who haven’t read the novel, like me, the sudden appearance of these fellas probably raised an eyebrow. They are creatures of some kind, but apparently not vampires. I’m not going to rush to a conclusion about these guys until we get more information, but I am definitely puzzled as of now.

Now that The Strain has reached the midpoint of the season, I hope that the show will continue to pick up momentum. The show has its moments, but it still isn’t firing on all cylinders. The mythology and scale of the series remains interesting, but it still hasn’t grabbed hold of me yet.

Additional notes:

– I assume Kelly’s boyfriend, Matt, got away safely, otherwise Eph probably would’ve received a frantic phone call from his ex.

– We haven’t seen Gabe in a while. I wonder what the show wants to do with him. I expect he’ll stick around for a little while longer.

– When was the last time Eph slept? It seems like he’s been awake ever since the show began.