Recap: The Strain Season 1 Episode 8, 'Creatures Of The Night'
August 31, 2014

Action! This week’s episode of The Walking Dead the Strain packed it in. I think we’re officially into act three, don’t you agree? The denouement is imminent, which means that soon we’ll only have the Knick for a weekly stomach-turning gross-out. (Watching these shows is keeping me so slim!)

This week, we are treated to a somewhat improbable crossing of storylines but whatever; let’s just keep this thing rolling by any means necessary, eh? Eph and the gang decide that what they need are UV lamps and a lot of them. They traipse on over to Brooklyn to break into a medical supply facility and who just happens to be there looting the same equipment but our man Vasiliy Fet. Upon their introduction Fet goes for some zombie apocalypse posturing about every man for himself, I work alone, I don’t need to join your vampire slaying posse &c., but just like Nora’s declaration that she’ll never kill anyone even if they are shooting bloodsucking face worms at her throat, of course it is Opposite Day.

The gang decides to stock up on food and supplies at an adjacent gas station. Who just happens to be in the convenience store as the gang strolls in? Why, it’s Hacker Babe! Of all the gin joints and so on. There’s much exclaiming about credit cards and ATM not working, for which Hacker Babe sheepishly-yet-proudly claims responsibility. The bread man stocks some bread, listening to Whitesnake on his headphones, blissfully ignorant of the Facesnake that’s about to be making a live, in concert appearance in his near future. (Spoiler alert, he dies!)

As the gang mill about the convenience store grabbing this and that, of course an army of zombies vampires the infected begin to accumulate outside. The episode quickly works some classic zombie tropes including:

1. The person who isn’t sure they can bear to shoot one of the infected in the head, does (Nora.)

2. Someone makes a run for it and lives (Hacker Babe’s friend.) Someone else makes a run for it and dies (Whitesnake fan.)

3. All automobiles in the adjacent garage are hopelessly inoperable.

4. Someone is skeptical until they are nearly killed (Hacker Babe.)

5. One character explains to another that you have to go for the head if you want the undead to die (Setrakian, Fet.)

6. A character gets wounded during a fight with the infected and sports a wound which looks pretty mild but then we find out they’re infected, and then everything has to pause for a second while they try to solve the problem through minor yet completely lurid surgery, which doesn’t work, and then the character realizes that he’s about to grow a bloodsucking face worm and is all “you guys have to kill me now” and the character’s friends are like “no we can’t kill him,” but then another character just steps up and shoots him in the head which causes some strife (Jim, Eph, Nora, Vasiliy.)

7. Everyone except the ones stupid enough to run too soon (Whitesnake fan), stay too long (the store’s clerk), or get infected/shot in the head (Jim) survives through teamwork, ingenuity, and superior firepower (hopefully involving actual fire), narrowly escaping certain death by speeding away in a vehicle large enough to accommodate everyone (bread truck.)

Other items of interest? Well, the infected are getting smarter. They’re becoming resourceful, able to smash windows with hand trucks and shimmy up poles to cut power lines. Setrakian explains that the Master sees through the eyes of all the infected, and that they’ll be mobbed by them wherever they go, because the Master is pissed off at the posse specifically. Yikes! We’ll see how the inevitable showdown shakes out next week.

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