[NOTE: This review is for The Strain Season 1, Episode 2 and contains SPOILERS!]

The show’s second episode, The Box, is an improvement from the pilot. It does suffer from the same problems though, overstuffing the episode with characters and narrative threads that will eventually pay off – at least one can hope – at the expense of progressing the main narrative.

The episode starts by introducing us to Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand) a city pest control officer proficient with an animal snatcher. One would believe he would be the main focus of this episode since he is positioned as the first character, but he only gets an additional four minutes – albeit featuring a memorable sequence when he shuts down a swanky restaurant with a rat carcass.

We then follow Gus (Miguel Gomez) with coffin in tow “over the bridge” to an underground parking facility. When he doesn’t find Thomas “white boy” Eichorst waiting for him, he decides to break the first rule and “examine the cargo,” only for The Master to scare him off by shaking the van violently from within the coffin. Back at his mother’s house, we find out that his brother Crispin (Francis Capra) is the same guy who tried to rob Abraham’s pawn shop and gave his mother the stolen clock. We see that Gus cares about his family and is trying to clean up his own life while trying to straighten out his brother.

Ephraim (Corey Soll) and Nora (Mia Maestro) find Bishop’s body at the airport with the same ammonia-rich biological discharge found on the plane. After some banter about tick shit, they speculate it would have to be a giant tick that crushed Bishop’s skull (SPOOOOOON!). Eph and Nora are called away after Everett Barnes (Daniel Kash) decides to release the survivors from quarantine. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Pierson, believes the passengers on Regis Flight 753 died from a faulty air system. Eph’s not convinced and his zeal to save people’s lives results in him getting suspended.

Meanwhile back at Stoneheart Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde) is dying (no pun intended) to meet The Master in hopes that he will be granted immortality for getting The Master and his cargo safely to the US. Meeting at the same underground parking facility Gus left the van in originally, Palmer finally gets his meeting, but it turns out to be more than he bargained for when he finally sees the monster.  However, although Palmer is clearlu terrified by what he sees; we the audience only get to see the back of The Master’s head.

The best part of the episode comes from an exchange between Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley) and Thomas Eichorst (Richard Sammel), which seems like something out of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards. The conversation is filled with exposition and a bit of Abe’s back-story. The increasing tension between the two actors makes it a great and captivating encounter that will have you rooting for Abraham and his cause.

We only get to catch up with three of the four survivors: Joan Luss (Leslie Hope), Gaberiel Bolivar (Jack Kesy), and Captain Redfern (Jonathan Potts) as we see their symptoms worsen. All of them suffer from headaches and a humming noise described as an echo of a voice. During a lunch meeting between Joan and Gabe, Joan’s eyes are bloodshot, and she discovers her mouth bleeding for no particular reason. Although erectile dysfunction isn’t a symptom of the virus, Gabe snorts a Cialis-like drug before a sexual tryst with three groupies. During the orgy, one of the girls runs her hands through Gabe’s hair (his real hair not the wig) and ends up with a fist full of hair. No it’s not a kinky thing, but he’s starting to lose his hair as part of the metamorphosis. Speaking of kinky, he bites one of the girls in a the neck hard, after throwing all girls out of his place and the scene ends with him licking up the blood trail on the floor.

Eph and Nora are officially off the case but conduct their own investigation meeting with a pale Captain Redfern. Other than the headaches and the humming noise he’s fine during their first meeting, but in the next meeting he’s bedridden, in pain, and burning up from a fever. Under UV light, they find the same incision on his neck, and his skin literally crawling with the worms. This prompts Eph and Co. to try to regain control of the situation by getting the four survivors and anyone they’ve had contact with in quarantine. Eph and Nora hope to get answers from Dr. Bennet’s autopsies, but they find the morgue in disarray and all the body bags are empty…

On the way to the morgue, Eph get’s a phone call from Gary Arnot first apologizing for his actions at the airport, and secondly thanking him for sending Emma home. Eph is convinced that Gary is seeing ghost that someone released the body to him, but as we saw in the previous episode it’s not just her body, but Emma’s been reanimated. The episode ends with Emma taking a bath and killing her father with the same tendril The Master used to drain Bishop once Gary notices her hair loss. They’re alluding to their eventual metamorphosis, but hopefully the vampire’s final designs will be as horrifying as their comic book counterparts.

The episode also further explores Eph’s character flaws the strained (no pun intened) relationship between him and his ex-wife Kelly Goodweather (Natalie Brown), his battle for joint custody of his son Zach Goodweather (Ben Hyland), and his drinking problem. Cory Stoll delivers a touching monologue during his AA meeting, which makes you wonder why we aren’t spending more time developing these characters instead of spreading them – and their respective stories – so thinly.

The biggest problem in their storytelling stems from having too much going on at one time. Poor Sean Astin, ultimately he’s been turned into an extra in this episode. If they had ended the pilot with the discovery of the coffin, then Sean Astin could have at least had his scene stealing moment here. But if they start thinning out the cast like I image they will then problem should not only work itself out but provide fans with the gore they’re looking for.

---

The writer of this piece is:

Laurence Almalvez
Laurence has previously written over at Whatculture.com.
Laurence tweets from @IL1511