The Strain Episode 8 Recap: And This Is Why Quickie Marts Should Carry Guns And Ammo

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I Hope The City Pays Me Overtime For All This Extermination Work. I'm Union Ya Know.

"Creatures Of The Night" picks up right where we left off last week. Eichorst is feeling pain from a shot of silver to the leg. Team Abe heads to a medical supply store to look for UV lights. After breaking in, who do they encounter but Fet. Yeah! They're finally all together.

Next everyone is trapped inside a Quickie Mart as a swarm of vamps encircles the building. Not-so-coincidentally the blond hacker chick (Dutch) who brought the internet/cell phones down is also there. When someone runs outside and manages to evade death, Abe says the swarm was sent by the Master to kill them as revenge. Soon the vamps will overrun the store and Team Abe will be goners.

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Maybe Taking Down The Internet/Cell Phones Was Not Such A Good Idea After All

The vamps are getting smarter. They're learning to use tools. Abe says the Master can see through each strigoi's eyes (and they can all mentally communicate with each other). The vamps will mature in about a month. But they will not become like Echorst. A few strigoi are granted special powers and allowed to retain parts of themselves. Abe says Echorst is one of the chosen.

A vamp climbs to the top of an electrical pole and then the power is off. No more using the UV lamps. Oh wait. They have batteries. Good!

Jim is scrapped while fighting off one of the monsters and has a worm inside of him.They remove it but soon there are many more. Jim knows he's a goner. Abe says to do the humane thing and kill him before he turns. Eph/Nora say the human thing is to try to save him. While they're all debating what should be done, Fet pulls out a gun and shoots Jim in the head. Bye bye Jim. While its sad to see ya go, you werent really very useful and you did help cause the vampire epidemic.

Everyone manages to escape in the bread truck except for poor Hasaan (who wont leave his cage in the Quickie Mart). Now they have Dutch in tow (who is able to access Eldritch/Echorst but they dont know that yet).

There were some funny moments in this episode as well. Like when Fet had to use Eph's credit card to get gas for the truck. Fet says he is "currently in dispute on my credit limit". And since it's not his card, Fet chooses premium gas instead. Dutch drinking half the alcohol in the bottles (instead of pouring it out) was fun as well. And the Abe/Fet mutual admiration society was a nice addition. They eat admire the other's badassery.

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If Any Of You Vamps Make Fun Of My Hair Again, You've Had It

And In Case We Need A List Of Things That Are Effective Against Strigoi:

Sunlight
UV Lights
Beheading (severing the spinal cord)
Silver (preferably silver bullets but silver in a nail gun works too)
Gun shots to the head (gun shots elsewhere will slow them down some if it hits bone, flesh wounds heal quickly)
Fire (Molotov cocktails slow them down)
Rebar to the head
Punching them in the face slows them down a little

Favorite Quotes:

"I work alone."- Fet
"When will you decide to believe me?"- Abe to Eph
"Burglars, vigilantes, vampires killers, just add it to the list"- Eph
"If you get stung I wont hesitate to return the favor" says Eph (referring to Fet killing Jim). Fet replies with "That's the spirit doc!". I love Fet!
When Dutch asks if its vampires or people with a disease outside, Eph says "It's a transformative disease that makes people predatory and extremely dangerous." They're freaking vampires dude! Sometimes I want to feed Eph to them just to shut him up.

Grade: 4 3/4 Monsters (out of 5). One of the best episodes to date. "The Strain" just keeps getting better and better. Focusing on one locale (instead of jumping all over town) helped increase the feeling of being trapped. "Creatures Of The Night" is reminiscent of zombie shows where the main characters are all isolated together and must become a cohesive team in order to survive.

We also learned from Abraham the basics of how vamps work (although we dont know anything new about the Special Forces Vampires we saw last week). And for those of you saying this show is becoming too much like "The Walking Dead"... who cares? It's still better than a lot of other shows on TV. Yes I'm looking at you "Under The Dome".