guillermo del toro

 Since BGH was getting an amazing make over last week, I skipped out on the recap of Episode 12, “Last Rites.” It’s not like you missed much, so I’ll sum it up before the recap of the finale.

As always the opening of episode seven, “For Services Rendered,” is an immediate attention grabber. Seeing Joan’s husband obliviously hang out in an empty country club (I guess his 19 hour flight drained him of his common sense) and pour himself a drink is a little stupid, but hey, maybe part of him can foresee this being his last. A slight slow burn leads up to every man’s nightmare of returning late from a business trip and seeing your wife transformed into a hideous life (and blood) sucking monster. Joan has by far been the most intensely creepy transformation.

Hey FX, aren’t you the same network that just set a cable network record for Emmy nominations? This kind of material is your wheelhouse, so I need you to get it together. I wait and wait for the cinematographic miscues to get better, for the tone to feel more plausible, for less of my time to be wasted with soapy dialogue serving frivolous exposition … and it never comes.
So indulge me, if you will, in my passionate plea for a film reboot where we can get all these things right. In the meantime, back to FX giving it their best shot.

I officially take back everything I ever said about Gabe Bolivar – he was gnarly this week. What a way to open an episode!
We’re dropped into episode four (“Runaways”) with the rock star in his velvety goth palace, blending with shadows and complected like a bruised fruit. It’s here that viewers get their first glimpse of the Master’s control: with one word, echoed twice – “Mine” – we get a subtle idea of his ventriloquist-like power.

I’ll give it to del Toro and Hogan this week. Opening episode four “It’s Not for Everyone” with the dissection of the plane captain was disgusting, fascinating, and an expository change of pace. The show’s “monster” aspects – and their obvious del Toro signatures – keep me coming back each week. The attention to detail of what we learn during the dissection, and to the stinger especially, is impressive.

The second episode of FX’s The Strain picks up immediately from where we last left it, opening to Gus the hustler transporting the Master’s coffin across the river. Though the episode begins delving deeper into the “virus” itself – and, more enlighteningly, its potential commercial and political implications on one of the world’s largest cities – the plot plods at a pace nearly rivaling Gus Van Sant’s Last Days. Whereas the book’s monolithic, apolocalyptic atmosphere loomed high, the show has thus far largely missed the mark.

If you’re a horror or fantasy devotee of any shade, hopefully you’re a student of master filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro. With the help of Chuck Hogan, he recently expanded his storytelling into the written word, delivering the terrifying Strain trilogy. Now, FX has brought the story to life as del Toro originally intended: a television show. The story vividly captures an apocalyptic nightmare initially disguised as a post-9/11 paranoid disaster.