The Strain Review: “Gone Smooth” (Season 1, Episode 3)

Unfortunately, any hope of halting the strain’s progress is essentially lost. The survivors are out there, Eichorst is gleefully rubbing his hands together somewhere and at the end of “Gone Smooth,” Eph and Nora have lost the only patient they had – Captain Redfern, whose condition deteriorated, to say the least. We saw that he had those nasty worms under his skin in “The Box,” and this week he transforms fully into a creature of the night. Once turned, he flees his hospital bed (You left the dude alone, really, docs?) and goes into the basement, where he begins feeding on blood bags. Jim finds Redfern first and almost gets himself killed, but Nora arrives in time to distract him.

Bizarrely, Redfern has managed to grow a proboscis straight out of Resident Evil, complete with fleshy, in-mouth, starfish-like appendages, without any of the hospital doctors noticing. Luckily, before the creature can do any real damage, Eph shows up and beats him to death (and then some) with a fire extinguisher. Unfortunately, I doubt the rest of the doctors are going to believe that the deathly weak guy suddenly gained superhuman strength and sprouted an icky, elongated tongue  – which means Eph just flattened a sick man’s head for no discernable reason. Side note: badass Nora moment this week, when she blocks Redfern’s tongue lashing with an IV stand – twice.

That awesome, spine-tingling sequence aside, the rest of “Gone Smooth” was pretty tame. Vasiliy Fet noticed that the rats are pouring out of New York’s sewer systems (trying to get away from something, or towards something?). Abraham Setrakian feigned senility in front of a judge and got himself released, quickly securing a list of the passengers on the plane and heading off to destroy them all. And in the episode’s opening, Eichorst proved himself worthy of the nickname “waxy man,” revealing that he actually looks a lot like Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, with pointed ears, sharp teeth and a corpselike pallor. We saw him donning his daily disguise, with fake skin over every part of his visible body, false teeth and even fake ears.