WARNING: There will be spoiler discussion of both the TV show and the book series it is based on.
Most of the time, watching The Strain can be a real… wait for it… strain.
The pieces are all there. Vampire apocalypse. Cool vampire hunters. Gory special effects. A story that comes from the mind of Guillermo del Toro. On paper, The Strain should be on par with The Walking Dead or at least commanding a solid audience that wants to see this through to it’s bloody end.
The FX show put up some decent ratings numbers at first but hasn’t exactly wowed critics and audiences in its first two seasons. It lacks the cultural impact of a Mr. Robot or Game of Thrones. You won’t find huge quantities of “what did it all mean” recaps on TV and entertainment sites the next day. No one is going to start a conversation with you at work the next day about the show. The Strain exists and we’ll all be able to say we remember that it was on but only a few viewers are likely to see it through to the end.
After premiering to 2.99 million viewers with it’s first episode in 2014, the program has consistently seen a drop-off, premiering to 1.66 million viewers in season two and even dropping below the one million mark during a mid-season episode. The Strain was able to rebound somewhat in the following episodes but the season two finale, which deviated strongly from the source material with the (seemingly unnecessary) death of Nora, grabbed 1.17 million viewers.
Del Toro and showrunner Carlton Cuse have both said that they envision The Strain as a five-season show.
“From the very beginning, we had really talked about the first book being the first season, the second book being the next two seasons and the third book the last two seasons. We’ve stuck to that game plan.”
Del Toro also says that he sees the story as a closed loop and isn’t interested in expanding on it or stretching things out any further. That’s good news because it already feels like The Strain is straining (sorry) to make it’s story work in that aforementioned format. And while on paper that five-season setup makes a lot of sense, in practice it’s hard to say that audiences are going to stick around in large enough numbers to justify two more ten-episode seasons after this one.
As the story moves along, it’s getting denser and denser, delving into a mythology that includes ancient vampires, the Holocaust, and vampires who hunt other vampires. The Strain is the kind of show that can only lose audience, not gain it. Very few people are going to jump in cold turkey in season three and just come along for the ride.
Some of that is to the show’s credit. It’s trying to tell the story it wants to tell. The problem is that sometimes that story isn’t all that interesting. The show has been hampered by an issue a lot of American TV shows face this day: too many episodes. Even at 13 per season, there have been plenty of filler moments and entire episodes along the way. Smartly, season three and any future seasons will top out at 10 per, so hopefully they use that limited space to advance the story in a more engaging way.
The other inherent problem is that because the show is on basic cable, there’s only so much they can do with special effects, sets, and CGI. That limits the believability of the surreal set pieces. As far acting goes, it’s a mixed bag. Kevin Durand is having a ball with the Vasily Fet character while David Bradley brings a real gravitas to the show with Abraham Setrekian. Rupert Penry-Jones brings just the right amount of subtle fury to the Mr. Quinlan role. Corey Stoll does a fine job as Ephraim Goodweather, but he also suffers from being the “Lead Male Character Who Is The Least Interesting Character At Any Given Time,” an issue that plagues a lot of genre shows. The less we discuss the child acting, the better.
Aside from the shortened seasons, the biggest change the show seems to have made headed into season three is a new opening credit sequence, which, is great and all, but isn’t exactly going to do that much when it comes down ot it. What will be somewhat interesting is how the show will deal with the fact that Nora (Mia Maestro) is now dead. In the books, Nora makes it to the end and actually ends up with Vasily. The show has actually done a good job of setting up hacker Dutch (Ruta Gedmintas) to take her place.
What would I do if ratings and money weren’t an issue? I’d cut out a season. The show already feels like it’s dragging and this upcoming season will be the culmination of book two, in which the vampires close in on their plans for world domination. Honestly, the events of the first and second season have already made all of this clear and a third season of everyone running around New York together is going to wear out even more audience patience.
Let’s all be honest, we’re here for what’s going to happen in seasons four and five, right? We’re here for the vampire apocalypse and humanity’s eventual redemption. And I get that we have to build up to that and earn it. But based on what’s already happened, we’ve earned it. Quite frankly, I wish I could go back in time and combine the events of seasons two and three into one meaty season but it’s too late for that. Instead, the events of the final book should be compacted into one crazy season.
The point being that The Strain needs urgency right now. What’s done is done but they have a chance to earn back the faith of wishy-washy fans who hate-watch the show because they loved the source materials so much. By turning on the turbo boosters and making each episode a strong attempt to move plot forward while showcasing characters in emotionally-intense scenes would go a long way towards regaining that trust and perhaps even inviting attention from critics and audiences who already stopped paying attention.
This might still happen, depending on the way ratings go for season three. If they continue to crater out at the same rate of drop-off between the first and second season, FX would be hard-pressed to commit to two more years of the show. In that case, maybe The Strain will have no choice but to step on the gas, make each episode feel important and necessary, and become the show we hoped it would be, if only for a moment.
The third season of The Strain premieres Sunday, Aug. 28 at 10 p.m. on FX.
