Well that’s an interesting way for Dying Billionaire to keep HHS in his pocket; turn her against the rest of the government w/ a fake conspiracy. I still don’t think he’s going to be able to keep this under wraps for long. Two hundred dead passengers have walked out of the city morgue back in to the arms of unsuspecting (& highly confused) loved ones. Well minus the ones who lived outside of Manhattan since it looks like these vampires can’t cross running water unless a 3rd party transports them.
Me, too. I’m hooked, as is my girlfriend.
It is stylish enough for me to overlook characters behaving in ways they wouldn’t and other stuff, like Setrakian being at least 15 years too young to have been an adult in the Holocaust, or the catholic woman being far too eager to feed a neighbor to her husband and then offing herself.
Yeah, there’s some stupid, but I find myself not wanting episodes to end.
Hush, you. Us dopey Americans aren’t expected to be able to count to 70, which is how many years ago WWII was.
So apparently now there’s a 3rd faction, which apparently consists of vampires that sympathise with humans.
Yeah and with that it feels to me like we’ve careened past “cool stylized tv show” into “uber-nerdy comic book” territory.
I thought that was an interesting development. I wonder what their motivation is.
This show definitely has its flaws, but I think the makeup and effects teams do a great job, and the creatures are very creepy. Like the infected mom in this episode–much scarier than a season full of zombies on The Walking Dead.
Still TOTALLY entertained. Could not possibly care less about stupid and plot holes because it’s all way too cool and creepy.
Well, we know that there are vampires that are willing to intervene in defense of humans, under at least some circumstances. That doesn’t necessarily establish that they sympathize with humans, though. For example, they might fear that an uncontrolled outbreak could lead to an insufficient supply of edible humans. Sure, there are vampire stories in which the evil plan is to TAKE OVER THE WORLD and raise humans as “cattle,” and this might be one of them - but I’ve never thought that idea makes a lick of sense.
I mean, say that your life depended upon a large and healthy human population. You know that humans are very good at raising and breeding themselves “free-range”. Why would you take the chance that you could produce better results in some sort of nightmare/dystopian state? The status quo works.
Of course, I suppose that you might prefer to engage in predation absent any danger from human law-enforcement. But in most places, most of the time, it’s pretty difficult for law enforcemnet to investigate murders by strangers. An evil-but-prudent vampire probably has very little to fear from law enforcement - oh, sure, he might get unlucky, but he could also slip and fall out a window during daylight hours. Life is risk, even when you’re immortal.
Finally - unless you’ve very, very far from psychological normality, life in a totalitarian dystopia just isn’t likely to be much fun. You need to work hard to maintain it, and you’re rarely going to get the sheer variety of artistic and cultural output that free societies produce. When you look at why dictators fight to hold on to power, the reason tends to be that they fear what will happen to them and their supporters if they lose power. Why grab on to that tiger’s tail?
So, if I’m a reasonable vampire, I’ll vociferously object to a war on humanity or wide-spread vampirism pandemic, even if I don’t think of humans as anything more than food. If necessary, I’ll use violence to curtail a war or epidemic. And I’ll actively help humans if I’m in a position to do so, because a human that’s alive is a human that can either (a) fight or (b) convince other humans to fight. If I content myself with just killing opposition vampires and any nearby humans, I delay an effective human response to the problem - I need witnesses who can scream for action.
Admittedly, it’s not ideal to let humans know that I exist - but, now that humans are going to learn that vampires exist anyway, that ship has more-or-less sailed.
My point: my Reasonable Vampire might well engage in thrilling heroics without having any recognizable “sympathy” for humans at all, just because this is what the situation demands.
Good point. It’s even possible that The Master isn’t the only Ancient vampire in the world and these are simply a rival Ancient’s minions. I wonder how long this big cover-up is going to last. By know there must be over a 1,000 vampires in Manhattan by now, and discretion doesn’t seem like their strong suit. I’m guessing it takes awhile for them to learn to self-control like Eichhorst.
Being a vampire just get’s less & less appealing in this show. It would appear The Master has a lot more control over his “subjects”, to the extent of deciding who stays an animalist meat puppet versus elite vampires like Eichhorst (who’s basically the exact same person he was when he was alive, though he’s probably over such petty matters as how the cattle divide themselves). If he has that much control then the Vampire SWAT team we saw last week must be working for another Ancient Vampire like The Master. I wonder what would happen to all his subjects if somebody managed to kill The Master?
In the latest episode, Van Helsing was pretty clear on the subject: you kill the master, his subjects die. The CDC guy argued that this made no biological sense, and VH said (paraphrasing), “I’ve been right about everything else, haven’t I?”
Yes, there are memes and cliches. Yes, there is continuity stupidity. But I like this show. Mainly because I want vampires to go back to being scary monsters, not stylish fops and insecure adolescents.
I like how the strigoi are more like alien parasites than obnoxious fetishists. I like how the heroes have to resort to merciless brutality instead of experiencing sudden Star Trek-like scientific epiphanies. The CDC people are bewildered by the impossibility of the strigoi, but figure out how to combat them with baby steps. There’s no sudden reveal that saves the day.
I haven’t gone into this thread much because I am usually a few weeks behind on the show but I am caught up now and wanted to say I am digging this. It started as something I would watch while distracted to something I pay close attention to.
Don’t worry boy, your stepfather wasn’t made at you; he just wanted to eat you alive because he loved you so much. 
The Master’s face was a little hokey looking. Kinda disappointing as I like the other makeup and visual effects.
I reallllly can’t stand any of the women on this show. The lead actress, who looks confused and tired all the time like she can’t open her eyes more than half way or the computer hacker babe who of course has to be supermodel pretty. At least we haven’t seen the wife in a while.
I like Fet & the latino criminal guy, but as for the others? meh, wouldn’t care if they get eaten.
I found last night’s ep particularly heart-breaking, the doomed inevitability of the wife, the slow horror of her transformation, and they preying on her best friend and son. Truly awful and uncompromising. At least Jim got a bullet to the head.
Plus, wasn’t that the first time we saw a kid directly killed? (I’m not counting the little girl from the plane who was found dead)
Some stuff still doesn’t make a lot of sense (mostly Larger World developments seen on the periphery) but I’m enjoying this more and more. And though I was hoping there would be a sad confrontation between Eph and the ex this time, looks like that will be tabled in even more distressing fashion.
I haven’t read the books, so this is pure speculation, but: surely the ex-wife will be made by The Master into one of the elite type of vampire (like the Nazi character Eichorst) and she WILL have a confrontation with Eph, in which we will be encouraged to enjoy how much we hate her (she’ll probably menace her son at some point, demonstrating how evil she is and all). Then Eph will, with great righteousness and nobility, kill her in some gruesome (and humiliating) way.
That’s my guess, anyway.
I think it’s going to be the complete opposite, she is going to try to play it as normal as possible and claim she is still the same person and not an evil vampire bitch from hell with no nose.
Given that he actually sought her out (or summoned her) I think it’s pretty obvious the Master has special plans for her. I’m curious as to how much free will elite vampires like Eichhorst actually have; the rank & fodder are apparently just undead meat puppets running around on auto-pilot until the Master takes control, Eichhorst’s apparent autonomy could just be an illusion. Granted that one male survivor had enough self-control early on to chain himself up in a shed & warn his wife to stay away. Plus Eichorst was carefully selected & groomed by the Master prior to being turned; Kelly wasn’t and has a totally different personality. She’s only especially useful because of her connection to Ephraim, and even then only so far as she can play on his emotions. It’ll be interesting to see how the Master plans to use her. Maybe he’ll hook her up with Eichhorst’s makeup artist.