The Strain: Season 1, Episode 12

The Strain
Episode Title: "Last Rites"
Channel: FX
Director: Peter Weller
Writers:  Carlton Cruse, David Weddle and Bradley Thompson
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Horror
Runtime: 60 min
Rated: TV-MA
Original Air Date: September 28, 2014

“Last Rites” isn't a bad episode, but it highlights the things that the series has been doing wrong since the beginning. Much of the show's runtime up to this point has been spent focusing on familial difficulties and health problems, now when things need to happen they seem crammed into one episode without much in the way of explanation.

Remember the hacker, who's name I had to look up again, Dutch? She just disappeared a week ago after Vasiliy had seemingly convinced her to stay. Well she's back with a fully formed plan that will allow Eph and the crew to get the story to the masses and hopefully get the rest of the population taking some sort of productive action. Instead of half an episode last week being spent on Zach's cigarette run at Mama Martinez's behest, the audience should have seen some experimentation or trial and error in regards to what seems like a pretty elaborate plan.

Setrakian's flashbacks in this episode now consist of him in his middle years, still fighting the good fight, in Albania. There's little in the way of new information presented there, as the most significant things revealed were already fairly easy for the audience to assume. Augustin is still underused, but had the most intriguing encounter in the episode, I'm just hoping that the season finale doesn't leave the audience wondering what's going to happen to him.

Eichorst is finally taking the threat that Setrakian and his not-so-merry band represent seriously. With numerous examples of him committing the oldest villain sin in the book, letting your greatest threat get away again and again to somehow heighten their suffering, I have to wonder why the sudden change of heart? I will partially forgive the script though, because it made for one of the more suspenseful scenes in the series so far.

Conclusion: The penultimate episode of the season contains a lot of exciting moments, but they feel rushed due to time constraints. Some things finally seem to go the good guys' way and one of the major distractions in the show has been trimmed away. “Last Rites” managed to get me excited for the finale by moving the plot along more than many of the previous episodes.

Rating: 7.25/10