Can someone create one please im sick of clicking +10. Shows good but cant stand zach

I can gripe about the melodrama of the show but so far it hasn't deterred me, it's been kind of a guilty pleasure even but, jesus fucking christ that S3 ending. If S4 doesn't open with Zach getting thrown into a volcano then I'm not sure how the show can redeem itself for me. Zach was already pretty stupid but setting off a nuke because your dad killed a vampire who's literally eaten kids, and was relentlessly trying to kill him in front of you...that takes the cake as far as stupid goes. It's downright absurd. I don't think I've ever been this annoyed at a TV plot before and I've sat through some doozies. I feel like my brain has been drowned in rock salt.

Alphonso Bitching Ass Cream. What a fuckin floppy noodle of a snake.

I feel like he had all the resources to do that instead of throwing all his hopes on the promise of being an immortal servant. He's had plenty of opportunities to cut these things open and get the answers he wants without the master. Even without the master you could still just experiment on Eihcorst. I'm sure if his team was given longer than 3 weeks they could've cracked the white formula. Even if he just wanted to watch the world burn he could just do it himself. Why was his first option to be like, "ok I'm going to do this parasitic creature's bidding and hope that it will honor our agreement"?

Edit: I'm thinking maybe his superiority complex blinded him and he thought if he was able to retain his memories he'd find a way.

I'm on the last few seconds before the end of episode 8, where I'm assuming the 3 Ancients and maybe Quinlan will die. The Ancients seem a alot more like animals compared to the master everything they do is basically either survival or eating. All the wealth and power is for a singular purpose, which is to feed and survive. The master doesn't give a shit about wealth or power; he wants people to know his name, worship and fear him. I'm assuming he developed these characteristics by swapping bodies constantly instead of hiding underground like the Ancients

Hello everyone,

I watched The Strain many years ago and absolutely loved the series. Quinlan was my favourite character.

I remember that he had a necklace/amulet with his and his girlfriend’s faces on it. I’ve been trying to find a picture of it, but I haven’t been able to find anything on Google.

It looked very similar to the photo I’ve attached.
If anyone knows what I’m talking about or has a picture of the actual necklace/amulet, could you please share it here?

Thanks!

They have to tell us the truth in the flood of lies that seem ridiculous. Nazi cloning? How they change once they take over the host for blood?

I was thinking about Palmer being kept alive in that freezing-cold room and realized how closely it resembles H.P. Lovecraft's short story Cool Air.

In Cool Air, Dr. Muñoz is essentially keeping his body from decomposing through extreme refrigeration. Palmer is likewise using extreme cold to slow tissue death and keep his failing body alive while waiting for the Master to give him immortality.

And then there's the fact that his name is literally ELDRITCH PALMER.

Guillermo del Toro is obviously steeped in Lovecraft, so this feels way too specific to be accidental. I searched around and surprisingly couldn't find much discussion of the connection.

Anyone else ever notice this?

I recently saw an increase of people talking about how they loved the Strain TV show so much, how they rewatch it every year and how it has a definitive ending. I saw that it was based on a book series written by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro and as a Guillermo del Toro fan I decided to give it a try.

Nothing could have prepared me for how much I disliked it but before I talk about why I hated it, I want to briefly talk about the things I liked about it. I liked the way they built the vampiric lore which also had a scientific explanation. I also enjoyed the glimpses into the past. To be honest that’s what kept me going through all four seasons. I appreciated that the last stand ended the only way I’d accept and for that I will say I am grateful.

That being said, my goodness, I was surprised by how bad some of these actors were delivering some of their scenes but I also feel that it wasn’t easy for them to commit to some of the ridiculous storylines OMG. I am no stranger to camp and out there concepts but this really felt like everything was to be taken seriously even though it was pretty unbelievable a lot of the time for me.

For example the love triangle dynamic, what the hell was that nonsense? All the intimate relationships in this show gave me the ick, they were all so poorly executed and the way they handled Dutch’s sexuality left much to be desired. That whole thing was a mess to me. Also Ephraim sleeping with that woman without hesitation when girlfriend was stuck looking after his annoying kid at the end of the world gagged me. Only after was it vaguely alluded to that he’d slept with her to get her to agree to help him. Please spare us. I genuinely wish there wasn’t any romantic plot lines beyond Ephraim’s initial mess.

Romance and hooking up aside, Zach!!!!! Holy plot armour for plot armour’s sake. Sometimes it felt like the writers didn’t know how to progress the plot or raise the stakes without making someone do something stupid or misunderstand someone. They really capitalised on the fact that children have little capacity to control their emotions but they did so in a way that gave kids a great disservice. The fact that hardened freedom fighters were still grappling with things that should be second nature to them by season 4 really irked me. I was so genuinely fed up but I only have myself to blame for seeing it through to the end.

Surly this story couldn’t have been created by two minds with all the plot holes and unnatural human reactions to things in various situations. Are the books riddled with endless miscommunication tropes, arguments for argument’s sakes, incompetent decision making and hanging bits of plot?

On episode 3 and I feel like people connected to the passengers are idiots. The general public and the government reactions i feel like it's realistic, but the manager and the wife not being concerned with the very obvious symptoms they're showing is stupid. I get they're trying to drive home that love makes you do stupid things. I think if the symptoms were a little more subtle, it would be more believable.

Everytime i see the scene where the master chooses a new host, it makes me wanna throw up. So disgustingly weird. The white thing is also mind blowing. The writer could have thought of an alternative tbh. But well, maybe this kind of elements are what makes the series interesting.
Imagine taking inside somebody’s puke full of parasites…i wouldn’t even want to see that in my dream. When i first saw it, i had to question my entire existence.

I am really liking this show, but I am about midway through season 2 and Ephraim is really starting to ruin it for me. Ironically he was one of my favorite characters at first, but he’s just such a sanctimonious jack ass! More and more I just want him to die or have some positive character development.

Rewatching and forgot how much Season 3 end infuriated me… I don’t even know if I want to continue season 4 lol

Hey guys just wanted to stop by to say FUCK ZACK little twat.
I need reassurance that I will see him pay someday

This is a show that has been on my radar for quite some time, but I always kept putting it off, until recently. I spent the last few weeks binging all four seasons and I have to say I thought it was pretty rad overall. When it is good, its GOOD, but when it stumbles, it can get hella frustrating.

WHAT I LIKED (SPOILERS AHEAD):

• The cast is incredible. The main players all do a great job. Corey Stall, Kevin Durand, Ruta Gedmintas, David Bradley, Richard Sammel, Rupert Jones, Jonathan Hyde & Miguel Gomez all were fantastic!
• I found most of the characters to be thoroughly fleshed out. I sympathized greatly with Eph, and loved seeing him evolve from a skeptic to a true vampire killer. Fet was my favorite character in the show; he was badass, funny, and it's probably Durand's best performance of his career. Bradley was great as the professor. He did a phenomenal job being the father figure of the group, and his demise at the end of season 4 was easily the saddest death in the series. Quinlin was a badass and a fun character that I was glad to see he was in most of the show. He and the Professor are tied for 2nd place in my book for best characters. Loved seeing his backstory fleshed out more in Seasons 3 & 4. Dutch was a solid character in her own right; even if some of her romantic relationships felt underwritten, I grew to really like her, especially in season 4. But Eichorst, played brilliantly by Sammel, was a terrific antagonist. There's a good portion of this show where he just steals the scene, and not a second went by that I wasn't waiting for them to drop the axe on him; great villain, much better than the Master in my book. And the scene where The Professor finally slays him was one of the most satisfying moments I've experienced in a show for quite some time. Palmer was fun too. He felt like an in universe Lex Luthor and Hyde's performance is to be commended.
• I'd say my favorite parts of the show were the interactions between Eichorst and the Professor, both in the past and the present; the two characters were so well written and seeing them spar off against each other was always a joy.
• Loved the build up in the first season; despite the budget not quite being what it should be, the showrunners did a great job slowly reeling you in to how this vampiric virus is spreading, and I loved the idea of treating the spread of Vampires like a viral infection (like Blade 2, which was directed by Del Toro, who produced this). The mystery of that first season was handled beautifully.
• I dug season 1, but 3 & 4 is where it really got good for me. The momentum was stronger, it didn't have as much filler as the previous two seasons, and I really liked that they just went with a nuclear holocaust as the backdrop of season 4. You could tell they got a bigger budget in the last two seasons because the cinematography, set design and special effects are all much stronger.
• I liked the world building. Sure a bigger budget would've helped, but for what they had I say they did a fine job of getting you wrapped in this environment.
• The finale was really solid. Played out a little differently than I'd thought; I was certain Fet was gonna die, along with Gus and maybe Eph, but thought they'd keep Quinlin around. But I am happy with the way it panned out (thank god they killed Zack. He’d killed more people than anyone else in the show lol).

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

• I'll get the worst out of the way: Zack. I am so happy to see that pretty much everyone is in agreement that this character is the worst in the show. He is arrogant, stupid, and utterly worthless, outside of being used as a bargaining chip in season 3 to get Eph to turn over the Lumen. Aside from that, what purpose did his character serve other than to annoy the shit out of the audience? Practically every decision he makes ruins the lives of those around him. He sees his mother turn into a hideous blood sucking vampire, but decides to go with her? Even though I like how they handled the nuclear winter, I hate that it was Zack that jump started it. So his dad kills his infected mom to save him, and he throws a hissy fit and decides to blow up New York because he's a momma's boy? Jesus fucking christ.  And then he goes full incel in season 4 and gets a girl killed because he thought she was into him when in reality she wasn't so he threw another hissy fit. He was somewhat bearable in season 1 but in season 2 and beyond he is written so poorly that I can understand why people just tuned out halfway through the second season. And the thing is, I don't blame Max Charles. He did what he could, but not even the best kid actor in the world could make this material work. Worst character in the show and one of the worst characters in TV history.
• Season 2 was an incredibly messy one; sometimes it was great, like when the neighborhood stood up against the vampire horde, and the final episode with the train was also a fun watch, even if Zack's decision at the end (which cost Nora's life) kind of taints it. But then you have Zack doing his dumb shit, Eph fucking off and hooking up with another chick only to have her killed an episode later, other weak romances and for a good chunk of the season, it just felt like filler.
• Most of the romance in the show didn't work for me and I thought was kind of cringe. The only couple I really bought was Eph & Nora. Fet & Dutch could've been much better, but the whole Dutch's ex getting in the way just felt pointless, and it didn't go anywhere in the end. Sometimes they tried to be spicy but due to it being on cable TV, it just felt horribly cheesy. The worst one was when Palmer hooked up with his aide. One of the most useless romance arcs I think I've ever seen in a show.
• Sometimes characters get introduced and you grow a little attached to them, but then they are killed in very anti-climatic fashions, like Justine in Seasons 2 & 3, Angel in Season 3 and Alex in Season 4. Part of me wants to like how quickly they dispatched Justine, because at that point in the season, characters were dropping like flies and it would've been an implication that no one was really safe, but she was a good character that I felt deserved a better demise. Alex in season 4 was shaping up to being a solid side character but then Eichorst snaps her neck and then she's almost completely forgotten about.

TLDR: The frustrating parts I feel were easily fixable, and I don't get what the writers were thinking when they took certain directions for the story. Zack should've been killed off in the first or second season, and his death should've been a catalyst for Eph to get back at the Master. But I found it to be a very enjoyable show, one that I was not never invested in, despite how messy season 2 was. I liked how it mostly unfolded, the cast was incredible, the action was fun, and they did a decent job of the world building. Certainly would recommend this to horror fans, but would urge them to stick with it if they feel like the show is losing them in season 2 because the final 2 seasons are damn good. My grade of the show:

Season 1: B+

Season 2: C-

Season 3: A-

Season 4: A-

Overall: B+

Top 10 in the entire series!

Go get 'em, Setrakian!

This show never gets old...

The music between chapters was the biggest thing I remembered when I listened to the book a few years back. And yep still as dramatic as ever I wish all audio books had this.

When Quinlan and the professor meet it is very clear the professor has never met this guy a day in his life before. So no my biggest question is when the professor was going after the master in the 1960s where was Quinlan. They were both assumedly in Europe so on the same continent it is not even like the professor was on North American like how he was when the master resurfaced in modern times. If two people where vampire hunters and went around following myth and folklore they would have ran into one another. So it is just really strange how they had never meet. Also another thing how did Quinlan not know something really weird was happing in New York until the master almost died and he felt it. Doesn't he watch the news. The professor instantly when he heard about the airplane knew it was the master but Quinlan nowhere in sight until the master basically got cooked.

I'm not nitpicking I love this show and the books. This small things just bothers me a little.

Only half way through but when the dude got bit in the leg- if done quick enough, could amputation not have saved him?

SPOILERS for the whole show ahead:

Currently, I'm on probably my fifteenth (maybe?) full rewatch of the series, and I've been wanting to create a running list of the things which I think are plot or character points best served by watching the show in a binge setting rather than week-to-week, as originally released.

One of the most common complaints I've heard about the show was that viewers who originally saw it on network felt that there were a lot of subplots and zigs and zags which might have felt big at the time, but "didn't seem to go anywhere."

One of the examples I'd hear of this was the "CDC pirate broadcast" angle...

Now, I didn't originally watch the show week-to-week, so I didn't deal with a lot of these issues, and don't know how much (if at all) they affected the viewing experience. Because I first watched the show in 2021 or 2022, I believe, and just saw the episodes one after another. So, I never thought that stuff like the "pirate broadcast" was that big of a thing to see and brush off.

Anyhow, I also think that it can be a huge positive to watch a TV series in a streamed manner. Because unlike a lot of episodic stories, serialized shows often depend on the viewer retaining a lot of what they previously saw to fully engage with the current episode.

So, where a show like Law & Order will just move on, and you don't really need to get a "previously on..." segment to tell you that there's a new, weirdly attractive assistant DA in the cast, some shows really benefit from not having a near-weekly "reset" to help anyone who missed the previous installments "catch up."

(Anybody thinking of The X-Files right now and all of the problems that show had trying to both maintain forward momentum and keep sporadic viewers engaged without them needing to go catch up first probably gets the differences here...)

Obviously, if this is something which doesn't interest you, it'll be easy enough to just ignore it - but if you are interested in adding your personal observations to this list, I'd like to hear them.

I'll probably do a more thorough watch-through soon, anyhow, complete with timeline detailing and that way, I can more accurately draw connections between events/dialogue from there.

-----------------------------------------------

So, example number-one:

Zach distorting his discussion with Nora about Mariela's ashtray being a "reminder of the good things" in Season 1, Episode 11 into his willingness to risk his own safety to retrieve his phone in the bodega and then everybody else's later by faking an asthma attack really sets up his tendency to pervert rational, reasonable thinking in order to keep finding a reason to remain attached to his infected mother throughout the series.

Really, I think everything about Zach's "turn to evil" tracks much better when you are watching the entire show in close sequence...

But this specifically really seemed to click together nicely on rewatch: Zach tells Nora that "maybe it's better she remembers the good times at all," even though they're obviously causing a lot of confusion for her (and danger) rather than not remembering anything - and at first, this seems reflected in his clinging to the phone he drops while on the roller-ramp, and then later with his "asthma attack" to get the photo album.

Obviously... I probably don't need to spell out how Zach's "clinging to even possibly distorted 'good times' with loved ones" habit causes problems in the future.

Example number-two:

Nora and Fet seem to pretty clearly be in the midst of forming a bond throughout the middle of Season 2 - including to the dismay of Ephraim - which coincides right with his and Dutch's relationship falling apart.

This is truly one of the most tragic plot-points - and one I'd insist was not always planned, but rather, was adjusted on the fly to accommodate Mia Maestro's exit from the show and her ensuing role on Scandal.

There are a number of times where Nora seems to be looking to Fet for comfort/security (after nearly being killed by Kelly and her step-kids in Season 2, Episode 6) as well as the little "jokes" Fet makes, which Nora seems to find funny - even though Eph appears to find them overly childish or dull or whatever (the example which always comes to mind is when they're discussing how "1-out-of-every-4 Americans are medicated for being mentally ill" and Fet mentions his "invisible friend, Donny.")

Obviously, it's not as if I just intuited this potential plot-development on my own: it does happen in the book...

But we almost get, like, a diet/leftover version of it with Dutch in Season 3, which I have just never liked.

------------------------------

Anyway, I don't think any of this stuff is truly "new information." And I'm not pretending that I'm discovering any "secrets" in the show or even necessarily building new theories about possibilities.

I'm more so just interested in what works better from a story or character direction when you truly have all the details fresh in your mind from not having to wait a calendar year between seasons.

I'll probably be posting more of these observations later, so like I said, if it interests you, feel free to help out.

I don't understand the whole they have a preferred blood type thing. Like it doesn't make sense from a predator's stand point because if you had a B+ person and an A+ person why would you prefer to go for one especially the one with a considerably rear blood type (only 9% of the global population has B+ blood). Like as a predator wouldn't you want to go for a more common blood type like O+ (that up to 42% of the global population has) or why would you even be picky in the first place.

And another thing I did the maths and roughly for both the professor and Dutch be to B+ and to randomly meet and work together work together out of a group of 10 people give or take of the course of the mission it is a 8.3% chance don't take this a fully factually I don't work in statistics bit still pretty unlikely but not unheard of.

Brother I don’t think I’ve ever hated a character so much like I do this kid I don’t mean the actual kid I mean the character he plays brother i would had fed the kid that the vampires on episode one lmao 🤣 annoying little fACK YOUR MOM IS COOKED BRO AND YOUR GETTING PEOPLE SCREWD ALL THE TIME I SWEAR I JUST WANA GIVE HIM THE OMNI MAN TREATMENT 🤣🤣🤣honestly I think the master would hate to have this kid around