Everybody on the Strain is obsessed with making bad choices

Oh boy. Sunday night's episode of The Strain called "Occultation" featured the long awaited "Eclipse" moment that has been advertised for a year now. The build up to the solar eclipse made me think that the proverbial shit was really going to hit the fan. In my mind I was thinking swarms of vampires emerging from the sewers with blood dripping from their maws and attacking New Yorkers enmasse. What actually happened is kind of "meh." A few people got infected, but New York remains pretty much New York, only with people growing increasingly more terrified of "strange events" because there are reports and eyewitnesses of supposed crazy people attacking others "non crazy" people.

But just like most horror tropes, the Strain's strongest plot moments come at the expense of intelligence. First off, there's Dr. Ephraim Goodweather who approaches his wife Kelly by going to their home. Ephraim is "on the lam" because the FBI has footage of him dragging the dead pilot from the airplane we saw in episode one down the hallway, so yeah, he's wanted for murder. Still, Ephraim manages to duck the pursuers enough to get to his wife's home and warn her. And it's pretty stern. "Get out of New York. Take the kid. Run." She replies, "You're scaring me." And his response is, "I'm scared. There's a pestilence. You have to run." Can you be any clearer than that?

But of course, she doesn't. I mean, why would you question the word of a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control that's had a profound career as an M.D.? I tell you what. If a doctor from the CDC told me that I needed to drop everything and get out of town, I'd grab the keys and be gone within the hour.

But the disbelief doesn't stop there. We have Gus getting ramrodded into helping the Nazi vampire, Mr. Eichorst, who meets him in what appears to be a sewer of all places. First, I wouldn't go into a sewer or an abandoned subway tunnel to meet anyone. Second, when Gus meets Mr. Eichorst again, this Nazi vampire in makeup clearly demonstrates supernatural speed and power. Eichorst threatens Gus' mother and then tosses him some cash to do yet another illegal job, and it never occurs to Gus to just go home, stuff his mother in the car, take the cash and get a full tank of gas, and just leave town. I mean like drive to Mexico leave town.

And then we have poor Jim Kent (played by veteran actor Sean Astin). Jim knows what he's doing is probably endangering the world, yet he still works for Dr. Eichorst all because his wife (whose dying of cancer) is getting signed up for an experimental treatment. But to damn the whole world for love? That's a serious lack of judgement. Jim gets the IQ80 award for the first season of The Strain (and I say that because it's been renewed for a second season).

And finally we have the rat guy, Vasily Fet, who is now killing vampires. He knows that there are monsters under the streets, and no one will believe him. Vasily is like the male version of "Cassandra" from the Trojan War (brush up on your Greek mythology, and you'll know exactly to what I'm referring). He goes to his dad's house and tells his father to take mom and go on a long vacation. Of course, dad just "blah blah blah. You never visit. Now a stranger wants to tell me what to do. Blah blah blah blah." And Vasily shakes his head and mutters, "I tried..."

So yeah, things are getting very ominous on The Strain, and it frustrates me because it doesn't need to be this way. If people would just listen to "the experts" then this wouldn't be an apocalyptic story. But I guess that's the point, right? How can you have an apocalypse if everyone is listening?