S01.E05: Runaways

[bluebonnet]

Ugh, I was so creeped out by the lawyer lady smelling her kids.  The best part of this show is that vampires are monsters.  I also really love that the coloring of the episodes is that sort of 80's horror.  What's the technical name for that called?  

 

It does seem like Palmer's part in all of this is the money side.  He has almost limited resources to pay off certain people in order to keep the spread of information contained, at least until the vamps have time to build up a sizable force (assuming the virus has a stopping point and/or a survival instinct because if everyone gets turned, the vamps die).  The vamps have too many weaknesses to be a lasting threat at this point once the news gets out.  I mean, these things can't even go outside for half the day.  However, once their numbers become significant, clean up and destroy methods are nearly impossible.  It now makes so much more sense that there were four "survivors".  Focus at the start would be on the survivors and determining what killed the rest, but it also helped sell the story that this was a simple carbon monoxide poisoning.  And now that internet and such is disrupted in NYC, not enough of what's happening there will be making it's way to the rest of the country or world.  

 

Plus that Everett dude at the CDC seems like he's also going to go out of his way for the CDC to be saying that it's not real.  It seems sort of implausible that all this containment of information could occur in the way they are suggesting in the show, but if I heard that there were vampires in NYC I would laugh because, duh, vamps don't exist.  But I would also look to the CDC to tell me whether or not there was a real virus I should be concerned about.  If the CDC says there is nothing to worry about, I wouldn't be worrying.  After all, the CDC mixes humor in with their preparedness guides (see their zombie apocalypse manual) and any government organization that has the ability to be funny earns lots of trust points in my book.  Plus, the media generally goes a long way towards keeping the CDC honest, or at least open, because once the media starts hammering on about some outbreak, the CDC has to respond, especially if there are videos of the infected. But....I guess if rich dude owns half the media and rich dude has a stake in the game, he's probably going to insure that at least the mainstream media focuses on something different.  Like carbon monoxide.  Would love to see how many minutes of CNN is devoted to carbon monoxide poisoning right now. 

 

Whose house were Abe and Eph in?  It seemed implied that it was Abe's house but would someone with a pawn shop in the bad part of town have a house with marble countertops?  

 

There's something a little tacky about using a German death camp as the background for a vampire show.

Oh yeah.  I had a knee jerk reaction to that at first.  I knew it was coming after all that focus on Abe's tattoo while he was in prison, but it still bugged me when it finally happened.  Though the idea of humans being put into camps for the vamps to feed off is interesting.  The virus has to stop spreading eventually or else the vampires can't survive.  They are going to need continued access to human blood and what better way than to make it easy with the humans all docile due to threat of death and evil, sadistic camp directors?  Would sort of suck if the Master was just doing this as a way to suicide.  

 

Also, can anyone tell me why there are so many fart face threads?  Is this some sort of joke in the show that I've missed?  Or maybe some sort of inside joke with the forums that has gone over my head?  I've never seen this fart face thing in any other show forum on this site so its really odd that it's so popular in this forum.  Maybe I've just become too old to find the humor in fart jokes.  

[fauntleroy]

Whose house were Abe and Eph in?  It seemed implied that it was Abe's house but would someone with a pawn shop in the bad part of town have a house with marble countertops?

 

Ha that's a good question. I thought it was Eph's house, but if so why way Abe making breakfast? I figured Abe lived above the pawnshop, where that beating heart was.

 

I don't get the fart face threads either.

[scarynikki12]

I think it was the home of Emma and her dad.

[roctavia]

Abe talked about the vamps being weaker and easier to kill in the early stages... maybe as they change, they get smarter/ less impulsive.. sort of like the head guy helping the master. I'm assuming he's one of them, since he's got missing face pieces and stuff... but he was outside in the Nazi camp... and he talks and thinks and strategizes, so maybe these early stages are sort of like infancy- they impulsively kill and eat without any control, but then as they grow they regain some semblance of intelligence? And maybe have less weaknesses?

 

I am also wondering how Gabe's manager knew to call a urologist... he didn't seem coherent enough to say, hey my penis fell of, can you call me a doctor?? And he didn't seem to actually care that his junk fell off. Did it clog the toilet? I'd have expected him to attack her before he could have told her to call a urologist for him.

 

But that said, I did like the scene with the cleaner, and I had hoped he'd managed to get out of their alive...

[bluebonnet]

I think the urologist thing was brought up when the other doctor visited him.  Gabe showed the pill pusher doctor his penis and something was obviously wrong and the pill pusher told him he needed to see a urologist.  I don't remember if the pill pusher or Gabe spoke to the manager after that, but it was set up for someone to have contacted the urologist before his junk fell off.  

[roctavia]

I think the urologist thing was brought up when the other doctor visited him.  Gabe showed the pill pusher doctor his penis and something was obviously wrong and the pill pusher told him he needed to see a urologist.  I don't remember if the pill pusher or Gabe spoke to the manager after that, but it was set up for someone to have contacted the urologist before his junk fell off.  

 

Ah.. okay.. I must have missed that... it makes much more sense that way! Thanks :)

[Terrafamilia]

What I really noticed this episode is that the sound editors are going overboard to make sure the sound effects are just plain obvious. I don't mean the vombies' nom nom shlurp shlup stuff (which is appropriate gory fun) but most everything else. Every shove at the Nazi camp was like a full body tackle and every movement of Abe's sword was a blatant post-production artifact. It had the effect of taking me out of the story.

[Bruinsfan]

I do recall hearing the expected celery crunch when Eichorst caught Gus' fist. Anyone care to lay odds on evidence of his broken hand bones showing up in any subsequent episodes?

[Omar G.]

He takes out a guy shortly after with a pipe in the alley, so clearly his hands are fine.

[CletusMusashi]

I was listening for the hand crunch and didn't hear one, although maybe my sound wasn't up high enough.

Afterwards, I figured Nazi Vamp had specifically chosen not to injure the hand, because

a. He was skilled enough not to have to, and, more importantly,

b. He didn't want the body heist job getting botched because of an injured hand.