“The Master,” both the name of the series‘ main villain and the season finale’s title, concludes a season with some powerful, gruesome moments — but even more less-compelling scenes.
After the first 12 episodes largely served as a means of gathering disparate characters into one place (with the exception of Gus) and slowly unveiling the threat of some very, very creepy vampires, the 13th episode preps the group for its final battle against the entity behind all the mayhem, the Master.
After Eldritch Palmer is rescued from death, the now sprightly old man gets to immediate work to make sure he stays on top of the chaos. He raids Setrakian’s house, thinking himself invincible and with vampiric powers after the Master’s visit — until Eichorst informs him that the transformation hasn’t taken place. Palmer’s increasingly uneasy bodyguard, Mr. Fitzwilliam, finally leaves him, and mere minutes later Palmer is visiting the minister of health to try and prevent a large-scale operation from messing with his (and the Master’s) plans. Palmer’s inelegant solution ends with a death, followed by a promotion for the CDC director, Everett Barnes.
After Gus is rescued from a vampiric onslaught, he finds himself deep underground with another vampire, the one who’s been killing the Master’s kin. Gus finds that he is to become a group of ancient vampires’ mortal agent, which he doesn’t accept until he hears there’s a payday involved.
With the main group, Eph and Fet go on a reconnaissance mission to scope out the Master’s layer, which also happens to be owned by Bolivar. Eph struggles with how he can keep his son safe, and Nora is the voice of reason when she says that he’ll be safest by Eph’s side, not left somewhere else. It’s nice to see that after losing her mother, Nora is putting her grief to good use.
After a battle against a horde of vampires involving swords, guns and even dynamite, the face off with the Master doesn’t last long. When Eph begins breaking windows, daylight starts to make the Master sizzle. However, things don’t go as planned when the Master goes out into daylight — while weakened, the Master manages to escape. Eph then asks the important question: if sunlight can’t kill the master, what can?
While the finale sets the tone for what should be an improved second season, the first has been a series of hurdles that weren’t all cleared.
To be fair, in some ways the series has done things right. The show delivers on its promise of horror and gore — the vampires’ throat stingers are terrifying to look at every time they emerge, and there’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as watching a thin worm burrow into someone’s skin, or even worse, eye, and then slither around visibly under a layer of skin.
Even stronger than the commitment to horror are the visuals. Colours in all scenes pop, and this is crucial in a show with a lot of action happening at night. Rather than go full-black and obscure people. blue is used more frequently, and stark colour contrasts often help to make scenes even more memorable, like when Eph is captured by police.
Which leads to what the series has been doing wrong: its main weakness is in its character development. Far more often than not, the series tries to go for emotional scenes but misses the mark entirely. Just as in the novels, the characters aren’t quite three-dimensional, with no real indication of motivations.
As a lead, Eph doesn’t have much going for him (horrible hairpiece notwithstanding). His relationship with his wife and son doesn’t ever feel truly genuine, and he can’t quite place himself firmly as a leader or follower. Nora as potential as a character but this first season has been unkind to her — she spends most of it without doing anything of substance and is hindered by her mother’s Alzheimer’s. With her mother gone, she may finally become a woman of action.
These problems resonate with most characters, with the exception of Setrakian’s gruff and no-nonsense personality and Fet’s rotation between joking around and badass-ery. Because the audience has no emotional stake, attempts at wringing out emotion are dead on arrival. Who cares about Eph’s wife before she turned into a vampire? Who asked for a scene involving Zack and Nora’s mother? Whose idea was Dutch Vanders in general?
Now that the audience is more familiar with the characters, one can only hope that season two establishes stronger character links and has fun with the world it’s in. Now that New York is thoroughly infested, season two needs to draw a lot more blood.
