Straining

I admit it, I'm late to the game. I only just started watching the TV series The Strain, and I only started watching it because I thought it was something else. When the show began and the pilot episode unspooled, I was totally confused. Where the hell was the little girl abandoned by her mother at the church? Where was the top secret military bunker with the monsters? Oh wait, shit...wrong book. That was Justin Cronin's The Passage. Oops. My bad.

I hadn't read The Strain but kept watching the show anyway because #1 - I was caught up with The Blacklist and #2 -  Guillermo Del Toro. And the longer I watched, the more I kept asking myself: "Why does this look like someone re-edited Blade 2 with a lawn mower, slapped a sloppy coat of Salem's Lot over it, forced a severely hungover Mick Garris to direct it and then hastily packaged it for immediate release to the Chiller TV after midnight schedule and/or select Wal-Mart bargain bins in select locations south of the Mason Dixon line?"

Granted, I'm only three episodes in and really ought to give it more time. I do plan on watching the rest of it...eventually...I guess. But ... BUT...

I do like his blouse, though. Where can I get one?

Am I really supposed to buy this guy as the biggest goth/metal rock star at large in 2015? Really? This is thus far my biggest problem with the show. This guy - whose name is Gabriel SomethingVaguelyItalian - is so stereotypical it hurts. He's arrogant and rude, dresses like a mannequin in an S&M shop display window, claims to be the son of a preacher man and is only in it "for the pussy." Now, if he actually had talent, I might let all that other shit slide. But judging from the one three-second sound byte of his band practicing, this guy sounds about as musically versatile as a Xerox machine. An old, clanky, 80s model Xerox machine that smells like burnt ink and chugs like a rusty washing machine when you start it up in the morning. He's so unbelievably famous that he has a personal assistant who fetches him threesomes with willing hotties at the snap of his fingers, so rich that he has his own personal doctor to keep him drugged to the gills with prescription narcotics 24/7, but he can't afford to get professional, high quality hair extensions? The best he can do is a cheap Vampira wig from Spirit, sealed in a plastic bag for $7.99 a pop? Really?!?!?!?!

Okay, so I'm supposed to take the threat of a vampire plague outbreak seriously but you can't even give me a believable rock star? Just this - a tired caricature of what most people assume Marilyn Manson must be like in real life. And for all I know, maybe he is, but come on! Could you at least make an attempt at originality? This guy makes Creed look like a revolutionary metal act with actual staying power. I don't lay the blame at the feet of actor Jack Kesy, who is actually pretty amusing as the scorbutic scumbag. It's a characterization/writing problem. "I know! Let's make one of the cast a rock star! Drag out the Halloween box from storage and just throw it at all some tall, skinny guy, tell him to act like a jerk and bingo!"This isn't a character, it's a cartoon.

Although - vindictive female that I am - I did rather enjoy watching Mr. Dirty Dirty Rock Star's hair fall out and penis rot off. On behalf of all women everywhere, thank you for flushing that down the toilet.If only more guys of the scumbag persuasion would follow your example.