The Strain is a silly show with a serious message about crisis response

This post describes the plot of “The Strain” through the second episode of the second season.

When it comes to TV-watching, I loathe the phrase “guilty pleasure.” The idea of feeling “guilt” about anything one watches on television, of all media, strikes me as a waste of emotional bandwidth. But I’m not sure how else to describe my love for FX’s “The Strain.” It’s silly and campy and slightly trashy, but darn if I don’t tune in every week to see what lead actor Corey Stoll and his merry band of vampire-hunting misfits is up to.

Now that my throat is sufficiently clear, allow me to suggest that one of the reasons I continue to tune in is that I think “The Strain” has something interesting and valuable to say about the ways structures respond to crises. It may not be the most realistic television show in terms of the threat it presents. But its portrayal of the way people react to unprecedented dangers and unexpected situations strikes me as all-too-frighteningly accurate.

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For those of you who aren’t watching, “The Strain” is about an outbreak of vampirism in New York City that slowly engulfs Manhattan and the other boroughs. On the side of light is a team led by CDC agent Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), Holocaust survivor and vampire combat veteran Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley) and city health inspector/rat exterminator/Renaissance-butt-kicker Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand). On the side of dark is aged vampire The Master (voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, portrayed by Robert Maillet), his Nazi goon Thomas Eichorst (Richard Sammel) and billionaire businessman Eldritch Palmer (Jonathan Hyde).

These characters have all sorts of more-or-less-standard motivations: Ephraim is trying to save his family from the vampire outbreak; Setrakian wants revenge against The Master for him having killed his wife and also fed on all his friends in a concentration camp; Palmer wants The Master to help him live forever; the Nazi goon is a Nazi goon. You get the drift.

Far more interesting than any of that is “The Strain’s” treatment of how structures can be used to aid and retard (mostly retard, in this case) the achievement of a goal. Last year I highlighted the way the show handles bureaucracies and the people who staff them. The all-too-realistic portrayal of bureaucratic infighting (and backscratching) may have been the most frightening aspect of the show.

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The vampire plague was initially allowed to spread throughout the city because the head of the CDC was too busy trying to fob off responsibility for the outbreak to the Defense Department and the secretary of Health and Human Services allowed herself to be convinced by Palmer that she would make a suitable candidate for president if he helped cover up the outbreak. Smaller agencies weren’t immune from such shenanigans: Fet, the health inspector, gets sent to clear a rat from a major donor’s apartment building rather than investigate what’s happening at schools, hospitals, churches. Modest corruption leads to much bigger problems down the road.

“Do not be so easily distracted,” Abraham warns his companions. “He [The Master] thrives on human self-interest and bureaucratic complacency.”

The government is not working alone, of course, and no one understands instituting distractions and appealing to human self-interest better than the corporate sector. Palmer’s Stoneheart group is knee deep in the effort to lock Manhattan down and gain control of its residents. Stoneheart’s interference comes not in the form of an evil, mustache-twirling bad guy. Rather, it comes with a smile. It comes with an open line of credit from the corporation to a city in crisis. It comes with a warehouse filled with needed goods and services. It comes with a rousing speech at one such “Freedom Center” about coming together and standing strong in the face of danger.

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“When the Twin Towers were built, there were very mixed feelings about how they looked,” Palmer tells a group of hungry New Yorkers who have seen blood drinking monsters with giant, tentacular tongues suck their friends, families and neighbors dry. “But! When terrorists brought them down, they became a symbol for our city. We all banded together and we rebuilt the site. Because whether we loved or hated them, those towers belonged to us! Why? Because we New Yorkers are family. And when faced with a threat we will link arms, help each other up, and we will endure! Because this is our town! We take care of our own. And that’s what today is all about.”

It’s an epic address, one couched in exactly the kind of language that would appeal to a besieged people. And sure, Palmer sometimes sounds a bit hokey, as when he gleefully, idiotically says “Freedom for all!” to an individual whose hand he shakes after the speech. But it’s the sort of language that would undoubtedly be used to manipulate people into, say, giving strangers their blood type during a vampire crisis in order to receive a bag of groceries.

Flag and family, bureaucratic butt-covering and professional advancement, these are the things we care about. And these are the things The Master will manipulate in order to gain what he wants.

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