FK Season 2, Episode 4 "Bad Blood"
Dec. 3rd, 2023 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
switchbladeeyesThis is a fun one. Jack the Ripper is a vampire and a vampire hunter comes to town! What's not to like?
We kick things off with two people we don't care about on a date. They're only here so one of them can be brutally muuuuuurdered. And boy does it seem gruesome as blood splatters across the scene of the murder we don't otherwise see. To hit the point home, we then get to hear Nat dictating her autopsy findings at the morgue. "Partial remains" and "gaping defects" in the body. Yikes. Rest inpieces peace, victim I don't care about.
Back at the station, Schanke ducks out on meeting with the captain because he hasn't written a report she wanted (and she is well aware he's avoiding her). Nick meets with her and discovers the department has a guest: Liam O'Neal, a police officer from Dublin, Ireland, who has been investigating murders with the same MO since 1979. Murders from Dublin to Iceland to Maine and now, Toronto. Bodies ripped to pieces every time. He's now on the case with the Toronto PD. As is Bridget Hellman, a rookie homicide detective.
Meanwhile, another murder! Same vicious type of attack. On the scene, O'Neal remarks that it's a leeeeettle odd that a body that's been torn up has so little blood. Where did all that blood go? Huh, Nick? Where'd it go? Nick's like, "Why would I know?" And O'Neal's all, "I thought you might have a few ideas." O'Neal suspects what Nick is, but Nick doesn't quite get that yet. Separately, Nat tells Nick that the attack certainly looks like it could be a vampire attack. He decides he's going to go "get some answers," which we all know is code for, talk to Janette. O'Neal watches Nick leave with suspicion. He's got to be wondering, if Nick is a vampire, WTF is he doing as a homicide cop? Covering up murders? Taking leftovers home for dinner or something?
At the Raven, Nick chats with Janette, who knows the attacker is a vampire and she knows which vampire it is. She does not want Nick to look for him because he's hella dangerous, because he's Jack the Ripper! Awesome!
O'Neal is hanging out with Schanke and Natalie pressing them for information about Nick. Does he live alone? Who are his family? Do y'all believe in leprechauns? … what? Then O'Neal point blank asks Nat if she believes in vampires. And Nat's kinda like, oh shit, as she almost veers off the road without answering.
Back at the Raven, Janette reveals that LaCroix made Jack the Ripper into a vampire (whether he was Jack the Ripper before or after he was turned is not entirely clear to me). We head to flashback land and LaCroix is ailing badly. It's basically a terrible case of vampire food poisoning. The toxic blood of a particular "surgeon barber." (An aside: this is Victorian London. Were barber surgeons still a thing at this time?? I think of them as medieval.) LaCroix asks Nick to go make sure the barber is dead so he doesn't become a vampire (I have some issues with this, which I will talk about at the end). LaCroix can't send Janette to do the job because he needs her to keep tending him while he's incapacitated. Nick objects to killing the barber and he and LaCroix have a tiff (typical!). LaCroix describes the barber as a madman who "laughed as I fed" and who is a danger to them all. (I think this is the first time we get the concept of people who are "too evil" to be vampires. Also on Team Too Evil: Hitler and Divia.) Nick's response is basically: all of this sounds like a you problem.
Back in the present, Janette names more serial killers in history that were, in fact, the barber. And I'm like, aren't most (all?) vampires serial killers?? The fact that the barber is a serial killer isn't really the problem for vampires. The problem is that his particular brand of vicious killing attracts attention, the kind of attention the vampire community at large does not want.
Meanwhile, at sunrise, O'Neal is in a state of agitation in his hotel room. He opens the curtains, but the sunlight hurts him. He touches his neck and we see scars from a vampire's bite!! We then go to a totally different flashback land! This is interesting! Is this the only episode where we have unrelated flashbacks? Anway, we learn that as a child, O'Neal was bitten by a vampire as was his mother, who died. Some young men took child O'Neal to a priest, who saw the wounds to his neck. The priest poured holy water over the wounds and they burned O'Neal. Fascinating stuff! Child O'Neal was on his way to becoming a bloodsucking undead creature of the night himself before the priest saved him. This trauma has haunted O'Neal his entire life.
The next night, Nat goes to Nick's loft and lets him know about O'Neal's questioning. They aren't sure (really???) if O'Neal knows about Nick. Nick says O'Neal seems to know that it's a vampire committing the murders though. Nick admits to Natalie that he knows who the vampire is. Also, in flashback land, we learn that Nick did go check out the barber and did not kill him. 'Cause the Nick of this time does not kill "innocent" humans. (But like… what about vampires? Just wait a couple minutes and then the barber will turn. Kill him then?) He also just may be unwilling since LaCroix is the one who asked because their relationship be like that. In the present, Nick blames himself for the killing that has resulted because he did not finish off the barber.
Back at the police station and the morgue, Bridget Hellman is proving to be an astute detective, predicting the likely location of the next anticipated murders based on past patterns. O'Neal takes a shine to her and mentors her. He gifts her a necklace with a lovely cross pendant as a sign of friendship, making her promise to wear it. He is worried for her safety because he knows a vampire is the murderer. And he finds Nick super sus as well.
Nick goes alone to the site of one of the murders. There, his vamp-o-vision reveals there is some soil on the scene that does not match the surrounding soil. Because "I saw it with vamp-o-vision" is not evidence, he later goes to Schanke and Hellman to take them to the scene to collect samples for analysis. Schanke, Nick, and Hellman all have good chemistry/banter. Hellman shows Nick the cross while he is driving, which hurts his eyes and makes him veer into oncoming traffic. "Sorry, a squirrel." Lol okay.
At the station, O'Neal noses around Nick's desk and finds a Raven matchbook (okay, I'm just realizing that Raven stuff is always getting left in places so people will go to the Raven. Matchbook in this episode. Matchbook in "A Fate Worse Than Death." Coaster that forensics somehow missed in "Hearts of Darkness." And matchbook in "Fallen Idol.") O'Neal decides to head down to our favorite nightclub. It's a pretty cool scene once he's inside as Janette kind of stalks him in the periphery. O'Neal is trying to get info on Nick, but not finding cooperation among the staff. O'Neal, it seems, has vampire radar, which starts going off, but it's not that precise (something he and Nick have in common!) He forces a holy cross on a waitress, who is unaffected by the cross, but is affected by this creeper invading her personal space. Bartender Miklos intervenes and O'Neal presses the cross to Miklos's forehead and it does not burn him. Soooo… it seems like Miklos is human? That's never been entirely clear to me. Miklos expels O'Neal from the club and Janette returns to the bar where LaCroix has materialized. Janette's about to make a phone call, apparently at LaCroix's behest, to have Nick come to the bar "just before sunrise." (Part of me is like, isn't my girl sick of doing shit like this? Stuck in the middle of these two jamokes? But then I remember that she doesn't want Nick to confront the barber. So even if she is sick of doing shit like this, she wants to keep Nick away from the investigation.)
Nick dutifully scampers on down to the Raven just before sunrise as planned. Janette kind of playfully teases him before he hears the sound of music being played. LaCroix is in the backroom chilling out with his medieval fiddle. Nick's all, "So this is where you've been hiding." And I'm like, rude. But also, I get it. Last time they saw each other, LaCroix threw a guy off a roof so I see why Nick is frosty. At any rate, the sun has risen so the three of them are stuck together for a super awkward day.
Nick's all, dude, what do you want? And LaCroix's like, nothing, in fact, I'm here to do you a solid. Then we find out more about O'Neal. Turns out as a "half-drained mortal" who "did not taste enough vampire blood" to be transformed into a vampire, he still got certain vampire powers and weaknesses. We don't know the full scope, but he at least has an imprecise vampire radar and sensitivity to sunlight. Now he's a vampire hunter! Bad ass. LaCroix says O'Neal is pursuing vampires "to avenge his family." Which makes me wonder, what does LaCroix know about it? Was he there? Was he the vampire that attacked O'Neal and his mother (unlikely, imo, that LaCroix would have failed)? Or know who the attacker was? Lucky guess? Or perhaps O'Neal has a reputation LaCroix is aware of?
Anyway, LaCroix's like, I'm totes here to help! I set up O'Neal so he would track down the barber and the barber would kill O'Neal. LaCroix comes across as a bit of a Bond villain as he reveals the scheme to Nick. He planted the strange looking soil, which was actually "soybean residue," at the crime scenes because it will lead the police and, therefore, O'Neal to the barber's location. Also, did LaCroix have a bunch of soybean dust in his pocket? Just so he could sprinkle it in front of Nick's face? LOL, petty. I never tire of LaCroix being LaCroix.
Just as LaCroix devilishly devised, police forensics figure out what the dust is. Cohen somehow magically knows when a specific mill that processed soy closed down. She sends Schanke with Hellman to check it out. Cohen is also weirdly dismissive about the possibility that the killer could be there. (So she knows a lot about abandoned mills, but doesn't think that direct evidence pointing exactly to such a mill could be the killer's location? What's going on here?) Nat tries to stall Schanke and Hellman by urging them to wait for Nick or O'Neal, but no one sees any reason to do that. Nat can't reach Nick to tell him what's going on because he's not at home and has left his cell phone in his car (that's convenient, plot-wise, but I'm also recalling that's where such a phone would normally reside and we called them "car phones"). Meanwhile, poor Nick is hella agitated at the Raven because he doesn't know what's going on with the investigation, is probably sleep-deprived, and is stuck spending time with LaCroix.
At the station, O'Neal arrives and Nat reveals that she knows it's a vampire doing the killing, knows Nick is a vampire, and knows they need to get to the mill before the sun sets. O'Neal says "there's not enough time to pick up the proper weaponry." Hard to know exactly what the plan is then. I supposed just get Schanke and Hellman out of the mill.
The filming location of the mill is pretty cool. Very creepy as it gets darker and darker toward sunset. Tension is really ratcheting up as Schanke and Hellman separately search the eerie, abandoned space for an absolute killing machine who we, the audience, know is there and who they are not equipped to stop.
Nick is able to reach Cohen on the Raven's phone and finds out where Schanke and Hellman are. He tells Cohen that they should get out of there, but she is unconcerned as the search is "routine." Nick's stuck because he can't tell her what's really going on. LaCroix hangs up the phone and really rubs it in that Nick already had a chance to kill the barber in the past and now can't stop what's about to go down. The moment the sun sets, Nick both vamps out and peaces out.
Meanwhile, there's trouble at the old mill! Hellman finds a chained and padlocked door. She can't continue the search. She radios Schanke and they decide they're going to leave when Hellman hears something. The padlock is suddenly unlocked. DUN DUN DUN.
O'Neal and Nat arrive on the scene. O'Neal tells her to lock herself in the car and "stay perfectly still." (Why? Is the barber like T-Rex in Jurassic Park? Can't see you unless you move?)
Hellman encounters the barber all vamped out! He's one scary looking mofo! The atmosphere is great, it's so dark and creepy while he's looking especially inhuman in that environment. He's snarling, has got wild hair, and his face is dirty. We're used to a more suave brand of vampire on this show. This guy is more emphatically monster-ish than we've seen. Hellman runs and then finds a way to barricade a door behind her. But the barber is a vampire with vampire strength. It will only slow him slightly. Hellman draws her gun and shoots him when he breaks the doors down, but, of course, her bullets do nothing to him. Hellman flees. Outside the mill, the barber catches up to her and it is extremely harrowing to watch a sympathetic character get hunted down by a vampire. It's just gut wrenching. The show did a great job building up Hellman as a character. So much so that I would have enjoyed seeing more of her. Hellman's efforts to flee the barber are for naught as he grabs her and puts the bite on her while she screams in terror. The cross O'Neal gave her did not protect her :-(
O'Neal takes Natalie's car and rams it into the barber then crashes through a wall. The car catches on fire and the conflagration consumes the barber. Nick arrives just in time to pull O'Neal from the car and save him from the same fiery death. O'Neal promises to keep Nick's secret and says Nick is "not like the rest." O'Neal then cradles Hellman, who has "died" from the barber's attack.
Things later wrap up at the police station. O'Neal will be heading back to Dublin. He and Nat have a nice little flirtation/banter after she asserts she'd "really like to study" him. LOL. (The actors were married at the time so lol, probably was fun to film.)
Nick goes to the Raven where Janette criticizes him for letting O'Neal live. Nick feels indebted to O'Neal for killing the barber, which Nick should have done long ago. Janette warns that O'Neal will be back to hunt down vampires in Toronto. (But no he won't. My biggest disappointment about O'Neal is that he never returns! I remember watching this with Mr. SwitchbladeEyes over the summer and he was super bummed to learn that O'Neal never came back.)
Finally, it turns out that O'Neal didn't go home after all. He's in the graveyard where Hellman is buried (I guess he hung stuck around for a good while). O'Neal is now armed with the "proper weaponry" he was lacking before (a crossbow). Because Hellman is alive! And a vampire! She's skulking about the graveyard à la Lucy Westenra in Dracula. She greets Liam fully vamped out and he dispatches her quickly. Pretty cold. And sad. :-(
I enjoy this episode a lot, but I have one major peeve about it. The show doesn't always seem consistent on the "how are vampires are made" thing. It is pretty well established during the course of the show, and certainly by the end of the show, that you need to drink a vampire's blood after a vampire bites you. But there are times where it seems all that needs to happen is that a vampire bites you and drinks almost to the point of death, but doesn't quite kill you. This episode can't seem to decide where it's going to land on this issue! Like it's one thing for inconsistency between episodes and another for inconsistency in a single episode itself! Janette says O'Neal isn't a vampire because he didn't drink "enough" vampire blood to come over. But neither the barber nor Hellman looked like they drank any vampire blood. Like, why would LaCroix have given the barber vampire blood? It seems a more "drained but not dead" type of conversion, which is why LaCroix is so concerned that the barber will come over. And Hellman… when would she have drunk the barber's blood? Why would he have given it to her? IDK, maybe there's more than one way to make a vampire on this show, but… why would that be the case? And what triggers it?
Also, as I mentioned, I am disappointed we never saw O'Neal again. I am so curious about him. What other powers and weaknesses does he have? Is he faster than a regular human? Stronger? Enhanced healing? Hates garlic? All we know is he has vampire radar, is sensitive to the sun (though he has more tolerance than a vampire), and isn't harmed by religious symbols (though holy water burned him when he was taken to the priest as a child). It's interesting that he has special abilities and weaknesses. I wish Nat had been able to study him more! He's quite unique and his "partial" vampireness might actually hold some keys to curing Nick. What if Nick could be, if not entirely human, a sort of vampire-enhanced human like O'Neal? How many other O'Neal-types are running around out there in the world? We've seen in other episodes that turning someone isn't always easy. And we learn in this episode that there is some sort of quantity of vampire blood required (or not… since this show is all over the place) or the conversion will not be complete. Aside from his state as this quasi-vampire human, O'Neal is also just interesting as a person. He immediately and dispassionately dispatches vampire Hellman though he cared about her when she was human. What goes on in O'Neal's mind in a situation like this? How many vampires has he killed? Isn't it interesting that LaCroix did not dispatch him? I'm assuming O'Neal must be formidable enough that even LaCroix hesitates to take him on as an opponent. I'd have loved to have seen him again.
We kick things off with two people we don't care about on a date. They're only here so one of them can be brutally muuuuuurdered. And boy does it seem gruesome as blood splatters across the scene of the murder we don't otherwise see. To hit the point home, we then get to hear Nat dictating her autopsy findings at the morgue. "Partial remains" and "gaping defects" in the body. Yikes. Rest in
Back at the station, Schanke ducks out on meeting with the captain because he hasn't written a report she wanted (and she is well aware he's avoiding her). Nick meets with her and discovers the department has a guest: Liam O'Neal, a police officer from Dublin, Ireland, who has been investigating murders with the same MO since 1979. Murders from Dublin to Iceland to Maine and now, Toronto. Bodies ripped to pieces every time. He's now on the case with the Toronto PD. As is Bridget Hellman, a rookie homicide detective.
Meanwhile, another murder! Same vicious type of attack. On the scene, O'Neal remarks that it's a leeeeettle odd that a body that's been torn up has so little blood. Where did all that blood go? Huh, Nick? Where'd it go? Nick's like, "Why would I know?" And O'Neal's all, "I thought you might have a few ideas." O'Neal suspects what Nick is, but Nick doesn't quite get that yet. Separately, Nat tells Nick that the attack certainly looks like it could be a vampire attack. He decides he's going to go "get some answers," which we all know is code for, talk to Janette. O'Neal watches Nick leave with suspicion. He's got to be wondering, if Nick is a vampire, WTF is he doing as a homicide cop? Covering up murders? Taking leftovers home for dinner or something?
At the Raven, Nick chats with Janette, who knows the attacker is a vampire and she knows which vampire it is. She does not want Nick to look for him because he's hella dangerous, because he's Jack the Ripper! Awesome!
O'Neal is hanging out with Schanke and Natalie pressing them for information about Nick. Does he live alone? Who are his family? Do y'all believe in leprechauns? … what? Then O'Neal point blank asks Nat if she believes in vampires. And Nat's kinda like, oh shit, as she almost veers off the road without answering.
Back at the Raven, Janette reveals that LaCroix made Jack the Ripper into a vampire (whether he was Jack the Ripper before or after he was turned is not entirely clear to me). We head to flashback land and LaCroix is ailing badly. It's basically a terrible case of vampire food poisoning. The toxic blood of a particular "surgeon barber." (An aside: this is Victorian London. Were barber surgeons still a thing at this time?? I think of them as medieval.) LaCroix asks Nick to go make sure the barber is dead so he doesn't become a vampire (I have some issues with this, which I will talk about at the end). LaCroix can't send Janette to do the job because he needs her to keep tending him while he's incapacitated. Nick objects to killing the barber and he and LaCroix have a tiff (typical!). LaCroix describes the barber as a madman who "laughed as I fed" and who is a danger to them all. (I think this is the first time we get the concept of people who are "too evil" to be vampires. Also on Team Too Evil: Hitler and Divia.) Nick's response is basically: all of this sounds like a you problem.
Back in the present, Janette names more serial killers in history that were, in fact, the barber. And I'm like, aren't most (all?) vampires serial killers?? The fact that the barber is a serial killer isn't really the problem for vampires. The problem is that his particular brand of vicious killing attracts attention, the kind of attention the vampire community at large does not want.
Meanwhile, at sunrise, O'Neal is in a state of agitation in his hotel room. He opens the curtains, but the sunlight hurts him. He touches his neck and we see scars from a vampire's bite!! We then go to a totally different flashback land! This is interesting! Is this the only episode where we have unrelated flashbacks? Anway, we learn that as a child, O'Neal was bitten by a vampire as was his mother, who died. Some young men took child O'Neal to a priest, who saw the wounds to his neck. The priest poured holy water over the wounds and they burned O'Neal. Fascinating stuff! Child O'Neal was on his way to becoming a bloodsucking undead creature of the night himself before the priest saved him. This trauma has haunted O'Neal his entire life.
The next night, Nat goes to Nick's loft and lets him know about O'Neal's questioning. They aren't sure (really???) if O'Neal knows about Nick. Nick says O'Neal seems to know that it's a vampire committing the murders though. Nick admits to Natalie that he knows who the vampire is. Also, in flashback land, we learn that Nick did go check out the barber and did not kill him. 'Cause the Nick of this time does not kill "innocent" humans. (But like… what about vampires? Just wait a couple minutes and then the barber will turn. Kill him then?) He also just may be unwilling since LaCroix is the one who asked because their relationship be like that. In the present, Nick blames himself for the killing that has resulted because he did not finish off the barber.
Back at the police station and the morgue, Bridget Hellman is proving to be an astute detective, predicting the likely location of the next anticipated murders based on past patterns. O'Neal takes a shine to her and mentors her. He gifts her a necklace with a lovely cross pendant as a sign of friendship, making her promise to wear it. He is worried for her safety because he knows a vampire is the murderer. And he finds Nick super sus as well.
Nick goes alone to the site of one of the murders. There, his vamp-o-vision reveals there is some soil on the scene that does not match the surrounding soil. Because "I saw it with vamp-o-vision" is not evidence, he later goes to Schanke and Hellman to take them to the scene to collect samples for analysis. Schanke, Nick, and Hellman all have good chemistry/banter. Hellman shows Nick the cross while he is driving, which hurts his eyes and makes him veer into oncoming traffic. "Sorry, a squirrel." Lol okay.
At the station, O'Neal noses around Nick's desk and finds a Raven matchbook (okay, I'm just realizing that Raven stuff is always getting left in places so people will go to the Raven. Matchbook in this episode. Matchbook in "A Fate Worse Than Death." Coaster that forensics somehow missed in "Hearts of Darkness." And matchbook in "Fallen Idol.") O'Neal decides to head down to our favorite nightclub. It's a pretty cool scene once he's inside as Janette kind of stalks him in the periphery. O'Neal is trying to get info on Nick, but not finding cooperation among the staff. O'Neal, it seems, has vampire radar, which starts going off, but it's not that precise (something he and Nick have in common!) He forces a holy cross on a waitress, who is unaffected by the cross, but is affected by this creeper invading her personal space. Bartender Miklos intervenes and O'Neal presses the cross to Miklos's forehead and it does not burn him. Soooo… it seems like Miklos is human? That's never been entirely clear to me. Miklos expels O'Neal from the club and Janette returns to the bar where LaCroix has materialized. Janette's about to make a phone call, apparently at LaCroix's behest, to have Nick come to the bar "just before sunrise." (Part of me is like, isn't my girl sick of doing shit like this? Stuck in the middle of these two jamokes? But then I remember that she doesn't want Nick to confront the barber. So even if she is sick of doing shit like this, she wants to keep Nick away from the investigation.)
Nick dutifully scampers on down to the Raven just before sunrise as planned. Janette kind of playfully teases him before he hears the sound of music being played. LaCroix is in the backroom chilling out with his medieval fiddle. Nick's all, "So this is where you've been hiding." And I'm like, rude. But also, I get it. Last time they saw each other, LaCroix threw a guy off a roof so I see why Nick is frosty. At any rate, the sun has risen so the three of them are stuck together for a super awkward day.
Nick's all, dude, what do you want? And LaCroix's like, nothing, in fact, I'm here to do you a solid. Then we find out more about O'Neal. Turns out as a "half-drained mortal" who "did not taste enough vampire blood" to be transformed into a vampire, he still got certain vampire powers and weaknesses. We don't know the full scope, but he at least has an imprecise vampire radar and sensitivity to sunlight. Now he's a vampire hunter! Bad ass. LaCroix says O'Neal is pursuing vampires "to avenge his family." Which makes me wonder, what does LaCroix know about it? Was he there? Was he the vampire that attacked O'Neal and his mother (unlikely, imo, that LaCroix would have failed)? Or know who the attacker was? Lucky guess? Or perhaps O'Neal has a reputation LaCroix is aware of?
Anyway, LaCroix's like, I'm totes here to help! I set up O'Neal so he would track down the barber and the barber would kill O'Neal. LaCroix comes across as a bit of a Bond villain as he reveals the scheme to Nick. He planted the strange looking soil, which was actually "soybean residue," at the crime scenes because it will lead the police and, therefore, O'Neal to the barber's location. Also, did LaCroix have a bunch of soybean dust in his pocket? Just so he could sprinkle it in front of Nick's face? LOL, petty. I never tire of LaCroix being LaCroix.
Just as LaCroix devilishly devised, police forensics figure out what the dust is. Cohen somehow magically knows when a specific mill that processed soy closed down. She sends Schanke with Hellman to check it out. Cohen is also weirdly dismissive about the possibility that the killer could be there. (So she knows a lot about abandoned mills, but doesn't think that direct evidence pointing exactly to such a mill could be the killer's location? What's going on here?) Nat tries to stall Schanke and Hellman by urging them to wait for Nick or O'Neal, but no one sees any reason to do that. Nat can't reach Nick to tell him what's going on because he's not at home and has left his cell phone in his car (that's convenient, plot-wise, but I'm also recalling that's where such a phone would normally reside and we called them "car phones"). Meanwhile, poor Nick is hella agitated at the Raven because he doesn't know what's going on with the investigation, is probably sleep-deprived, and is stuck spending time with LaCroix.
At the station, O'Neal arrives and Nat reveals that she knows it's a vampire doing the killing, knows Nick is a vampire, and knows they need to get to the mill before the sun sets. O'Neal says "there's not enough time to pick up the proper weaponry." Hard to know exactly what the plan is then. I supposed just get Schanke and Hellman out of the mill.
The filming location of the mill is pretty cool. Very creepy as it gets darker and darker toward sunset. Tension is really ratcheting up as Schanke and Hellman separately search the eerie, abandoned space for an absolute killing machine who we, the audience, know is there and who they are not equipped to stop.
Nick is able to reach Cohen on the Raven's phone and finds out where Schanke and Hellman are. He tells Cohen that they should get out of there, but she is unconcerned as the search is "routine." Nick's stuck because he can't tell her what's really going on. LaCroix hangs up the phone and really rubs it in that Nick already had a chance to kill the barber in the past and now can't stop what's about to go down. The moment the sun sets, Nick both vamps out and peaces out.
Meanwhile, there's trouble at the old mill! Hellman finds a chained and padlocked door. She can't continue the search. She radios Schanke and they decide they're going to leave when Hellman hears something. The padlock is suddenly unlocked. DUN DUN DUN.
O'Neal and Nat arrive on the scene. O'Neal tells her to lock herself in the car and "stay perfectly still." (Why? Is the barber like T-Rex in Jurassic Park? Can't see you unless you move?)
Hellman encounters the barber all vamped out! He's one scary looking mofo! The atmosphere is great, it's so dark and creepy while he's looking especially inhuman in that environment. He's snarling, has got wild hair, and his face is dirty. We're used to a more suave brand of vampire on this show. This guy is more emphatically monster-ish than we've seen. Hellman runs and then finds a way to barricade a door behind her. But the barber is a vampire with vampire strength. It will only slow him slightly. Hellman draws her gun and shoots him when he breaks the doors down, but, of course, her bullets do nothing to him. Hellman flees. Outside the mill, the barber catches up to her and it is extremely harrowing to watch a sympathetic character get hunted down by a vampire. It's just gut wrenching. The show did a great job building up Hellman as a character. So much so that I would have enjoyed seeing more of her. Hellman's efforts to flee the barber are for naught as he grabs her and puts the bite on her while she screams in terror. The cross O'Neal gave her did not protect her :-(
O'Neal takes Natalie's car and rams it into the barber then crashes through a wall. The car catches on fire and the conflagration consumes the barber. Nick arrives just in time to pull O'Neal from the car and save him from the same fiery death. O'Neal promises to keep Nick's secret and says Nick is "not like the rest." O'Neal then cradles Hellman, who has "died" from the barber's attack.
Things later wrap up at the police station. O'Neal will be heading back to Dublin. He and Nat have a nice little flirtation/banter after she asserts she'd "really like to study" him. LOL. (The actors were married at the time so lol, probably was fun to film.)
Nick goes to the Raven where Janette criticizes him for letting O'Neal live. Nick feels indebted to O'Neal for killing the barber, which Nick should have done long ago. Janette warns that O'Neal will be back to hunt down vampires in Toronto. (But no he won't. My biggest disappointment about O'Neal is that he never returns! I remember watching this with Mr. SwitchbladeEyes over the summer and he was super bummed to learn that O'Neal never came back.)
Finally, it turns out that O'Neal didn't go home after all. He's in the graveyard where Hellman is buried (I guess he hung stuck around for a good while). O'Neal is now armed with the "proper weaponry" he was lacking before (a crossbow). Because Hellman is alive! And a vampire! She's skulking about the graveyard à la Lucy Westenra in Dracula. She greets Liam fully vamped out and he dispatches her quickly. Pretty cold. And sad. :-(
I enjoy this episode a lot, but I have one major peeve about it. The show doesn't always seem consistent on the "how are vampires are made" thing. It is pretty well established during the course of the show, and certainly by the end of the show, that you need to drink a vampire's blood after a vampire bites you. But there are times where it seems all that needs to happen is that a vampire bites you and drinks almost to the point of death, but doesn't quite kill you. This episode can't seem to decide where it's going to land on this issue! Like it's one thing for inconsistency between episodes and another for inconsistency in a single episode itself! Janette says O'Neal isn't a vampire because he didn't drink "enough" vampire blood to come over. But neither the barber nor Hellman looked like they drank any vampire blood. Like, why would LaCroix have given the barber vampire blood? It seems a more "drained but not dead" type of conversion, which is why LaCroix is so concerned that the barber will come over. And Hellman… when would she have drunk the barber's blood? Why would he have given it to her? IDK, maybe there's more than one way to make a vampire on this show, but… why would that be the case? And what triggers it?
Also, as I mentioned, I am disappointed we never saw O'Neal again. I am so curious about him. What other powers and weaknesses does he have? Is he faster than a regular human? Stronger? Enhanced healing? Hates garlic? All we know is he has vampire radar, is sensitive to the sun (though he has more tolerance than a vampire), and isn't harmed by religious symbols (though holy water burned him when he was taken to the priest as a child). It's interesting that he has special abilities and weaknesses. I wish Nat had been able to study him more! He's quite unique and his "partial" vampireness might actually hold some keys to curing Nick. What if Nick could be, if not entirely human, a sort of vampire-enhanced human like O'Neal? How many other O'Neal-types are running around out there in the world? We've seen in other episodes that turning someone isn't always easy. And we learn in this episode that there is some sort of quantity of vampire blood required (or not… since this show is all over the place) or the conversion will not be complete. Aside from his state as this quasi-vampire human, O'Neal is also just interesting as a person. He immediately and dispassionately dispatches vampire Hellman though he cared about her when she was human. What goes on in O'Neal's mind in a situation like this? How many vampires has he killed? Isn't it interesting that LaCroix did not dispatch him? I'm assuming O'Neal must be formidable enough that even LaCroix hesitates to take him on as an opponent. I'd have loved to have seen him again.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 01:53 am (UTC)I agree that the inconsistency about various aspects of canon is confusing and annoying, particularly in this case of bringing across a new vampire. This episode does seem to rely more heavily on the more conventional vampire mythology than quasi established FK canon. The Ripper seems more monster than man, it looks like he sleeps in some kind of coffin-like crate, and it seems to be more a death by draining creates a vampire. Perhaps Janette's comment is meant to try and smooth over the inconsistency without looking at it too closely. I also wondered about the padlock popping open. Great creepy effect, but the only vampire we've seen do anything like that is Divia.
Overall, I loved the creepy atmosphere of this one--the darkening abandoned mill building, and I'm a sucker for some swirling fog and an opera cape. More of a supernatural feel to it than most episodes and I think that works well here.
I really enjoyed Cedric Smith as O'Neal. As you mention, the chemistry between he and Catherine Discher was great throughout the episode. He had just the right touch of gravitas with a bit of a dry sense of humor. The secondary flashback with very helpful as well. I am thinking he does vampire hunting as a side gig to his police career and as such would be known to someone like LaCroix who I would imagine keeps up with such things in the Community unlike Nick.
The character of Bridget Hellman and the actress who played her was wonderful as well. I would have liked to have seen her as a recurring character or even as Nick's 3rd season partner. I do think her death really served the episode well. It really was a visceral blow to see the Barber get her. We're used to characters we care about managing to escape harm, but not in this case. Sad.
And poor Janette playing intermediary again, both in the flashback and present day. I was touched by her concern for LC's wellbeing. It seemed very genuine. We don't often see that kind of emotion from her. I take it that LaCroix needs her to bring victims to him, to flush out the "bad blood." Something he knows Nick will not do. I can't really blame Nick for being suspicious of LaCroix's request that he make sure the Barber is dead. He's been tricked so many times before, but his skepticism was misplaced on this occasion.
It was funny to me that the three of them sit at the Raven all day dressed exactly as they were, right down to Nick wearing his overcoat. I'm sure it was a filming thing, but I'm thinking Janette might want to get out of that evening gown and let her hair down! Can Nick and LaCroix not even be left alone long enough for her to take a shower? Jeez!
I do think they seem to be building a path for O'Neal to return in another episode as well and I'm sorry it didn't happen. His last comment to Natalie, "I hope we never meet again" kind of says it all. I wonder why it never happened? Was it just circumstances that didn't come together, or did JP just decide to go in a different direction and bring Divia back instead? I wonder if that would have been a better end to the series--still a bloodbath potentially if they wanted to kill everyone off, but from an outside force not from a mental breakdown of characters we had come to care about. Hard to say.
I am going to shamelessly promote my own fiction. A returning Liam O'Neal is prominently featured. It's AU post-LK and a bit heavy on the N&N, but it has other redeeming features, and characters.
Unfinished Business
https://archiveofourown.org/works/34905031/chapters/86916388
no subject
Date: 2023-12-31 03:22 am (UTC)This kind of thing is welcome here!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 09:38 pm (UTC)That possible Lacroix - O'Neill connection screams to be examined in fanfic. :)
I found O'Neill quite charming. I highly second