FK Season 2, Episode "Baby, Baby"
Nov. 8th, 2024 06:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
switchbladeeyesJust when you thought Nick couldn't possibly have more to feel guilty about than he already does, along comes "Baby, Baby."
This is a very interesting episode that puts Nick in the position of trying to stop a vampire he created from regaining her humanity. The shoe is on the other foot!
We start off at night with a construction crew congregating near a food truck (I feel pretty confident that in the 90s, we would have called a food truck like this a "roach coach.") A person screams and plummets to their death off an adjacent silo facility.
The cops arrive. This location is a plant of some kind that is shut down with construction crews working around the clock until "they can get it up to standard." I do appreciate that the show gives an explanation for all these people working at night, instead of just randomly having people working late night hours when you wouldn't usually expect that.
It's unclear whether the death was a suicide or homicide. Nick and Schanke start investigating. Schanke says plummeting to his death "is the last way I'd want to go. Three seconds seems like three hours." 😭😭😭 Stick a knife in my heart, why don’t you, FK! 💥🛩️
At the scene where the victim died, Nick picks up a necklace with a broken chain and a cross pendant, which, of course, hurts him to look at. He puts it down and the camera focuses on the onlookers in the background, including a woman on the construction crew, who carefully walks away.
Schanke says that the word is that the victim didn’t get along with a coworker, Calvin Trilling, who swears he was with his girlfriend at the time the victim fell. Schanke then skeevily goes on about how hot the girlfriend is. Oh, Schanke. Nick pulls one of his disappearing acts (in front of a lot of people!) and is gone when Schanke turns around.
Nick is in pursuit of the woman from the construction crew, also moving at speed. We realize she’s a vampire. And Nick knows her. Her name is Serena. He wants to know why she ran, and it’s because she recognized Nick and didn’t want to see him. There’s a History here 🤔
At the police station, Nick interviews Trilling. Trilling admits the necklace on the scene was his, but that he’d lost it a week prior and that the victim must have found it and kept it. Yeah, sure, okay buddy, that sounds believable. We’re not dealing with a master criminal here. Trilling admits he didn’t get along with the victim. He claims he was with his girlfriend, Serena, at the time the victim died. The plot thickens.
Meanwhile, in a different room, Schanke interviews Serena with Nick watching behind the one-way mirror. She definitely knows he’s there though. Serena corroborates Trilling's alibi, saying they were doing “intimate, consensual things" at the time the victim died.
Natalie arrives and tells Nick and Cohen that there’s no evidence to point clearly to a homicide, but that a scraping from under the victim’s nails might reveal a match to Trilling, from whom they got a DNA sample.
Schanke finds it surprising to learn that Serena is a welder, certainly a traditionally male job (so "Flashdance!") Serena toys with his surprised expectations a bit and then points out that the job is very well paid. Serena looks at the glass, right at Nick, and Natalie realizes Nick knows her. Nat presses Nick for information, but all he says is that “she’s a mistake.”
To the flashback!! Very cool flashback setting and costumes. 1920s French nightclub where we find Serena dressed in a tuxedo with her hair styled like a man. A pregnant friend encourages Serena to touch her belly to feel the baby. Serena is enchanted and her friend says that Serena can have the same, she just needs to find a husband. The young woman’s husband mocks Serena for her masculine attire, saying she’ll never find a husband dressed like that. Cool as a cucumber, Serena says that’s the point.
Serena goes to the bar for a drink when a handsome stranger walks in. It’s Nick. She tells the bartender that drinks are on her, and then steps away. Nick knows the bartender, who offers Nick “the usual.” Definitely makes me wonder if the bartender knows what he is. It’s possible Nick is drinking wine, but why would he do that? I like to think the bartender knows, and perhaps is even a vampire himself.
The bartender points to Serena’s back and says the payment is already covered. Nick wonders, “But why would that gentleman…?” then realizes his benefactor is a woman.
Back in the present, Nick just tells Natalie that Serena is a “strong-willed woman.” Nick suspects her of being Up To Something, but he doesn’t know what.
Meanwhile, Cohen has acquired Trilling’s rap sheet. The man has quite an unsavory history of violent crime, but there’s insufficient evidence to hold him for murder. As Trilling and Serena are being released, Nat wonders what Serena could possibly see in a man like him. What, indeed.
Nick stops Serena and wants to talk to her alone, but she refuses. She doesn't want anything to do with him. When she tries to walk away, he grabs her arm and she yells out, “Let me go!” while Trilling demands Nick take his hands off her, creating quite the scene in the police station. Serena tells Nick, “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
Whew, loads of tension here! Love it. And you just know this little spectacle is going to be hot gossip in the precinct. ☕
(Also, anyone else think it’s weird that Nick is kept on this case after it’s clear he has a Thing with Serena, who is not only the main suspect’s girlfriend but also a key witness?)
Anyway, time to check in with the Nighcrawler. LaCroix is broadcasting about pain, both physical and emotional. Perhaps, he postulates, mistakes of the heart cause the most pain. Nick is listening because he cannot stop letting LaCroix crawl into his head for some reason. Nick is in his car and has swung back by the plant where Serena's crew works. Not creepy at all, Nick, to be following Serena like this.
Back in the 1920s club flashback, Serena is serenading Nick, and sits down at his table. She got a real "Marlene Dietrich in 'Morocco'” vibe. Nick says she has a beautiful singing voice “for a man.” As she lights a cigarette, she asks Nick if how she dresses bothers him. He’s not really bothered, rather curious. She tells him “because if I dress like a woman, they’ll treat me like one, a cloistered little flower who’s supposed to laugh at their jokes and cook them dinner.” You’ve got to admire her here for publicly flouting convention and gender expectations.
Serena says that she also likes things “that are not what they appear to be.” Like Nick. She’s been looking into him, knows he’s a man of the night, a traveler, a man not to be locked into marriage or have the burden of a family. Nick says it’s not that he wouldn’t like to have a family. Serena picks up that nonetheless he “can’t” or “won’t.” He says he has “other concerns,” which kind of confirms for her what she just said about him. She comes in hard after that, describing Nick as the perfect man for her. They kiss.
And we get a very cool transition as the time period returns to the 90s. From Nick’s kiss with Serena in the French nightclub, we flip to a different couple kissing inside the Raven. Nick is there talking to Janette about Serena. Janette encourages Nick not to feel guilty about Serena because “she knew what she was getting into.” As the audience, we don’t know at this point what they’re talking about. (Of course, having seen this before, I know exactly what went down. I get Janette’s role in trying to make Nick not feel bad about himself. But F that, Nick should feel bad about himself here, this is his fault. More on that later.)
Janette postulates that more than guilt is at play here. Both Nick and Serena spend quite a bit of time with mortals. Nick apparently had told Janette at some point that Serena “shared his soul.” So perhaps Serena is living her life the way she is because she’s looking for answers like Nick, maybe even looking for the same thing as Nick.
Flashback for a sec where Serena says to Nick, “I want eternity, Nicolas. You can give it to me.”
In the Raven, Nick insists Serena’s not looking for the same thing. And Janette wonders if that is true. Janette picks up on something else: Nick is jealous. Serena has a human boyfriend, and he doesn’t like that (ostensibly because Serena is using him for something, but he's def kinda jealous, I think). He thinks Serena is up to something, but what? Nick decides he’s going to "see someone who knows.” Which, to Nick’s annoyance, means he’s going to have to talk to LaCroix.
At the police station, Nat and Schanke chat about love. We get a great story of Schanke as a sixth grader writing love poems to the girl he had a crush on. Then the principal found the poems and read them over the PA at school. Mortifying. Schanke says he therefore knows “exactly what Nick is going through” vis-a-vis his “old friend” Serena (remember the mortifying scene when she was trying to leave the station). This makes Nat wonder if Schanke thinks Nick loved Serena. Schanke’s like, oh yeah, 100%, and he probably still does.
Nat looks perturbed at this revelation. Then logs in to Nick’s computer? Where blood test results suddenly are? At any rate, Trilling has a chromosomal aberration: instead of typical XY, he’s XYY. Nat reports some studies link the extra Y with greater aggression, which like, is not something you can arrest someone for. But Nat can run a chromosome test on the material under the victim’s fingernails, and results will come a lot faster than the DNA test.
Over at the plant, Nick, apparently procrastinating on the whole talking to LaCroix thing, stalks Trilling. In the bowels of the plant, Trilling meets with Serena and they start making out. Trilling admits to the murder, and she tells him to keep in line or they will be parted.
Spicy 🔥 flashback time. Nick and Serena are making out. (And hey, Nick’s fireplace mantle is there.) It’s getting quite hot and heavy and Nick tells her she should leave. But she refuses because she wants “eternity.” But Nick doesn’t want to be responsible for that. (Ahhhhh just careening toward disaster here).
In the present, Trilling really wants to have sex with Serena. She says, “just a little less than 24 hours.”
In the flashback, Serena assures Nick that there “will be no blame, no guilt, this is my choice.”
In the present, Serena breaks off from her makeout sesh and goes back to work.
In the flashback, Nick vamps out and bites Serena.
In the present, we get another cool transition as we shift to Nick’s place where he’s drinking blood straight from a bottle and looks at the fireplace mantle, the same one as in the flashback.
The next night at his place, Nick heads downstairs, and who is sitting upstairs? LaCroix! First time we’ve seen him at Nick’s place since “Dark Knight.” He’s been there before for sure, surreptitiously in "Killer Instinct" and skulking on the roof in “Stranger Than Fiction.” But never at the same time as Nick, certainly never invited by Nick. Hell must be freezing over.
Nick’s even being hospitable because LaCroix’s got a glass of blood. But it’s cow’s blood, which LaCroix finds to be “perfectly dreadful.” Even though that’s a rude thing to say to his host, Nick thanks him for coming. LaCroix being LaCroix, he’s going to relish the shit out of this encounter, and also is not going to stop being rude to Nick. He razzes on Nick for falling for a woman who doesn’t conform her appearance to gender norms. He just cannot seem to help picking on Nick.
Nick is not taking the bait. He says he fell for “her fire, her independence.” And LaCroix’s like, great, isn’t that how she’s behaving now? Like, what’s the prob?
Nick’s all, “She’s with a mortal man” as if it’s any of his business. Similar to Janette, LaCroix wonders if Nick is jealous. Nick, also not taking that bait, asserts that Serena is using the man for something. He thinks LaCroix may know what that something is. ‘Cause I guess LaCroix is like Wikipedia for vampire lore.
Nick entreats LaCroix by saying, “I’m asking for your help.” Which, damn, you know is the last thing Nick wants to say.
Love LaCroix’s response, “And I’m enjoying it, I really am.” LOL, jerk.
Nick wants to know whether “it’s possible for her to mate with a mortal.” (I assume he means without killing or turning the mortal?)
LaCroix’s all, depends what she’s after.
Back to the flashback. (Yet another cool transition, from the cold hearth in Nick’s apartment to a fire burning the hearth in the 1920s.) Nick’s basking in the afterglow of his fun, bitey romp in the sheets with Serena. Nick goes to her, kisses her forehead, puts his arm around her. (It would all be sweet if I didn’t know what was about to happen.) Nick says he’s given her what she wanted. She agrees. He says immortality and eternity. And she says, “A baby.”
Oh.
No.
Ohhhhhhh. Nooooooo.
In the present, Nick presses LaCroix to answer his question. LaCroix offers his own question, is a baby what she still wants?
And Nick’s like 😮, is it possible?
Interesting that LaCroix meanders on over to the elevator’s sliding door and touches the scorch marks there. From when Nick tried to kill him by ramming a flaming stake into his chest the last time they were in this room together. Quite a contrast from that moment to now when Nick wants him there. I am enjoying their fucked up relationship, I really am.
LaCroix fills Nick in that there are legends that say “special mortal men” can make a female vampire pregnant. The baby will be mortal. Now we know why Serena is interested in Trilling: he’s not a typical human man because of the extra Y chromosome. LaCroix thinks this legend is hogwash.
Nick asks what happens to the man and LaCroix says, “He dies, of course.” That does seem to be the logical outcome of sex with a vampire. Die. Mebbe come back as a vampire, if you’re lucky/unlucky.
Nick goes to Natalie for Science Answers. Natalie is just as skeptical as LaCroix. She doesn’t have answers for him. She does observe though that he loved Serena. He says that it doesn’t matter because she sees him as a betrayer. (Which is fair!). Nat gets a call on the chromosome results from the material under the victim’s nails: XYY. Trilling is the culprit, which we already knew and for which the police now have actual evidence.
Nick and Schanke go to the plant to arrest Trilling. Trilling clocks Schanke and takes off. Nick pursues, capturing him easily. Serena watches as Trilling is taken to a squad car.
Serena comes to see Nick at his place. He says he can’t give back what he took from her. She tells him, “Then please don’t take any more.” She wants him to leave her alone and accuses Nick of going after Trilling because of jealousy. Nick’s like, nah, we have evidence he committed a crime so I'm just doin' my police job. She wants Nick out of her business. He tells her not to kill Trilling to which she has a biting retort, “That’s sweet. You murder me, then you lecture me on ethics.”
Ouch.
Nick’s continues to do just that though, telling her that she can’t just go around killing people ‘cause she wants a baby. Serena reveals that’s not all this is about. If she can become pregnant, then she will also become mortal.
Nick’s face is like, whuuuuuuuuuuut?
Still, he says, it’s just a legend, Trilling’s death could be for nothing. Serena’s perspective is that it’s worth the risk. And who cares, Trilling is a violent man, a murderer that the world isn’t going to miss. Which… probably true. But we know 90s Nick doesn’t make those kinds of calls, and he doesn’t think Serena has any right to do so either. But Serena believes that if Nick could get his mortality at the cost of one human life, he would take that chance.
But we, the audience know, no he wouldn’t. In “Dark Knight,” when given the choice between the “the cup or the girl,” to save the cup reputed to cure vampirism, or save Alyce, he chose Alyce. Though part of me wonders, what if the choice had been “the cup or a violent murderer”? The cup or Trilling? Could that have changed Nick's decision?
Anyway, Serena is like, you, of all people, have no right to stop me. Which, fair.
Back in the holding cells at the police station, Trilling is making a ruckus. Serena arrives, puts the whammy on the officer on guard duty, and springs Trilling from the joint. Nick calls and asks Schanke to check the holding cells. Trilling is gone. The officer is very confused. Nick rolls in and overhears this, telling the others that Trilling must be with Serena.
Indeed, that is so. Trilling is in a car with Serena, asking where they’re going. She cryptically says, “higher than high, at the peak of the fire, under the light of a perfectly full moon.” She looks up at the moon in the sky.
Because this episode is full of terrific transitions between scenes, we get another one as the moon fades into the clock at the police station. Nick and Schanke are trying to track down Serena. Schanke’s going to go check out her apartment. Nick just zips off on his own as he always does. Time is running short until the exact minute when “the moon will be perfectly full.” Perturbed, Nick goes to see LaCroix at the radio station. He accuses LaCroix of knowing there was more to the legend than a baby.
LaCroix’s like yeah, whatevs, I kept the whole “becoming mortal again” part from you to protect you. Because that would just bum Nick out. Even if such a cure were possible, it would be unattainable for him as a male. LaCroix thinks this is amusing.
Nick demands to know where Serena and Trilling are. LaCroix doesn’t know, and says Nick should keep out of it. LaCroix has GOT to be enjoying this. I think he’s toying with Nick. The vibe is: hasn’t Nick tried to keep LaCroix out of Nick’s business? Well then, who is Nick to get into Serena’s business? And, what if it works (not that there’s any way LaCroix thinks that it will), isn’t that good for you, too, Nick? A relief for your “silly guilt.”
Off to the flashback, Nick tells Serena he thought she wanted to be a vampire. That isn’t what she wanted AT ALL. “Why would I want to adopt your life any more than any other man’s?” Youch. She wanted to have sex with him to get pregnant, to have a child free of the constraints of marriage, free of the constraints of a man who was going to control how she lives her life. Nick thought she knew he was a vampire. Nope! She had no idea. She begs him to “take it back.” But, of course, he cannot.
Look, I’m #TeamSerena here. 100%. Nick is a mythical, supernatural being. Why the everloving fuck would he assume that a bunch of innuendo meant Serena knew he was a vampire and that she wanted to be one too? All this “eternity” talk could have been like, how humans can talk to each other about living a life together! This is all on Nick. He should have been really fucking clear with her. Damn, Nick, at least LaCroix gave you a choice before he turned you (IMO, he was pretty clear he was going to kill Nick and then make him immortal... mebbe Nick should have asked more questions, but still, he had a choice). Poor Serena.
Back at the radio station, LaCroix is starting to get irritated with Nick for continuing to ask questions about the legend, but relents when Nick uses the magic word. LaCroix tells Nick that in the legend, the deed has to be done “higher than high, at the peak of the fire, by the light of a perfectly full moon.”
Serena and Trilling are making out. She wants to bone him. She looks up because oh, we’re at the CN Tower. Why, that’s a high place. Tallest freestanding structure in the world, as a matter of fact. She’d like to bone him up at the top.
Nick is still trying to track her down (apparently, his vampire radar is not calibrated because he should be able to use that to find her, but I digress). He calls Schanke to see if he found any clues in her apartment. Nothing that points to anything for him. She keeps “chilled red wine” in her fridge though lol. Nick is at the plant on his cell phone, having thought the tall silo where Trilling murdered the victim earlier would be the correct high place. Nick mentions the “higher than high” line to Schanke. Serena’s fridge has a picture of the CN Tower on it. Schanke relays that info and Nick realizes that must be the place.
Serena flies Trilling up to the top of the tower, which Trilling weirdly doesn’t question much. He’s not thinking with his brain at this point anyway.
Nick arrives and demands that Serena let Trilling go. She’s upset, she abhors what she is, she’s desperate to escape the darkness. All of this is because of Nick. She wants to know how he can deny her this. She begs him to “find it in your heart to give me my life back” just like she begged him after he turned her. Nick turns his back, deciding not to stop her.
Trilling meanwhile has no problem with a cop standing RIGHT THERE while he fucks Serena. I think it’s safe to assume he must be whammied at this point. And I guess Nick is sticking around because…? I dunno, curiosity?
The cops arrive at the base of the tower. They need to get through a locked gate to access the tower.
While Serena and Trilling get it on, Nick flashes back to the night when he had sex with her and turned her. Trilling and Serena finish. Trilling looks dead. Nick asks Serena if she’s all right. She turns to him and her eyes are those of a vampire. It didn’t work. She is weeping blood, and asks, “What have I done?”
Question: Have we otherwise seen vampires crying blood tears? I feel like they just usually have water tears? Any fun theories on why blood sometimes, but not every time? (I mean, other than that canon inconsistencies are the show's MO.)
Nick tries to console Serena, who’s dream has been dashed, and who has killed a man, a totally vampire thing to do; we know she hates vampire things. Nick tells her to go, he’ll take care of the cops and Trilling. But she doesn't want his help, she doesn’t “want anything from you ever again.” It's all just terribly sad. She takes off with Trilling’s body.
Nick goes down to the base of the tower. He tells Schanke, if Trilling and Serena were ever there, they’re not there now. No one knows where they’ve disappeared to.
At the very end, Nick flashes back to when Serena was mortal, and she smiled at him as their eyes met for the first time before it all went so horribly wrong.
Whhhhhew. This is a bummer of an episode. I feel for Serena and Nick, but especially Serena. Poor outcomes for both of them. And on the police side, there’s no arrest so no closure on the murder.
While it is a bummer, it is also SUCH an interesting episode. Until this point, I don’t believe we ever met another vampire that is so much like Nick. And yet, because he turned her, she wants nothing to do with him. They won’t be allied despite both being on quests to regain their mortality. I think Nick would want to work together, but he cannot have that. It’s all so Tragic.
Even aside from their history, I also can’t see him NOT trying to control her in some way if she stuck around. He was trying to do that through most of the episode. He’s also got a possessive/jealous streak in him with respect to her. Though he denies it in the episode, several people remark on jealousy being one of his motivations for being up in her biz. And, well, if it weren’t Serena you kind of have to wonder if he would have gotten as Involved. Being trapped in that type of relationship is completely antithetical to who she is. Nick Gets It, I think. He's kinda stuck in a relationship like that himself. Unlike LaCroix though, Nick lets Serena go.
As ever, I wonder about the “what’s next?” of the flashbacks. No way in hell would Serena want to stay with Nick, yet she’s also somewhat vulnerable as a new vamp. Nick knows from prior experience bringing people over (the rando on the beach in a season 1 episode, and the plague doctor from “Fever”) that new vampires are susceptible to losing control and going off on a murder spree. From the conversations Nick had with LaCroix and Janette in the episode, it’s clear that they know who Serena is, and I think it likely that they actually knew her. I bet Nick sought out their help when the shit hit the fan in the 1920s. I doubt Serena liked them at all, and she probably peaced out as soon as she could.
In the flashback history, we’re not far off in time from the “Father’s Day” scene in Paris when LaCroix violently loses all patience with Nick over the search for a cure. At that point, the cure thing wasn't a new issue, but in that episode, LaCroix had reached his absolute limit with it. I wonder if Nick’s colossal wronging of Serena pushed him to step up his search cure into much higher gear, not just for himself, but also for her.
It would have been very interesting to see Serena again on the show. “The Human Factor” wouldn’t have been such a disaster of an episode (and dare I say, might even have been a good episode) if it’d had Serena instead of Janette. It also would have been interesting if the legend from “Baby, Baby” had been proved true in “The Human Factor," and it had only been misinterpreted in "Baby, Baby."
This is a very interesting episode that puts Nick in the position of trying to stop a vampire he created from regaining her humanity. The shoe is on the other foot!
We start off at night with a construction crew congregating near a food truck (I feel pretty confident that in the 90s, we would have called a food truck like this a "roach coach.") A person screams and plummets to their death off an adjacent silo facility.
The cops arrive. This location is a plant of some kind that is shut down with construction crews working around the clock until "they can get it up to standard." I do appreciate that the show gives an explanation for all these people working at night, instead of just randomly having people working late night hours when you wouldn't usually expect that.
It's unclear whether the death was a suicide or homicide. Nick and Schanke start investigating. Schanke says plummeting to his death "is the last way I'd want to go. Three seconds seems like three hours." 😭😭😭 Stick a knife in my heart, why don’t you, FK! 💥🛩️
At the scene where the victim died, Nick picks up a necklace with a broken chain and a cross pendant, which, of course, hurts him to look at. He puts it down and the camera focuses on the onlookers in the background, including a woman on the construction crew, who carefully walks away.
Schanke says that the word is that the victim didn’t get along with a coworker, Calvin Trilling, who swears he was with his girlfriend at the time the victim fell. Schanke then skeevily goes on about how hot the girlfriend is. Oh, Schanke. Nick pulls one of his disappearing acts (in front of a lot of people!) and is gone when Schanke turns around.
Nick is in pursuit of the woman from the construction crew, also moving at speed. We realize she’s a vampire. And Nick knows her. Her name is Serena. He wants to know why she ran, and it’s because she recognized Nick and didn’t want to see him. There’s a History here 🤔
At the police station, Nick interviews Trilling. Trilling admits the necklace on the scene was his, but that he’d lost it a week prior and that the victim must have found it and kept it. Yeah, sure, okay buddy, that sounds believable. We’re not dealing with a master criminal here. Trilling admits he didn’t get along with the victim. He claims he was with his girlfriend, Serena, at the time the victim died. The plot thickens.
Meanwhile, in a different room, Schanke interviews Serena with Nick watching behind the one-way mirror. She definitely knows he’s there though. Serena corroborates Trilling's alibi, saying they were doing “intimate, consensual things" at the time the victim died.
Natalie arrives and tells Nick and Cohen that there’s no evidence to point clearly to a homicide, but that a scraping from under the victim’s nails might reveal a match to Trilling, from whom they got a DNA sample.
Schanke finds it surprising to learn that Serena is a welder, certainly a traditionally male job (so "Flashdance!") Serena toys with his surprised expectations a bit and then points out that the job is very well paid. Serena looks at the glass, right at Nick, and Natalie realizes Nick knows her. Nat presses Nick for information, but all he says is that “she’s a mistake.”
To the flashback!! Very cool flashback setting and costumes. 1920s French nightclub where we find Serena dressed in a tuxedo with her hair styled like a man. A pregnant friend encourages Serena to touch her belly to feel the baby. Serena is enchanted and her friend says that Serena can have the same, she just needs to find a husband. The young woman’s husband mocks Serena for her masculine attire, saying she’ll never find a husband dressed like that. Cool as a cucumber, Serena says that’s the point.
Serena goes to the bar for a drink when a handsome stranger walks in. It’s Nick. She tells the bartender that drinks are on her, and then steps away. Nick knows the bartender, who offers Nick “the usual.” Definitely makes me wonder if the bartender knows what he is. It’s possible Nick is drinking wine, but why would he do that? I like to think the bartender knows, and perhaps is even a vampire himself.
The bartender points to Serena’s back and says the payment is already covered. Nick wonders, “But why would that gentleman…?” then realizes his benefactor is a woman.
Back in the present, Nick just tells Natalie that Serena is a “strong-willed woman.” Nick suspects her of being Up To Something, but he doesn’t know what.
Meanwhile, Cohen has acquired Trilling’s rap sheet. The man has quite an unsavory history of violent crime, but there’s insufficient evidence to hold him for murder. As Trilling and Serena are being released, Nat wonders what Serena could possibly see in a man like him. What, indeed.
Nick stops Serena and wants to talk to her alone, but she refuses. She doesn't want anything to do with him. When she tries to walk away, he grabs her arm and she yells out, “Let me go!” while Trilling demands Nick take his hands off her, creating quite the scene in the police station. Serena tells Nick, “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
Whew, loads of tension here! Love it. And you just know this little spectacle is going to be hot gossip in the precinct. ☕
(Also, anyone else think it’s weird that Nick is kept on this case after it’s clear he has a Thing with Serena, who is not only the main suspect’s girlfriend but also a key witness?)
Anyway, time to check in with the Nighcrawler. LaCroix is broadcasting about pain, both physical and emotional. Perhaps, he postulates, mistakes of the heart cause the most pain. Nick is listening because he cannot stop letting LaCroix crawl into his head for some reason. Nick is in his car and has swung back by the plant where Serena's crew works. Not creepy at all, Nick, to be following Serena like this.
Back in the 1920s club flashback, Serena is serenading Nick, and sits down at his table. She got a real "Marlene Dietrich in 'Morocco'” vibe. Nick says she has a beautiful singing voice “for a man.” As she lights a cigarette, she asks Nick if how she dresses bothers him. He’s not really bothered, rather curious. She tells him “because if I dress like a woman, they’ll treat me like one, a cloistered little flower who’s supposed to laugh at their jokes and cook them dinner.” You’ve got to admire her here for publicly flouting convention and gender expectations.
Serena says that she also likes things “that are not what they appear to be.” Like Nick. She’s been looking into him, knows he’s a man of the night, a traveler, a man not to be locked into marriage or have the burden of a family. Nick says it’s not that he wouldn’t like to have a family. Serena picks up that nonetheless he “can’t” or “won’t.” He says he has “other concerns,” which kind of confirms for her what she just said about him. She comes in hard after that, describing Nick as the perfect man for her. They kiss.
And we get a very cool transition as the time period returns to the 90s. From Nick’s kiss with Serena in the French nightclub, we flip to a different couple kissing inside the Raven. Nick is there talking to Janette about Serena. Janette encourages Nick not to feel guilty about Serena because “she knew what she was getting into.” As the audience, we don’t know at this point what they’re talking about. (Of course, having seen this before, I know exactly what went down. I get Janette’s role in trying to make Nick not feel bad about himself. But F that, Nick should feel bad about himself here, this is his fault. More on that later.)
Janette postulates that more than guilt is at play here. Both Nick and Serena spend quite a bit of time with mortals. Nick apparently had told Janette at some point that Serena “shared his soul.” So perhaps Serena is living her life the way she is because she’s looking for answers like Nick, maybe even looking for the same thing as Nick.
Flashback for a sec where Serena says to Nick, “I want eternity, Nicolas. You can give it to me.”
In the Raven, Nick insists Serena’s not looking for the same thing. And Janette wonders if that is true. Janette picks up on something else: Nick is jealous. Serena has a human boyfriend, and he doesn’t like that (ostensibly because Serena is using him for something, but he's def kinda jealous, I think). He thinks Serena is up to something, but what? Nick decides he’s going to "see someone who knows.” Which, to Nick’s annoyance, means he’s going to have to talk to LaCroix.
At the police station, Nat and Schanke chat about love. We get a great story of Schanke as a sixth grader writing love poems to the girl he had a crush on. Then the principal found the poems and read them over the PA at school. Mortifying. Schanke says he therefore knows “exactly what Nick is going through” vis-a-vis his “old friend” Serena (remember the mortifying scene when she was trying to leave the station). This makes Nat wonder if Schanke thinks Nick loved Serena. Schanke’s like, oh yeah, 100%, and he probably still does.
Nat looks perturbed at this revelation. Then logs in to Nick’s computer? Where blood test results suddenly are? At any rate, Trilling has a chromosomal aberration: instead of typical XY, he’s XYY. Nat reports some studies link the extra Y with greater aggression, which like, is not something you can arrest someone for. But Nat can run a chromosome test on the material under the victim’s fingernails, and results will come a lot faster than the DNA test.
Over at the plant, Nick, apparently procrastinating on the whole talking to LaCroix thing, stalks Trilling. In the bowels of the plant, Trilling meets with Serena and they start making out. Trilling admits to the murder, and she tells him to keep in line or they will be parted.
Spicy 🔥 flashback time. Nick and Serena are making out. (And hey, Nick’s fireplace mantle is there.) It’s getting quite hot and heavy and Nick tells her she should leave. But she refuses because she wants “eternity.” But Nick doesn’t want to be responsible for that. (Ahhhhh just careening toward disaster here).
In the present, Trilling really wants to have sex with Serena. She says, “just a little less than 24 hours.”
In the flashback, Serena assures Nick that there “will be no blame, no guilt, this is my choice.”
In the present, Serena breaks off from her makeout sesh and goes back to work.
In the flashback, Nick vamps out and bites Serena.
In the present, we get another cool transition as we shift to Nick’s place where he’s drinking blood straight from a bottle and looks at the fireplace mantle, the same one as in the flashback.
The next night at his place, Nick heads downstairs, and who is sitting upstairs? LaCroix! First time we’ve seen him at Nick’s place since “Dark Knight.” He’s been there before for sure, surreptitiously in "Killer Instinct" and skulking on the roof in “Stranger Than Fiction.” But never at the same time as Nick, certainly never invited by Nick. Hell must be freezing over.
Nick’s even being hospitable because LaCroix’s got a glass of blood. But it’s cow’s blood, which LaCroix finds to be “perfectly dreadful.” Even though that’s a rude thing to say to his host, Nick thanks him for coming. LaCroix being LaCroix, he’s going to relish the shit out of this encounter, and also is not going to stop being rude to Nick. He razzes on Nick for falling for a woman who doesn’t conform her appearance to gender norms. He just cannot seem to help picking on Nick.
Nick is not taking the bait. He says he fell for “her fire, her independence.” And LaCroix’s like, great, isn’t that how she’s behaving now? Like, what’s the prob?
Nick’s all, “She’s with a mortal man” as if it’s any of his business. Similar to Janette, LaCroix wonders if Nick is jealous. Nick, also not taking that bait, asserts that Serena is using the man for something. He thinks LaCroix may know what that something is. ‘Cause I guess LaCroix is like Wikipedia for vampire lore.
Nick entreats LaCroix by saying, “I’m asking for your help.” Which, damn, you know is the last thing Nick wants to say.
Love LaCroix’s response, “And I’m enjoying it, I really am.” LOL, jerk.
Nick wants to know whether “it’s possible for her to mate with a mortal.” (I assume he means without killing or turning the mortal?)
LaCroix’s all, depends what she’s after.
Back to the flashback. (Yet another cool transition, from the cold hearth in Nick’s apartment to a fire burning the hearth in the 1920s.) Nick’s basking in the afterglow of his fun, bitey romp in the sheets with Serena. Nick goes to her, kisses her forehead, puts his arm around her. (It would all be sweet if I didn’t know what was about to happen.) Nick says he’s given her what she wanted. She agrees. He says immortality and eternity. And she says, “A baby.”
Oh.
No.
Ohhhhhhh. Nooooooo.
In the present, Nick presses LaCroix to answer his question. LaCroix offers his own question, is a baby what she still wants?
And Nick’s like 😮, is it possible?
Interesting that LaCroix meanders on over to the elevator’s sliding door and touches the scorch marks there. From when Nick tried to kill him by ramming a flaming stake into his chest the last time they were in this room together. Quite a contrast from that moment to now when Nick wants him there. I am enjoying their fucked up relationship, I really am.
LaCroix fills Nick in that there are legends that say “special mortal men” can make a female vampire pregnant. The baby will be mortal. Now we know why Serena is interested in Trilling: he’s not a typical human man because of the extra Y chromosome. LaCroix thinks this legend is hogwash.
Nick asks what happens to the man and LaCroix says, “He dies, of course.” That does seem to be the logical outcome of sex with a vampire. Die. Mebbe come back as a vampire, if you’re lucky/unlucky.
Nick goes to Natalie for Science Answers. Natalie is just as skeptical as LaCroix. She doesn’t have answers for him. She does observe though that he loved Serena. He says that it doesn’t matter because she sees him as a betrayer. (Which is fair!). Nat gets a call on the chromosome results from the material under the victim’s nails: XYY. Trilling is the culprit, which we already knew and for which the police now have actual evidence.
Nick and Schanke go to the plant to arrest Trilling. Trilling clocks Schanke and takes off. Nick pursues, capturing him easily. Serena watches as Trilling is taken to a squad car.
Serena comes to see Nick at his place. He says he can’t give back what he took from her. She tells him, “Then please don’t take any more.” She wants him to leave her alone and accuses Nick of going after Trilling because of jealousy. Nick’s like, nah, we have evidence he committed a crime so I'm just doin' my police job. She wants Nick out of her business. He tells her not to kill Trilling to which she has a biting retort, “That’s sweet. You murder me, then you lecture me on ethics.”
Ouch.
Nick’s continues to do just that though, telling her that she can’t just go around killing people ‘cause she wants a baby. Serena reveals that’s not all this is about. If she can become pregnant, then she will also become mortal.
Nick’s face is like, whuuuuuuuuuuut?
Still, he says, it’s just a legend, Trilling’s death could be for nothing. Serena’s perspective is that it’s worth the risk. And who cares, Trilling is a violent man, a murderer that the world isn’t going to miss. Which… probably true. But we know 90s Nick doesn’t make those kinds of calls, and he doesn’t think Serena has any right to do so either. But Serena believes that if Nick could get his mortality at the cost of one human life, he would take that chance.
But we, the audience know, no he wouldn’t. In “Dark Knight,” when given the choice between the “the cup or the girl,” to save the cup reputed to cure vampirism, or save Alyce, he chose Alyce. Though part of me wonders, what if the choice had been “the cup or a violent murderer”? The cup or Trilling? Could that have changed Nick's decision?
Anyway, Serena is like, you, of all people, have no right to stop me. Which, fair.
Back in the holding cells at the police station, Trilling is making a ruckus. Serena arrives, puts the whammy on the officer on guard duty, and springs Trilling from the joint. Nick calls and asks Schanke to check the holding cells. Trilling is gone. The officer is very confused. Nick rolls in and overhears this, telling the others that Trilling must be with Serena.
Indeed, that is so. Trilling is in a car with Serena, asking where they’re going. She cryptically says, “higher than high, at the peak of the fire, under the light of a perfectly full moon.” She looks up at the moon in the sky.
Because this episode is full of terrific transitions between scenes, we get another one as the moon fades into the clock at the police station. Nick and Schanke are trying to track down Serena. Schanke’s going to go check out her apartment. Nick just zips off on his own as he always does. Time is running short until the exact minute when “the moon will be perfectly full.” Perturbed, Nick goes to see LaCroix at the radio station. He accuses LaCroix of knowing there was more to the legend than a baby.
LaCroix’s like yeah, whatevs, I kept the whole “becoming mortal again” part from you to protect you. Because that would just bum Nick out. Even if such a cure were possible, it would be unattainable for him as a male. LaCroix thinks this is amusing.
Nick demands to know where Serena and Trilling are. LaCroix doesn’t know, and says Nick should keep out of it. LaCroix has GOT to be enjoying this. I think he’s toying with Nick. The vibe is: hasn’t Nick tried to keep LaCroix out of Nick’s business? Well then, who is Nick to get into Serena’s business? And, what if it works (not that there’s any way LaCroix thinks that it will), isn’t that good for you, too, Nick? A relief for your “silly guilt.”
Off to the flashback, Nick tells Serena he thought she wanted to be a vampire. That isn’t what she wanted AT ALL. “Why would I want to adopt your life any more than any other man’s?” Youch. She wanted to have sex with him to get pregnant, to have a child free of the constraints of marriage, free of the constraints of a man who was going to control how she lives her life. Nick thought she knew he was a vampire. Nope! She had no idea. She begs him to “take it back.” But, of course, he cannot.
Look, I’m #TeamSerena here. 100%. Nick is a mythical, supernatural being. Why the everloving fuck would he assume that a bunch of innuendo meant Serena knew he was a vampire and that she wanted to be one too? All this “eternity” talk could have been like, how humans can talk to each other about living a life together! This is all on Nick. He should have been really fucking clear with her. Damn, Nick, at least LaCroix gave you a choice before he turned you (IMO, he was pretty clear he was going to kill Nick and then make him immortal... mebbe Nick should have asked more questions, but still, he had a choice). Poor Serena.
Back at the radio station, LaCroix is starting to get irritated with Nick for continuing to ask questions about the legend, but relents when Nick uses the magic word. LaCroix tells Nick that in the legend, the deed has to be done “higher than high, at the peak of the fire, by the light of a perfectly full moon.”
Serena and Trilling are making out. She wants to bone him. She looks up because oh, we’re at the CN Tower. Why, that’s a high place. Tallest freestanding structure in the world, as a matter of fact. She’d like to bone him up at the top.
Nick is still trying to track her down (apparently, his vampire radar is not calibrated because he should be able to use that to find her, but I digress). He calls Schanke to see if he found any clues in her apartment. Nothing that points to anything for him. She keeps “chilled red wine” in her fridge though lol. Nick is at the plant on his cell phone, having thought the tall silo where Trilling murdered the victim earlier would be the correct high place. Nick mentions the “higher than high” line to Schanke. Serena’s fridge has a picture of the CN Tower on it. Schanke relays that info and Nick realizes that must be the place.
Serena flies Trilling up to the top of the tower, which Trilling weirdly doesn’t question much. He’s not thinking with his brain at this point anyway.
Nick arrives and demands that Serena let Trilling go. She’s upset, she abhors what she is, she’s desperate to escape the darkness. All of this is because of Nick. She wants to know how he can deny her this. She begs him to “find it in your heart to give me my life back” just like she begged him after he turned her. Nick turns his back, deciding not to stop her.
Trilling meanwhile has no problem with a cop standing RIGHT THERE while he fucks Serena. I think it’s safe to assume he must be whammied at this point. And I guess Nick is sticking around because…? I dunno, curiosity?
The cops arrive at the base of the tower. They need to get through a locked gate to access the tower.
While Serena and Trilling get it on, Nick flashes back to the night when he had sex with her and turned her. Trilling and Serena finish. Trilling looks dead. Nick asks Serena if she’s all right. She turns to him and her eyes are those of a vampire. It didn’t work. She is weeping blood, and asks, “What have I done?”
Question: Have we otherwise seen vampires crying blood tears? I feel like they just usually have water tears? Any fun theories on why blood sometimes, but not every time? (I mean, other than that canon inconsistencies are the show's MO.)
Nick tries to console Serena, who’s dream has been dashed, and who has killed a man, a totally vampire thing to do; we know she hates vampire things. Nick tells her to go, he’ll take care of the cops and Trilling. But she doesn't want his help, she doesn’t “want anything from you ever again.” It's all just terribly sad. She takes off with Trilling’s body.
Nick goes down to the base of the tower. He tells Schanke, if Trilling and Serena were ever there, they’re not there now. No one knows where they’ve disappeared to.
At the very end, Nick flashes back to when Serena was mortal, and she smiled at him as their eyes met for the first time before it all went so horribly wrong.
Whhhhhew. This is a bummer of an episode. I feel for Serena and Nick, but especially Serena. Poor outcomes for both of them. And on the police side, there’s no arrest so no closure on the murder.
While it is a bummer, it is also SUCH an interesting episode. Until this point, I don’t believe we ever met another vampire that is so much like Nick. And yet, because he turned her, she wants nothing to do with him. They won’t be allied despite both being on quests to regain their mortality. I think Nick would want to work together, but he cannot have that. It’s all so Tragic.
Even aside from their history, I also can’t see him NOT trying to control her in some way if she stuck around. He was trying to do that through most of the episode. He’s also got a possessive/jealous streak in him with respect to her. Though he denies it in the episode, several people remark on jealousy being one of his motivations for being up in her biz. And, well, if it weren’t Serena you kind of have to wonder if he would have gotten as Involved. Being trapped in that type of relationship is completely antithetical to who she is. Nick Gets It, I think. He's kinda stuck in a relationship like that himself. Unlike LaCroix though, Nick lets Serena go.
As ever, I wonder about the “what’s next?” of the flashbacks. No way in hell would Serena want to stay with Nick, yet she’s also somewhat vulnerable as a new vamp. Nick knows from prior experience bringing people over (the rando on the beach in a season 1 episode, and the plague doctor from “Fever”) that new vampires are susceptible to losing control and going off on a murder spree. From the conversations Nick had with LaCroix and Janette in the episode, it’s clear that they know who Serena is, and I think it likely that they actually knew her. I bet Nick sought out their help when the shit hit the fan in the 1920s. I doubt Serena liked them at all, and she probably peaced out as soon as she could.
In the flashback history, we’re not far off in time from the “Father’s Day” scene in Paris when LaCroix violently loses all patience with Nick over the search for a cure. At that point, the cure thing wasn't a new issue, but in that episode, LaCroix had reached his absolute limit with it. I wonder if Nick’s colossal wronging of Serena pushed him to step up his search cure into much higher gear, not just for himself, but also for her.
It would have been very interesting to see Serena again on the show. “The Human Factor” wouldn’t have been such a disaster of an episode (and dare I say, might even have been a good episode) if it’d had Serena instead of Janette. It also would have been interesting if the legend from “Baby, Baby” had been proved true in “The Human Factor," and it had only been misinterpreted in "Baby, Baby."
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Date: 2024-11-11 07:19 pm (UTC)Totally understandable. 100%.
I have to say, I like the first season scenes better. They did a better job of building the drama in the first season--I felt Janette and Nick's passion, it had more of a sense of realism and grittiness to it. There wasn't much about the Near Death sequence that felt like the back room of a 13th century tavern…
Completely agree. The atmosphere and vibes in that first season flashback were way better. The show did not capture that same dark and seductive feeling in the “Near Death” flashback, which was too bad. I blame the lighting choices. Seriously. The lighting is a marked difference between those flashbacks and I think had a lot to do with why the second season version did not hit the mark like the S1 scene did.
Turn down the lights and get some candles in here! S1 “got it.” These supernatural events should evoke a sense of darkness and foreboding. But when the lighting is not quite right, the show just doesn’t quite get there, and the feeling is more one of... mild concern. 🤷♀️
I had the same problem with the exorcism scene in “Sons of Belial.” Lighting makes a huge difference.