Monday, January 11, 2016

Hemlock Grove, Season 3, Episode 2: Souls on Ice



Time for random gruesomeness – two people embalming a body and the boss is pretty harsh with her assistant who she promptly fires. The poor guy’s partner (and carrying his child) is Most Unimpressed (apparently this isn’t the first job he was fired from. This is not his day).

He goes back to his boss to beg to be taken back –only to find her brutally murdered corpse. Well there goes job security.

Roman wakes up the next day and Annie is still hanging around. After she brushes off the monster from last episode he asks her about feeding – all the more important when she says she doesn’t kill people. She realises he’s never been taught how to be an Upir. He asks her for an education – and she says most Upir work in jobs with blood available (she’s an ER nurse).

Peter arrives and they brainstorm what monster attacked Roman without any answers. Roman also tells Peter that Annie’s an Upir since Peter is all for him dumping Annie in a taxi (he assumes that Annie is another of Roman’s hook ups). He, wisely, doesn’t think Annie being an Upir makes her especially more trustworthy either. She did save Roman’s life though and he needs her so Peter goes with it.

Annie seems curiously reluctant to accept Roman’s attacker was a monster and Destiny arrives for some psychic woo-woo. It’s the same aura-sensing monster we saw last episode. Whatever it was terrified her – and she knows the creature went to the morturary.

Roman, Destiny and Annie check the mortuary with more psychic investigation. While they’re there they also find a vat of corpse blood which apparently mortuaries have (I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I’m quite happy to be ignorant in this matter). They find it odd that the blood is refrigerated and one of the corpses has been deliberately drained – Annie realises the owner of the mortuary was also upir. Apparently upir morticians are common – and the beastie that attack Roman is targeting upir.

It does attack them and Destiny kills it with a mortuary tool of organ squishing… but the attack sends Roman into a seizure.

Annie also decides to reminisce about her lost, dead family before she became an upir. Angst interrupted by Destiny telling them that the beastie is still about

Olivia re-wraps Shelly’s always-bandaged hands, this time wrapping the bandages (we see blackened, shrivelled fingers) so she has fingers not mittens. Shelly’s reluctant to take her pills because they deaden all her emotions.


Olivia still has to keep making up lies and excuses for the absence of Norman – setting up a crafty “explanation” for Shelley to overhear. The explanation doesn’t include Olivia murdering him.

Shelly throws up her pills.

Olivia goes to see Isaac, Roman’s PI who is still supposed to be tacking down the creepy lizard doctor – Dr. Spivak (no I can’t keep calling him creepy lizard doctor). He has done a whole lot of research and found, among other things, that Dr. Spivak hasn’t aged in 70 years – Isaac of course thinks of a conventional explanation while Olivia, of course, thinks there’s more.

Johann is still falling apart terribly when Olivia visits (“you’re either doing too many drugs or too few”) with her info on Spivak. He also tells her he has no blood nutrient because of her little stunt. Oops, should have thought about that Olivia.

Of course while Roman angsts mightily about lack of blood, Olivia takes care of business and hunts down a homeless person to a squat – but backs off when she sees them injecting drugs under their tongue.

Plan b involves Olivia trying to eat her neighbour – only after biting him she is sick all over the new carpet.

She goes to see Johann who is neither helpful nor sympathetic –but does have a glass of blood for him – and she can’t keep that down either. She’s an upir who can’t eat blood. I find it amusing, Johann finds it “intriguing.”

Shelly looks out her window and decides to help some kiddies who lost their kite – the kids run screaming when they see her. Shelly flies the kite and lets the string unravel and it fly away before playing on the swings to classical music then visits Priscilla’s grave. I’m sure it’s all artistic and meaningful – and is a prequel to Shelly wrapping the chain around her neck and hanging herself… it’s beautiful and sad and tragic… and then the tree branchs snaps under her weight.

Over to Peter and Andreas who are meeting with a Croatian gang (against Peter’s better judgement) and treating us to unnecessary gross commentary about one of the women) to sell their stolen caviar (yes, caviar – it’s from an endangered beluga sturgeon and illegal to import). The gang members refer to Peter and Andreas with several anti-Rroma terms and there’s clearly no love lost between these business partners. Andreas is also pulling a fast one – and Peter is increasingly worried by Andreas’s dangerous scams and greedy pushing for more money.

An expert is called in to taste it to authenticate (they assume it’s fake because no-one trusts the Rroma) – and he is impressed that it’s the real thing rather than fake pretentious overpriced fish eggs. Peter’s still not remotely pleased with Andreas’s antics (even if he did bribe the taster) and dumping him into these dangerous situations without telling him.

Time to catch up with Miranda who was kidnapped last season by Dr. Spivak the reptile-flying-manta-ray-thing – said doctor is babbling and making breakfast for Miranda and Pearl (Nadia’s nurse) who are very tense – and Nadia stabs him with a fork. Yeah, that’s me in the morning as well – why do people insist on talking before 9:00am?!

He spits on her – and the saliva burns her like acid the then throws aside her body while Miranda cringes. And he whistles! Over breakfast!? This man is evil.

When Miranda changes Nadia, we see she has what look like surgical scars on her stomach. Miranda also has to endure YODELLING in his house. Ye gods the torture. He has been tinkering with Nadia in his basement but other than being ominous he doesn’t tell her what

Miranda smacks the guy in the head with a hammer. Waaaay better than a fork (and that yodelling is STILL playing). He screams she smacks him. He screams she smacks him. He screams, she smacks him again – then drops the hammer when he’s still screaming. Miranda you need to keep going! We can see lizard skin under his scalp

She grabs his keys and runs, telling Nadia she will come back for her. She manages to flag down a car but creepy Spivak follows (I’m going to assume it’s him). He happily holds the helpful people’s baby, the implicit threat of harming the child bringing Miranda out of hiding. Miranda did manage to send a text though

Spivak decides to blame her whole running away on Pearl. He’s also finished something in his creepy basement, he drags her down there while she screams

Rescue services fine the family Miranda asked for help – frozen in their car.





I always wonder, exactly how much accounting for blood is there at your average blood bank/hospital? Because it’s a trope in vampire fiction that vampires work in blood banks etc (Being Human did it as well, Vampire Diaries constantly raids it) but I can’t imagine blood bags can go missing and not be worthy of comment.

I continue to kind of love the expertise of Olivia’s cunning manipulation. Sometimes I just kind of love a complete evil monster who is shamelessly such. Yes, I admit I like a well done Magnificent Bastard.

It would be nice to see one of the Rroma characters on this show not stealing, using woo-woo or both at the same time.


Shelly’s scenes were desperate and painful – and so very well done. And I think it contrasts with Annie, she has her painful past… but are we in a position to care? Is it supposed to contrast with Olivia? Are we to think of Olivia when she talks about the angst of seeing everyone you love die? But how can we not since Olivia is, apparently, far far older?