Thursday, September 29, 2016

From Dusk Till Dawn, Season 3, Episode 4: Fangalorious



Time to catch up with Scott – he has a band now and has even taking his sister’s advice to heart after she urged him last season to find a way to feed on blood that didn’t kill the innocent

He found a way. Since Culebras can mind meld by mixing blood with humans – so as part of his schtick of his band’s act he encourages people to cut their hands (don’t do that!) so he can mix blood with them and then pick the terribad evil person to snack on. Sure he’s still killing people – but they’re rapists and if you’re going to murder people, they’re a good choice to be chomped on.

He’s also causing one hell of a hepatitis outbreak.

And after one act he meets Kate… yes, actual Kate. Kate has managed to throw off the influence of Amaru to warn Scott that he must save himself from Amaru and stay away from her

Y’know this plan has a flaw. See, Amaru and Brasa haven’t been able to find Scott – and they really want to because killing Scott will quash Kate’s soul and give Amaru full control of the body. But now they’ve found Scott because Kate just found him. I mean, he didn’t even know Kate was still alive so it’s not like he would even seek her out

Anyway, Amaru takes over and does her soul sucking thing – to which Scott is resistant – when Freddie the peacekeeper shows up and saves him by shooting Kate. She backs off and Freddie takes an enraged Scott off to Freddie and Seth.

While Amaru goes off to Basra to get some healing by chomping on a random guy before practicing her knife skills and demanding they find Scott again because of that whole soul squishing thing. And, of course, they pull out some new monsters of the week to send after Scott

These are Jaguar warriors that hunt by hearing their enemies’ heart beats and then using epic combat skills to slice and dice them. They’re the guards of the sun god (that would be the demon Brasa and his burniness) as he passes through Xilbalba. So pretty elite.

As we can see when they catch up with the Geckos, take down some random minions and impale Richie on a giant blade. While Seth manages to capture one of the others (of course on a team of 2 men and 1 woman, it’s the woman who is captured).


Look, can we address that Seth is human? He’s human and he’s not enhanced shiny human like Freddie apparently is. He’s human. These Jaguar Warriors manage to take down Richie with their shiny Xibalban blades and combat skills (these blades are super good against demons and culebras) but not Seth? This show needs to do something to explain why Seth can continually go up, in hand to hand combat, no less with powerful demon creatures without being mangled and minced.

This episode reminds us that Richie can absorb people’s powers by biting them – and he chomps on the female Jaguar warrior to absorb her skills and kill off this token female extra.

The Geckos have figured out that Amaru is after Scott so need to use him as bait – especially since he’s not super co-operative – but Scott managed to escape during the attack so it’s time to track him down again (not hard, he ran right back to his band – and killed one of them in a bit of a convoluted exposition to remind us of Kate’s instructions on not killing innocents and to remind us who Kate is)

Since Scott didn’t do the greatest job of hiding it’s pretty easy for both sides to meet for a showdown. Happily splitting up to avoid having to choreographed multi-person fight scene. Freddie with his Peacekeeper-ness, Richie with his Culebra and absorbed fighting skills and Seth with the greatest plot armour known to mankind.

Freddie discovers that With the new combat monsteryness Richie kills one Jaguar Warrior and matches another, thankfully neither try to kill Seth and give us a convoluted reason to test his plot armour. He manages to step in to stop Amaru killing Scott (he held his own for a while with some surprising knife skills he pulled out of nowhere) with some non-lethal shooting. The Geckos et al manage to escape. I guess. I mean, it feels more like running away without definite purpose – but so far no-one has any real way to kill Brasa so probably wisest

It does feel a little like we’re circling though – sure it’s only episode 4 – but I do wonder how many more episodes of demon of the week do we get? I also want Santanico back, please.

Both Richie and Scott are clinging to the idea that Kate is still in there, still saveable (and, in tropelandia, that is the most likely result. Of course there’s also a decent chance of her dying for the sake of manpain, but I’m leaning towards the former).

We do need another plot line other than “she can be saved” and demon of the week – so we have Dr. Dakota McGraw. Yes Sherriff Earl’s (Freddie’s former mentor) daughter. She’s on a revenge trip to hunt down the Geckos. This will totally be a useful plot line and not a distraction I’m sure.