What a frustrating mess. There's so much good to be mined from the book trilogy it is amazing how the showrunners drop the ball each and every season. While some seasons are vastly better than others, there are the same consistent problems with each. How exactly does one manage to make the story of a vampire/zombie apocalypse in New York (vampbies? Zompires?) a dull and plodding affair? By instead focusing upon uninteresting love triangles between equally uninteresting characters. By casting the worst child actor very possibly in the history of bad child actors. By rehashing the same cliched character arcs season after season for characters who are barely sketched stereotypes. By adding more and more unnecessary subplots and ridiculous melodrama. When this show focuses on the Strigoi apocalypse, hunting and killing vampires, the history of the setting and the machinations of the villains, then there's a lot of entertainment that can be gleaned. Many of the main cast are excellent, highly charaismatic actors who can command the screen and attention, but more often than not get bogged down with lesser material. For the most part, this show looks great and effectively makes the most of a television budget, but unfortunately there's not much on display really taking advantage of it. The first and last seasons provide some respectable moments of television, but for the most part there's better entertainment to be found elsewhere.
The Strain