Recap: Another Great VAN HELSING Episode For Me
Episode 107 “For Me”
Written by Simon Barry and Shevon Singh, Karen Lam (story editors)
Directed by Amanda Tapping
[all photos: Syfy]
The episode opens with Dmitri (Paul Johansson) offering a meal to Dr. Sholomenko (Duncan Ollerenshaw), a human doctor in fellow Head Vampire Rebecca’s captivity. He gives him the meal in exchange for information. The doctor tells him that Julius (Aleks Paunovic) intends to usurp him as Head Vampire, a fact Julius expressed in a previous episode. The doctor also makes mention of Rebecca ‘keeping’ Sheema like a pet, even killing feral vampires in order for her to live. Dmitri decides he is going to confront Julius before he has a chance to get Vanessa (Kelly Overton) and attack him.
We cut to Mohamad (Trezzo Mahoro) scouting in a field, presumably just outside the city. He encounters a vampire hoard attacking Catherine (Sarah Desjardins), and manages to hear about their party’s exile and Vanessa returning to the hospital before she dies. Mohamad then continues to scout around and manages to find an abandoned car with supplies inside, including a working flare gun.
Vanessa continues to get worse, briefly dying before Doc (Rukiya Bernard) is able to bring her back with adrenaline and heart compressions. Doc then theorizes that there’s something inside her bite wound causing the problem, and needs to pull it out. The surgery is successful with Doc pulling out a vampire tooth.
Julius and his vampire horde then advance on the hospital, but are beaten back by all of Axel’s (Jonathan Scarfe) traps and UV lights. The humans retreat to the roof, able to watch the coming events from above. They witness a firefight in the distance, theorizing that it’s the Resistance they’ve heard about. They aren’t able to continue to guess, however, as a sudden flare goes off (later shown to be from Mohamad). The flare cuts through the darkness to show a group in all black approaching. Julius and Flesh (Vincent Gale) tell their respective groups that the group is Dmitri’s ‘Death Squad’, an elite group of vampire assassins. Julius and his remaining vampires flee, while the Death Squad approach the hospital and make their demand. Deliver Vanessa to them or die. Flesh also clues them in on the power struggle between Julius, Dmitri, and Rebecca, telling them they stand no chance against Dmitri. He tells them they’re ‘Ancient’ and are much more powerful than Julius and his cronies.
The humans then retreat into the hospital, unwilling to give into the Death Squad’s demands. They arm themselves and wait for them to come into the hospital. One approaches, and is not affected by the UV lights, smashing them as he advances. Vanessa suddenly recognizes him, saying that he was the vampire that ‘killed’ her, and he must be turned human after the attack like every other vampire. They retreat after the realization, with Axel telling them he has one final gambit: fleeing the hospital while he activates the bomb he has within it. (Although not without Nicole being separated and dying).
The episode ends with Mohamad witnessing the hospital blowing up and the group fleeing in a souped up ambulance.
This episode was pretty great, with a lot of tension and suspense. Most of the episode is dedicated to the party frantically trying to survive the assault of Julius and the Death Squad, with a lot of creative but deadly traps (a great one being just a bunch of file cabinets falling on many deadly vampires).
Plot threads have slowed down quite a bit in this episode in favor of action, which is a breath of fresh air after many plot heavy episodes. Thankfully though, the vampire civil war and Sheema and Rebecca plots are fleshed out and clarified for the audience, which in previous episodes have been vague about them. My only problem is that the murder mystery seems to have been totally dropped, especially with Mohamd gone and Nicole dead. It’s very noticeable because of the time it took in previous episodes. The continuing mystery of the Resistance gets hyped without getting spoiled gives the audience another interesting plot without being too overbearing.
The action itself is very nice without having any actual hand to hand combat and even very little guns and explosions. They knew this was the last stand for the hospital, so they go all out with traps and gadgets attacking the vampires. It was fun and creative. Though, the trap filled hospital setting will be missed. The change of setting will be great for the characters and keep the show from getting stale.
The episode was great overall, and the show itself is definitely finding its footing as a creative post apocalypse show.
Van Helsing airs Friday nights at 10/9c on Syfy.
