Recap: Stay Inside…And Perhaps Skip This Episode of VAN HELSING
Episode 103 “Stay Inside”
Written by Jackie May, Karen Lam (Story Editor)
Directed by Micheal Nankin
The episode starts out with a short recap of the previous two episodes, with a reminder of the vampire seemingly turned human at the end of episode two.
The episode fully begins with a flashback, showing a lone vampire (Aleks Paunovic) trying to avoid the sunlight streaming in from inside a building. He makes it to a dark spot to notice the sunlight fading. The vampire steps out, noticing the sky darkening and it no longer burning his skin. A radio nearby plays the news warning of the super volcano eruption, saying the ash cloud is toxic and will block out the sun, advising everyone to remain indoors. The vampire proceeds to attack everyone in sight, noting that he can go wherever, whenever now that the sun is blocked out. A new vampire, a man in a suit, goes into his home to his loving family only to attack and presumably kill them. Then the episode returns us to the present, where everyone is woken up to the sound of the new not-vampire yelling for help down the hall.
The group goes out to see what is going on, and ‘Flesh’ (Vincent Gale) as he’s called, explains that he was a vampire, but drinking Vanessa Helsing’s (Kelly Overton) blood turned him into a human. Vanessa is disturbed by this, saying that that’s impossible, while everyone takes Flesh back to get cleaned off. Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) then counters by saying that this has never happened before. Vanessa concludes it must have been something in the shaft where they dump the zombies, but Axel restates that this has never happened before, and he’s been dumping vampires in there for years. She blows him off, rejoining the rest of the party.
Meanwhile the rest of the group is still suspicious of Vanessa and now are skeptical of Flesh really being human again. The suspicion turns to hostility when John (David Cubitt) sees vampires tying up his wife (Fiona Vroom), demanding Vanessa (“The Dead Woman” as the vampires call her) in return for his wife. They begin to whip and beat her, causing Axel to take a sniper rifle and shoot her dead. (While harsh, it’s fairly clear they were never going to give her up and would kill her when they got Vanessa.) John is understandably upset, while Axel states the cold fact that she was dead no matter what they did. John and Axel fight, knocking over a windmill. Axel stops the fight, yelling that that windmill was the only power source of the UV lights, the hospital generator being dead for some time. He states that they have three hours to find a battery for the generator or the vampires will be able to breach the hospital.
Axel decides to take Vanessa with him, telling everyone to stay together and don’t kill Flesh or Doc (Rukiya Bernard). They leave, going outside of the hospital, with the sky the same sickly gray-orange it was at the end of the flashback at the beginning of the episode, with bits of volcanic ash still floating around in the air. I’m not sure if even the Yellowstone super volcano could generate enough ash to block out the sun for three years straight, but it’s certainly possible. It IS supposed to be the size of half the continental United States. Anyway, they venture out to find a battery, managing to avoid stray feral vampires.
Vanessa explains on the way that she just wants to find her daughter, while Axel explains that venturing alone is suicide. They continue to argue until he finds a battery. At the same time though, a few stray vampires find them. Vanessa takes his semi-automatic rifle and begins to fire clumsily. It’s nice for a series to show that firing military grade weapons isn’t something everyone knows without any training. She manages to kill one, with another dying after it bites her, identical to Flesh. After Axel returns, he reaffirms that she has the power to kill vampires. She still doesn’t quite accept it, but she doesn’t deny it as they return to the base.
As time ticks down, John suggests they kill Flesh and the Doc, stating that Doc is a danger and Flesh is not ‘really’ human. Sam (Christopher Heyerdahl) stops him, signing that ‘We do as Axel says’ with Mohamad (Trezzo Mahoro) translating. John yells at him frustratingly, but backs off. Sam signs “I’m watching you,” but with no translation from Mohammad, leaving John angry and those of the audience who don’t know any ASL confused. The party then prepares to fight off the incoming zombies, with Flesh grabbing a scalpel.
Axel and Vanessa return to the hospital to find vampires trying to beat down the door. With the rifle out of bullets, they are unsure of how to enter. Suddenly Flesh steps out, cutting himself with the scalpel stating that the ‘Dead Woman’ made him human again, and can do the same to everyone else. And if they don’t leave, she will. This apparently scares the vampires away, with Vanessa and Axel quickly running in, only stopping for Vanessa to bring in John’s dead wife so they can mourn her.
When Axel is fixing the generator, Vanessa demands to know Flesh put himself out there like that, declaring that she’s some kind of ‘vampire destroyer’. He tells her that now he’s human again, he has all of his human and vampire memories. He remembers everyone he’s ever killed and hurt, including revealing that he was the businessman vampire in the flashback. He elaborates that he killed his children and turned his wife into a vampire, and he know feels alone. Vanessa tells him it’s not her fault, but continues that she’s not any ‘savior’ or ‘destroyer’ and that she just wants to find her daughter.
Axel pulls her aside and asks her if she could do him a huge favor and try to turn Doc back into a human. Vanessa enters her cage and tries to get Doc to bite her, but she refuses. Doc then attacks her, causing Vanessa to attack her back, biting her in the neck. Doc then collapses, and after a few terse moments the episode ends with Doc turning into a human and stepping out of her cage.
This episode is…fairly stereotypical and by the numbers of a ‘post world-ending wasteland’. Any tension with the whole ‘We have three hours’ time limit is killed with the lack of tension between characters during the time crunch. Also, the sunlight being blocked comes to bite the show as there’s no change in skylight, losing the indication that time is passing. Again, this kills any suspense the episode might have, as we don’t have any indication of time passing. A countdown clock might have helped here. Also, John has managed to cause two huge problems in as many episodes, not only pushing more interesting characters to the background, but his constant endangerment of the party is also causing him to be a very unlikable character. Sam and Mohammed were once again the highlights of the group with their wit, but they still barely got any lines or character development in this episode.
Another problem of the episode is the episode is too bogged down with flashbacks. The flashback to Flesh’s character becoming a zombie and the volcanic ash blocking out the sun was tedious and took away from the episode. Honestly, the flashbacks should’ve been shown in the previous episodes (which were also flashback heavy) or Flesh’s flashback could’ve been shown when he was confessing to Vanessa. It would at least help the episode mesh better, in my opinion.
I appreciated Vanessa’s mix of inexperience and tenacity, it makes her a whole, complex character that’s rarer of a female character than it should be. This is the first episode where I actually felt like she was the lead character of her show (I still feel as though Axel is still too much at the forefront, but his presence is a lot less apparent than in the first two episodes).
The episode does lay the seeds for a more interesting story down the road in future episodes. With Doc now human again, we can learn more about how Vanessa and the vampires work, and her relationship to them. Also, with the vampires now aware of her presence, we can see how they react and how the hierarchy of vampires works.
Overall, I’m a little disappointed in this episode. This episode really did not establish much other than Vanessa’s ability to ‘cure’ vampires, and wasn’t an original take of the ‘Leaving the Fortress’ trope shown in every other zombie/vampire show. The episode was very bland and forgettable, which is disappointing of such a promising show. Maybe next Friday’s episode will prove to be better and more original.
Van Helsing airs Friday nights at 10/9c on Syfy.
