VAN HELSING – Season 3 Episode 5 – SPOILERS

Doc (Rukiya Bernard) and Joline (Caroline Cave) are now a couple and are living together in Denver, Doc, whose real name is Sarah Carol, works at the local hospital. Joline is also working there, pretending to be a nurse, and has a creepy co-worker named Jared (Aidan Kahn) who says he recognizes her from somewhere. He asks her out, but retreats quickly when she says her girlfriend wouldn’t like it. Jaden is the same guy who asked Vanessa out when she gave blood at the clinic in Seattle where he worked shortly before the Rising (Episode 1.2). He told Vanessa at that time that he lived only a few blocks from her. Could Jaden be more than he seems? In any event, if Joline has a past in Seattle that she is concealing, it is going to come back to haunt her.

Joline and Sara seem to be very much in love and quite happy together, just like Flesh and Lucky were before they were blown to bits at Crooked Falls. (Flesh subsequently rose from the dead. Lucky did not.)

Vanessa’s ex (Dylan’s father) was, at last report, living in Denver. We know nearly nothing about Vanessa between the car crash in “Fresh Tendrils” and when she was bitten by Balthazar in “Help Me“. It seems likely that Vanessa will eventually get to Denver, and we will learn more about that part of her life.

Flesh (Vincent Gale) now insists on being called by his real name, Phil Fleichman (because Flesh was the name Julius gave him after he turned him into a vamp). Phil is stuck sharing an apartment with Julius (Aleks Paunovic), and is not at all happy with this arrangement because of the memories it conjures.

Julius gets a job as a bouncer, so at least he won’t be home all the time, but it might not be the best occupation for him, since he heals rapidly and if he gets injured (not an unlikely thing in that job) it will look suspicious. We don’t yet know what occupation Phil will choose.

The Denver Safe Zone really doesn’t sound that safe. After being released from quarantine, Sarah has this exchange with a border officer:

OFFICER: “Here are your weapons that were confiscated.”

DOC: “We get them back just like that?”

OFFICER: “This is still America. Recommended to be armed, even in safe zones.”

DOC: “Comforting.”

Everyone in the Zone is inoculated with vampire repellent, so whatever danger exists there is not the result of vampires.

Meanwhile, Vanessa, Scarlett, and Axel are in what’s left of San Francisco looking for The B’ah. Not a lot happens there, but here are the highlights:

— Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) is asked by a young army private what it was like serving in Iraq and Afganistan. “War is hell, kid,” he responds. “Ain’t nothing sexy about it. You know what it’s like. Hold your buddy’s hand while he takes his last breath. Tell him everything’s gonna be fine when you know it’s not. Vamps, at least, you know they’re bad guys. Over there, there are no bad guys, just different points of view.”

— Scarlett (Missy Peregrym) gets poisoned with the same stuff that poisoned Lily in Hong Kong, and the only antidote to it is The B’ah‘s blood. Scarlett is being cared for by a local resistance group headed by Marybeth (Vanessa Walsh), who explains how she was thrust into a leadership position: “I was the weather anchor before this. Channel 5 News. Things fell apart about three weeks back. I don’t know. I guess because people recognize me from TV they look to me for leadership.”

— Vanessa (Kelly Overton) finds the crates that were shipped from Hong Kong. They were apparently undisturbed by the 1906 earthquake and contained only one Elder (The B’ah). The remaining crates apparently held her warriors. All of them were awakened by the virtual reality created by Elder Susan three weeks previously.

NOTES

Caroline Cave (Joline) will be Ann O’Malley in UNSPEAKABLE, an eight-episode miniseries starring Sarah Wayne Callies and Shawn Doyle which will chronicle one of the largest preventable medical disasters in Canadian history. In the 1980’s thousands of people were infected by tainted blood, and the scandal triggered a federal inquiry. (Judge Krever, who headed that inquiry, will be played by Matt Craven. Marlys Edwardh, legal counsel for the Krever Comission will be portrayed by Lexa Doig.) A precedent-setting lawsuit resulted in the awarding of nearly ten billion dollars in compensation to victims. (Showrunner Robert C. Cooper himself contracted Hepatitis C from tainted blood.) UNSPEAKABLE is a co-production of CBC and SundanceTV, and will premiere on CBC Wednesday, 9 January at 9pm .

All of the Season Three VAN HELSING episode titles correspond to titles of songs by the Seattle rock band Soundgarden. (Some song titles are shortened. Episode 3.10 is “Outside World”, and the song is “Blow Up The Outside World”. Episode 3.11 is “Been Away”, shortened from “Been Away Too Long”. Episode 3.12 is “Christ Pose”, and the song is “Jesus Christ Pose”.

Naika Toussaint (Sheema in 8 first season episodes) is Julie in CHRISTMAS PEN PALS which stars Sarah Drew as Hannah, the creator of a popular dating app, who heads home for the holidays hoping to re-design her app’s dating algorithm. Once there, she runs into her high school boyfriend (Niall Matter), a person she has carefully avoided for many years. To please her father (Michael Gross), Hannah reluctantly agrees to sign up for the town’s anonymous holiday pen pal service. She is smitten by each beautifully written letter she receives and starts to believe that her Christmas pen pal (whose true identity she will not learn until Christmas Eve) could be her soul mate. Directed by Siobhan Devine and written by Carley Smale, CHRISTMAS PEN PALS will air on Lifetime on 15 December at 8/7c .







