VAN HELSING – Season 4 Episode 3 – SPOILERS

Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) stops to lend assistance to Max Borman (Richard Harmon), who was being attacked by a vampire hitchhiker he had (unknowingly?) picked up. Max, who looks like Elvis gone insane, offers Axel a job running booze and weapons, and it turns out that Max is the fellow in charge of Loveland, the place where Phil’s wife is incarcerated. Axel finds this out accidentally when he makes a delivery for Max and sees Phil (Vincent Gale) and Jolene (Caroline Cave) being held captive. He pays them little attention and leaves quietly, but one suspects he’ll be back for them. (Axel’s weapons were confiscated at the prison gate so to conduct a rescue mission he will need to go out, reclaim his weapons, and surreptitiously come back in.

Max occasionally snorts solicite (the vampire repellent that doesn’t work on Daywalkers), saying it “snaps your brain into a very nice sweet spot”. He also threatens to ship Jolene “back east”, and the impression one gets is that being sent there is not a good thing. (Almost everything on VAN HELSING has taken place in either the Denver area or the Pacific northwest, and because the volcanic eruption that caused all this made radio communication difficult, we have little information about what things are like elsewhere in the world.)

Phil’s finally locates his wife Jennifer (Holly Elissa) but she is not at all happy to see him.

Elsewhere, Chad (Donny Lucas) and Jack (Nicole Muñoz) head out on a food finding mission, and it was going well until Monica (Tammy Gillis) shows up looking for Tabby who decided to follow Chad out of a fear of abandonment. Monica makes too much noise and the lot of them get attacked by vampires. Jack is bitten, and kills herself rather than become a vampire. Or so she thinks. To make sure she doesn’t rise again, they burn Jack’s body along with those of the dead vampires. Fortunately, they do not cut off her head. After they discover that the vamp that bit her is human again. Jack climbs out of the burning dumpster.

Like Violet, Jack now has Vanessa-like power to cure vampires. (The way Jack got that power might be the same way that The Morrigan was turned human by Dr. Lewis in Episode 4.12 of LOST GIRL.) After her resurrection, Jack feels a “pull”, and tells Chad that she must find Vanessa. She begins walking due east (toward the rising sun) so Vanessa must be on her way to Denver, or thereabouts. On the way, Vanessa will likely run into Axel, who wants very much to kill her. (He’s still pissed about Vanessa killing Scarlett at the end of last season.) After Axel rescues Phil and Jolene, he’ll probably head for Denver looking for Doc and we will find out if anyone survived Hansen’s nerve gas attack (unless he somehow finds out that Doc is in Fort Collins).

After the episode ended, someone on twitter (who shall be nameless) complained: “My gosh could @SYFYVanHelsing be more bleak, dark and filled with death?!” Were he watching any of the previous seasons, he’d be right, but this year, VAN HELSING is a much more hopeful story. The carnage level in this episode is comparatively minimal, despite the fact that Max uses vampire heads instead of clay pigeons for skeet shooting. (One wonders where he got all those severed heads. Is there a black market for vampire parts?) Only four vamps were killed in this episode, and no humans died.

NOTES

Holly Elissa (Jennifer) will be Linda Crabtree in the Hallmark romance LOVE IN STORE. Terrie and David (Alexandra Breckenridge and Robert Buckley) are two shopping network hosts. On camera, their selling styles are quite different, off camera, their personalities clash, and each of them hopes to replace the network’s star Sharyn (Jackée Harry) who is preparing to retire. While trying to sell a high-tech umbrella, Terrie turns on her phone (as part of the demonstration) and sees a break-up text text from her boyfriend. This leaves her speechless and she breaks the cardinal rule of live TV — no dead air. Naika Toussaint (Sheema in “He’s Coming“) and Fiona Vroom (Wendy in “Stay Inside“) are also in the cast. Written by Joie Botkin, LOVE IN STORE was filmed at Camosun College in Victoria, B.C. No air date has been announced.

Elissa is also Pauline Barker in “Everybody Has A Secret”, Episode 1.9 of VIRGIN RIVER, a TV adaptation of the books by Robin Carr, starring Alexandra Breckenridge as nurse practitioner Melinda Monroe. Fleeing a painful past, Munroe takes a job in the remote California town of Virgin River, and soon discovers that small town life isn’t as simple as she expected it to be. The nine-episode series will be on Netflix later this year.

Margaryta Sodatova (rehumanized vampire) will be Malice in CONTRACTS, Alex Chung’s film about a jaded hitman who finds himself in a fight to the death with a group of vicious assassins. CONTRACTS will premiere at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival on 21 October at 9:30pm . A trailer is available on YouTube.

Donald Sales (Jeremy) will be Dean in episode 1.10 of LIMETOWN a TV series based on the eleven-episode podcast of the same name created by Zach Acres and Skip Brokie. The series will star Jessica Biel as Lia Haddock, a fictional radio reporter investigating the unexplained disappearance (ten years previously) of 326 men, women, and children from a neuroscience facility in Tennessee. Haddock’s investigation is at least partially motivated by the fact that her uncle Emile (Stanley Tucci) is among those who vanished. The first two episodes of LIMETOWN will premiere on Facebook Watch on 16 October at 3pm , and new episodes will become available on subsequent Wednesdays.







