he Fire Inside
he Fire Inside
A crazed killer using a flame-thrower to torch his victims sends Nick and Schanke on an underground pursuit. In the confined quarters of the underground sewer system, it's anybody's guess who will find who first. While Nick faces his fear of fire, Natalie discovers she has her own fears to deal with.
Those were damn clean sewers. In terms of realism, this episode must be the worst. Sewers that looked like the basements of apartment buildings I've lived in (except much, much cleaner). Almost inane dialog at times. The completely fake hand of the burnt corpse. But somehow I rather enjoyed watching Nick chase this "Dragon" character around.
The facing of one's fears was certainly the theme, as Nick faced the flames, Natalie faced the corpse of a man burnt beyond recognition, and Schanke faced (believe it or not) his eight-year old daughter's class.
At first, Natalie's concern for Nick as he chased after the flame-thrower wielding crazy seemed a bit too melodramatic. After all, such fire would destroy mortals just as easily as vampires, so it's not like he's taking a greater risk than other people. It's greater than the risk he normally takes (stray bullets have little effect), but that just means he's finally showing the same level of bravery that his fellow cops have always been showing all along. And her concern seemed much more normal after she explained to the captain about the accident she saw as a youth.
I must admit that I liked the character of Danny (played by Derek Aasland), the boy in the sewers that Schanke befriends. He comes off as the typical "Gen-X" teen: knowledgable, therefore cynical and sarcastic; wearing his hair at shoulder length; resentful at society. But somehow he portrays this stereotype in a way that isn't so insulting, and with a touch of feeling -- every time he's confronted with a hard decision between helping the unknown "good" (Nick and Schanke) and sticking with the unknown "evil" (letting the supposed killer reach his friends), he chooses correctly, even when his projected facade would suggest backing off and just letting things happen on their own.
And I can't accept the behavior of the people living in the sewers. Would the old woman really have risked her life for a single coin? I'd have been too scared to grab it. And then they all came out of hiding in droves after Nick killed the flame-thrower guy, even though he was just as much of an apparent threat. What did they know about him? It doesn't match the profile. Even Danny had tried to run from the two cops, since he hadn't any real reason to trust them.
The flashback, for once, didn't directly correlate with the major storyline, except for the obvious fire motif. Nor did it make much sense to me. Why would he show himself as a vampire to the two slaves and let them live (well, he does tend to show empathy for those in a similar plight), much less to the lynch mob outside the house? Especially when they hadn't been hunting for vampires before? It was close enough to modern times that they would have been wary of leaving so many witnesses. And was Nick really facing up to his fear of fire in the flashback? If so, why is he still so afraid of it?
But after all these complaints, I didn't really dislike this episode. A good deal of the dialog (especially between Schanke and Danny) is quite humorous, and some of the scenes, taken in a wider context, were phenominal. Too bad the underlying details were so flawed.
Episode rating (0 to 10): 5
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