A conversation with Mother prompts Daimon, Ana and Gabriella to go and visit someone they suspect might be a victim of the Helstroms’ father who actually escaped, but they are not prepared for what they find. Meanwhile back at St Theresa’s, Caretaker and Hastings have a frank discussion.

Helstrom continues to a be an odd mix with this third episode – whereas there’s some excellent character work and some really fun scenes, there’s also a really hammily written episode plot which resolves in ways that make no sense at all in so many different ways.

It’s a real shame as well, because the interactions between Gabriella and Ana in particular are really nicely done. Gabriella is far from the shrinking violet anyone might expect and Ana loves pushing up against boundaries so the pair of them chatting is real sparks flying stuff, while Daimon just finds himself awkwardly on the sidelines – a position one senses he’s not used to.

Mother having seemed to have slightly released their grip on the Helstroms’ actual mother, Damon and Ana try to have a sensible conversation with her which quickly (and predictably) turns into something else entirely, meaning that the big secret Ana was literally just telling someone she wouldn’t share with Daimon in a previous scene gets shared and more. This ends up setting the two of them, with Gabriella in tow, off to see someone who may have been the one victim of their father who escaped.

Back at St Theresa’s, Caretaker turns up for a chat with Hastings, which reveals a little more about the respective characters’ roles in everything as well as the fact that they are good friends. There’s also a bit of revelation for Caretaker about Hastings’ previously only vaguely alluded-to illness, which in turn starts to make more sense of exactly why Gabriella is at St Theresa’s in the first place.

There’s also some connective scenes and dialogue which reinforce the idea again introduced in the previous episode that someone doesn’t want Ana and Daimon together for… whatever reason, it’s not quite clear. We also learn some fairly horrific details about Ana’s past and exactly why she’s quite as traumatised as she is. Suddenly her personal mission to go around killing people who have done bad things hits in a different way – perhaps it’s less vengeance than redemption that she’s seeking.

But then there’s that episode-specific plot that relies on a fair amount of situational dumbness, a crucial detail it feels like wouldn’t have been a surprise if anyone had done their jobs properly and then some even more egregious situational dumbness on the part of one character we’re actually supposed to believe is pretty smart. All told, it makes for an unsatisfying wrapper around all the good stuff happening elsewhere. I only hope it’s not going to be typical of the show going forwards.

Verdict: Fun characters and some great scenes dragged down overall by some really hackneyed and quite shonky plotting. This one is starting to go downhill at the moment. 6/10

Greg D. Smith