Romanian Characters in American TV Series: Abraham Setrakian in The Strain
About
Genre: Vampire Horror
Created by: Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Seasons: 3
Episodes: 36
Synopsis
Character: Abraham Setrakian (and the Strigoi)
The show, created by del Toro and Hogan following an eponymous novel trilogy, focuses on the outbreak of a virus that turns people into "strigoi" (vampires) in the city of New York. Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his lover dr. Nora Martinez, two CDC (Center for Disease Control) employees, struggle to contain the virus and find a cure for it. They partner up with various people in order to do so, one of the most important being Abraham Setrakian, an old Holocaust survivor turned pawnbroker.
While Setrakian is of Armenian descent, he was raised in Romania for most of his life, and that is where he gained inside information on the Strigoi from his grandmother's story. His conflict with the creatures is very personal, and he uses any resource available to fight them. He has a special silver sword which he uses to kill them, and he chants "sabia mea fredoneaza de argint" (Romanian phrase meaning "my sword sings of silver") while doing so.
Personal Opinion
In my opinion, The Strain is one of the best vampire series out at the moment. While the fact that it plays on the ever-so-popular stereotypes of vampires coming from Eastern Europe (Romania also, but on only), I do believe that the fact that the entire thing is viewed from both a traditional, semi-superstitious point of view, as well as a scientific one is innovative. In Abraham Setrakian, we can find the old-timey Eastern European vampire hunter, while Dr. Goodweather is the (apparently mad) scientist that tries to solve everything and stop the vampiric virus using scientific methods and research. All in all while the show does play on some tropes (which is inevitable in television, after all), I believe that the perspective it offers on the vampire horror genre is quite fresh and worth watching.
