100 Favorite Shows: #49 — What We Do in the Shadows
“It’s like the old adage, you know. Co-workers die, but vampire roommates — they’re forever.”
The 2014 horror-comedy from directors Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, What We Do in the Shadows, was an underrated hit out of New Zealand. When Waititi was tapped to helm Thor: Ragnarok, though, he exploded into the zeitgeist and his best film (a mockumentary about vampire roommates) came with him. Since then, it has been heralded as one of the best comedies of the 2010s, en route to spinning off into an ongoing series (with the same format and general premise) on FX in 2019. Having just wrapped up its second season last spring, What We Do in the Shadows has a claim for the funniest show on television (it even earned four Emmy nominations). A lot of that is due to the sensibilities of Clement and Waititi, but it’s also a credit to the brilliant writing staff (including the sensational Stefani Robinson, who now serves as showrunner with Paul Simms) and characters, including Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and familiar Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén).
(Spoilers for What We Do in the Shadows are actually pretty consequential. Plus, who wants great jokes ruined ahead of time?)
The sixth episode of What We Do in the Shadows’ second season, “On the Run” (directed by Yana Gorskaya and written by Robinson), begins when a new vampire, Jim (Mark Hamill), arrives to collect on a month’s rent’s worth of debt owed to him by Laszlo from a stay in California 167 years ago. Jim comes in hot, inciting conflict and preparing to slay Laszlo (Guillermo, hiding, gestures to the documentary crew that he won’t fight Jim because he doesn’t care much to protect Laszlo), but Laszlo’s arrogance slows down the procedure. “I’m not paying for shit,” he tells Jim before fleeing the scene to avoid confrontation.
Instead of setting up a cat-and-mouse type vampiric installment, the episode sees Laszlo travel to Clairton, Pennsylvania instead. Sporting a “foolproof human disguise” (blue jeans and a toothpick), Laszlo becomes “Jackie Daytona” (“Regular Human Bartender”), a local bartender from “Arizonya” (his accent remains unchanged) whose spirited love for the town ends up propelling the local girls’ volleyball team, the Bucks, to the state tournament via a fundraiser he orchestrated. When Jim tracks him down, the fact that they’re two vampires doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are spiteful vampires. They exchange business cards and “human alcohol beers” before eventually uncovering one another’s identities and dueling in an act of physicality that comes in second to Berry’s “Simply Irresistible” dancing.
But their brawl that burns down Jackie Daytona’s bar is completely beside the point of the episode. The actual heart comes from Lucy (Madeleine Martin), a waitress who is enamored with Jackie Daytona and the promises he made to Clairton and the Bucks volleyball team. “When you’re Jackie Daytona, you can do whatever you want because you change lives,” she tells the camera crew, admiring his big heart and searching for a way to confess her feelings for him. We’d never seen Lucy on What We Do in the Shadows before because Clairton is not a quick trip from Staten Island, but her feelings for Jackie-Laszlo unfold in a matter of seconds to tell the Mary Poppins-esque, savior-comes-to-town story of Jackie Daytona, who changed the spirit of Clairton forever as if he descended from Mount Crumpit.
For the most part, “On the Run” seems like an episode dedicated to revolving around a story that would typically be a C-story in sitcoms. (The kind that a character goes off and engages in, only to return and laugh with their friends, remarking, “It’s a long story.”) It’s more than just a C-story spread across twenty-four minutes, though. “On the Run” is the exploration of what usually would be a throwaway gag. For example, on New Girl, aliases like Julius Pepperwood and Retired Rear Admiral Jay Garage-A-Roo were used for quick jokes and the occasional exploration of people who adored Nick for Pepperwood, rather than for Nick Miller. On Shadows, though, this joke expands over the course of the entire installment, building up Laszlo’s disguise as a vehicle for absurd humor and the sort of sports underdog story seen in The Mighty Ducks, for example, when Gordon Bombay teaches the community a thing or two about heart and grit. (Plus, he utters the perfect line of dialogue: “I didn’t scrape and murder my way to Pennsylvania to watch those talented athletes get fucked off.”)
Even beyond this, “On the Run” is just a genius episode of television because of how it almost entirely ignores the fact that the sitcom is no ordinary sitcom because it is populated by blood-sucking characters. Theoretically, a comedy with vampires would be ripe for stories that they wouldn’t have to throw one to a bar in Pennsylvania for many seasons, let alone in the series’ sixteenth episode. Instead, Shadows knew there was merit in diving into such an absurd story line early because these core vampire roommates have already burned through the interesting parts of their immortalities. Now, they’re just filling the time.
The immortal life of a vampire would certainly be cool. At first. But in the modern world — drastically more cynical than the world in which Laszlo, Nadja, Nandor, and the rest were initially exposed to — their lives are just meandering. They attend the lazy Super Bowl parties of their neighbors, they wait in veterinary offices. It’s not really that exciting, which makes it all the more amusing to see once-great and regal vampires reduced to the average citizens reflected in most of us.
Yes, they still dabble with the creatures and in the traditions of fantastical mythology. They bring a new familiar (Haley Joel Osment) to a necromancer, Wallace (Benedict Wong), whose techniques are similar to the scatting of stereotypical voodoo characters in The Princess and the Frog. They inadvertently inflict “brain scramblies” on their peers. They meet ghosts, witches, mailer-daemons, real trolls who pose as Internet trolls. Their world is simultaneously removed from and imbued into ours. Much of Shadows’ brilliant balancing act is owed to the refreshing of the vampire tropes, even updating the archetypes we saw in the original film from 2014.
The newness of the vampire tales is most prominently exemplified in Colin Robinson, whose entire persona (an “energy vampire”) is an invention for the FX comedy. Rather than hunting for human victims and draining their life forces via their bloodstreams, Colin Robinson feasts on the spirits of human beings (and, occasionally, his roommates). Proksch’s performance is genius because I often can feel my energy sapped by his boring platitudes, flat wardrobe, and nasally-told stories. (It made the episode, “Colin’s Promotion,” an almost insufferable endurance test, as it centered around Colin’s lust for power while he multiplied his essence before eventually draining his own energy instead.) It’s a perfect concept for a vampire in the modern age, as if his character exists solely to merge Dracula with Office Space.
In terms of the British Laszlo, he’s obviously the type of vampire who enjoys crafting fake identities for himself (he also confesses to being Jack the Ripper at one point), but his bravado is also counterbalanced by a chill demeanor that takes most affronts in stride to the point of near-hippie levels of laid-back relaxation.
He’s also just as much a perverted sex fiend as his wife, the Romani Nadja, who is obsessed with bodily intimacy and finding new ways to spice up their centuries-old dynamic in the bedroom. (Their roleplaying with the Jackie Daytona disguise is best left for her doll vessel to experience, rather than us.) Furthermore, Nadja (a character fully realized by subtle writing and an incredible Demetriou turn) can transform into rats — on top of bats — in just one of her many skills that feed into her own over-inflated ego and sense of importance.
This is a trait that is also abundantly present in the Iranian Nandor, who is as arrogant a leader as he is incompetent at leading. Nandor the Relentless is deemed the “alpha male” of the Staten Island apartment, simply because Laszlo can hardly be bothered to give a shit about pseudo-masculine pissing contests with Nandor, who is so obviously not equipped to lead, due to his palpable mix of insecurity and ineptitude. It’s a real Mac and Dennis dynamic between them.
Through this group of characters (and their passive familiar, Guillermo, who possesses the show’s greatest arc), we follow the daily lives of vampires over the course of a series, rather than just checking in on some of their most climactic moments, as many movies in the genre tend to focus on. FX (and all of us) struck glory when Shadows debuted in March 2019. Not only did it bring us Halloween vibes (through an intensive production design, Norma Tenega music, and Old World artwork) in spring, but it brought us these hysterical characters who enhanced the experience of the 2014 film, rather than detract from it as a paler, more inferior spin-off (it might even be better than the movie).
In addition to revamping the vampire subset of the horror genre, Shadows refreshed the state of funny-for-funny’s-sake television comedy. It’s (un)living, (non)breathing proof that the mockumentary format is still worthwhile, so long as the premise supports and makes proper use of it. Granted, much of that is thanks to the influence Clement and Waititi had over the show, but it’s also buoyed by the aforementioned actors and their incredible line deliveries. Exuberant accents just make their blasé profanity all the funnier. (“Who threw a fucking dagger?,” “I said, ‘Welcome back,’ didn’t I? Fucking guy,” and “I haven’t got a fucking clue who the hell you are” are all in “On the Run” and all are fantastic.) They managed to make the series feel like it belonged to them and never in the shadow of their grandparent Shadows.
Fortunately, on Shadows, there’s still room to pay homage to what’s come before, as in season one’s seminal “The Trial” (directed by Waititi and written by Clement), which sees the roommates faced with the judgment of the vampiric council for the death of Baron Afanas (Doug Jones). (He can also be referred to as “barren” or “the undying one,” even though he died. Classic WWDITS, really.)
Of course, it was Guillermo who accidentally shone light into their parlor to kill the Baron in the previous installment, “Baron’s Night Out.” It’s a moment that sets in motion the show’s two major narrative threads: the vampiric council’s desperation to punish the Staten Island group and Guillermo’s uncharacteristic ability to slay vampires by way of crucifixions, sunlight, sinkholes, and more. “The Trial” begins these arcs in earnest, but they eventually culminate in the season two finale, “Nouveau Théâtre des Vampires,” which promises a rapid reshuffling of the deck for the future of the series (now that Guillermo’s abilities have been outed to his masters).
At first, in “The Trial,” Guillermo seems unwilling to advocate for his vampire friends’ innocence after hearing from elderly familiars who never received the promise of being turned into vampires. Eventually, though, he does relent and states that they only “floated the idea of murdering him,” while he did the actual killing. (At first, Nadja thinks Guillermo has arrived to snitch, so she attempts to throw her voice in an effort to proclaim him as the vampires’ lunch.) “This little guy couldn’t kill a vampire,” resists the vampiric council; even though this incredible behind-the-scenes Twitter clip says otherwise.
The council is, of course, comprised of such iconic pop culture vampires, including Blade (Wesley Snipes), Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood), Eve (Tilda Swinton), Amilyn (Paul Reubens), and the trio from the 2014 Shadows film. (Colin Robinson is also on the council, but as he states when they’re sentenced to death, “Fuck can I do?”) At first, the episode is simply an ingenious depiction of the Shadows universe implying that all vampire media in American culture is actually just propaganda from real-world vampires (Tilda doesn’t play Eve, for example. She plays Tilda.) By the end, it’s become a promise of all that Shadows has in store with Guillermo (Van Helsing/de la Cruz) as their secret weapon. He saves his roommates’ life, but he also demolishes the lives of myriad vampires along the way, showing that the FX comedy could use laughs and meta humor to deliver set pieces as astonishing as any epic fantasy series.
It’s definitely a fun bonus for What We Do in the Shadows, but ultimately, the series is just about having dumb fun, man. It’s Laszlo shouting, “Bat!” whenever he turns into a bat. It’s vampires (visibly) fighting on wires and hissing at each other to show off their prosthetic fangs. It’s Laszlo finding vampire porn films ahead of the orgy their species is invited to. It’s a collection of vampires who are, ninety percent of the time, average people, minimizing the craziness unfolding around them. Any show that sends an entire installment to Pennsylvania to unleash Jackie Daytona is going to be at least a little bit dumb. But that’s the best part of Shadows. It’s hilarious and it’s occasionally just pure silliness. In the age of comedies that are anchored by their showrunners’ metaphysical philosophizing, it’s nice to have something that exists to make us laugh. That’s a crucial part of life, too. When you’re What We Do in the Shadows, you can do whatever you like. Because you change lives.
