We left last What we do in the shadowsNandor’s central quartet, Nadja, Laszlo and Colin Robinson, had just escaped a second final death at the hands of the Vampire Council. The only reason none of these immortal ding-dongs are still able to reach Staten Island is because William of the Cross, the great-great-great who is the famous vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, fell in the last second to save their undead lives. So they should be grateful, right? And does the Vampire Council need to be about to bring them to justice? Do not be silly! As often happens in real life, go ahead What we do in the shadows good deeds are not recognized and the most clueless and right-wing among us fall into positions of power. In other words: congratulations to the vampires for their promotion.
We collect 29 days after the events of the end of the second season, as Laszlo, Nadja, Nandor and Colin try to find out what they will do with Guillermo, whom they have locked in a cage in the basement very Hannibal Lecter in Barcelona The silence of the lambs. It should come as no surprise that Nadja, Laszlo, and the creepy doll Nadja think William should die. They are vampires – or the ghost of a vampire, as the case may be – he is a vampire hunter, at the end of the story. But Nandor was a warrior before he was a vampire, which means he takes blood debts very seriously. And he owes it to Guillermo to save his life. (Also, as we’ve established, he loves Guillermo in his own way.) So by the end of the episode, Guillermo is already out of his cage and is doing well (sorry), having been known for relatives on bodyguards. With last season’s story over, it’s time for a new season arc. (Re-) enters Kristen Schaal as the Floating Woman, also known as The Guide, now forced to obey the vampires’ orders as they take on the Vampire Council of the East Coast of the New World.
Still, things have changed between the characters as this new status quo is established. While it will obviously take a while for Guillermo to overcome his self-proclaimed “codependent” tendencies, there has been a change in the character’s behavior. His eyes are more frequent, his jokes are more sarcastic and he seems to be less afraid of vampires than he used to be, and with good reason. They should be scared he. In the first two episodes of the third season, most of the protagonists of the show cut a deeper groove in terms of the personality of their characters: Laszlo is more cruel than ever, Nadja more bloodthirsty, Nandor more melancholy, Colin more chaotic. But while the show slows down its restaurant transformation (at least superficially) the master / server dynamic between the vampires and William, his character is still in motion.
There is still a distance between William and Nandor, and Nandor’s loneliness leads to the central gag of episode two. A 24-hour fitness center is a great setting for one What we do in the shadows episode – congratulations on this show for, once again, news on the subject of vampires – but what stood out to me was the way “The Cloak Of Duplication” used character-based comedy to satirize the rights masculine. Colin’s insults, Laszlo’s collection lines, Nandor’s pathetic projection: each of them takes a different and equally harmful approach to talking to a woman they don’t know. And the blind confidence of the guys that “he doesn’t like men” is a pretty good punchline, until he becomes a very good punchline again at the end of the episode.
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Meanwhile, Nadja is proving to be more fearsome than Nandor the Relentless, which I have trouble believing he took such a gentle approach to dissidents in the 13th century. However, Nadja is also a survivor and is proud to step on anyone who intervenes. According to her, “this is how you are the only one of 17 children surviving.” During the first season, Nadja turned Beanie Feldstein’s Jenna into a vampire and told us many things about how Nadja sees the world, both her desire for personal power: what better way to show dominance over someone than by cursing him with immortality? —And her belief in female supremacy. Now she and Nandor are fighting for control of the council, and with Nandor weak, it is possible that the time has finally come for Nadja’s feminist takeover. Laszlo, who was also turned into a vampire by Nadja centuries ago, certainly seems happy (or maybe gave up?) To hang out in her wet porn cave and let her run things her way.
Another highlight of this first group of new episodes is what appears to be a larger budget for VFX and set design. (This is what gets you an Emmy from the outstanding comedy series!) I should go back to previous seasons and see if the main rooms of the vampire mansion have been redecorated, but the Laszlo and Nadja rooms have definitely been upgraded with a battery kit. and some new wallpapers depicting what appears to be a bacchanal rite. (Sexy!) The new sets at the Vampire Council headquarters are also impressive: decorating the Curiosity Room must have been a dream job for some lucky fans of Canadian curiosities and with more Victorian-style settings to choose from, Modern settings such as the gym stand out even more.
“The Prisoner” holds the vampires together for a group episode based on the plot, as befits the season premiere; “The Cloak Of Duplication” is a half-hour of looser, character-based comedy, which sneaks into cartoon territory as it doubles as the voices of the various cast members on Kayvan Novak’s body. Both episodes are sharply written, combining a sharp satire, either about incompetent bosses or disputing hipsters, with silly jokes about penis and poop and a lot of profanity. What we do in the shadows he successfully maintained his momentum with a focused, character-driven arc in his second season, and while the characters continue to play to power in these first two episodes of the third season, there is a relaxed confidence in the writing. and representations that not only include meeting expectations, but exceeding them.
*play on words
- Humans can digest raw (or at least semi-crossed) chicken, as long as it is slaughtered, stored, and prepared in perfectly sterile conditions (i.e., not in a small refrigerator in a damp basement).
- Vampires may be right in never advancing beyond the VCR. It all started to go down when the iPods came on the scene.
- Speaking of which, this week’s wordplay award goes to Kristen Schaal, who has said “VCR”. (If I had to transliterate it: “Veyh Schey Ahyr”). She is followed very closely by Natasia Demetriou making trepidating, bird-like affirmative noises when vampires tell William her fate.
- However, fans of Matt Berry’s euphonic voice didn’t have to do without this week, thanks to the five-part series of Knobnomicon, Gutenberg’s Vaginarium, Tocqueville Download Brochure, Egypt’s Largest Penis and Roy Cohn Esquire’s 169 Sexual Positions.
- The latex glove Laszlo wears while exploring esoteric porn was a nice detail, as was the Blood Chemex in the apartment of Queens hipster vampires.
- In case you have any doubts about whether Colin Robinson was secretly the biggest monster of all, we have Colin practically licking his lips talking about William’s “stinky pickles”.
- “I didn’t become a vampire to end up being a bureaucrat pushing the pen. I became a vampire to suck blood and fuck forever! ”
- Was Laszlo trying to make an accent when he wore the duplication layer, or wasn’t it Matt Berry who was making the voiceover? His voice sounded … different.
- The song that plays throughout the final credits of the first episode, “King Of The Nighttime World,” is performed by KISS. But the show uses the 1974 original from The Hollywood Stars, which I also prefer to the KISS version.