What We Do in the Shadows: Lazlo's Father (6x06)

A pretty good episode, but probably not one of my favorites?

Cons:

The recurring gag of Nandor having a crush on the Guide still just feels really unmotivated for me. I swear this isn't a shipping thing, the whole Nandermo thing is something I enjoy thinking about but I don't have a lot of hope that the show will actually deliver on. But even setting that aside, it just feels out of nowhere and not very funny for Nandor to have this crush on the Guide, a character who hasn't been around most of the season and when she does pop up, has nothing really to do? I don't know.

Pros:

I enjoy the groupings this season, where Nandor, Nadja, and Guillermo are often connected in one of the plots together. It's a fun dynamic. Their subplot, with their misunderstanding about an AirBNB, and then the plot twist that shapeshifters actually are involved, was pretty great. Guillermo as exasperated explainer of basic human things is a joke that never gets old. And I love them accidentally stumbling into preferential treatment, as their neighbor is worried she'll get in trouble for operating an unlicensed AirBNB.

Probably the funniest bits of this to me were the fact that the vampires hadn't even realized they had neighbors on the other side of their house, and also the bit where Nandor and Nadja are each paranoid that the other might be a shapeshifter in disguise. They are unable to assuage each other's suspicions because it turns out that Nadja never listens to Nandor when he talks and so can't answer his basic questions that would prove she's really who she says she is.

The main plot is a Lazlo-centric operation, where his ghostly father comes back to try and make things right with his son. While Lazlo is completely unwilling to entertain that he's a changed man, the rest of the gang seem charmed and delighted by the old ghost. I loved Nadja willfully misunderstanding his insulting attitude towards her and actually getting along with him, Colin taking out his own daddy issues on the relationship even as Lazlo reminds Colin that he was the one who raised him up from a baby... Lazlo having Guillermo pretend to be his servant in order to impress his father... all of this was great. And then in the end we discover that Lazlo was right to be suspicious of his father all along. Turns out, he's here to try and gain access to a corporeal form again. And it's not Cravensworth's Monster he's gunning for - it's Lazlo himself! Luckily he's able to use his Ghostbusters-esque contraption to trap his father's essence, which he then hands over to Colin. Colin hides it along with his Funko Pop collection, which is of course something he would have!

So that's it. I had fun with this episode, I liked seeing Lazlo deal with his emotional baggage in a direct way, all the Freudian slips were quite humorous and completely in character for this dude! Still, I'm not sure anything in this episode is going to stick in my head in a major way moving forward. Fun, but not remarkable!

8/10