What We Do in the Shadows: Come Out and Play (6x09)

I liked this one!

Cons:

So, back to the Guide/Nandor thing - I think I realized my core issue here. It feels like a potentially funny subplot that would happen in a single episode, but stretched out over the full season until it feels threadbare and irritating. Like, the bit where Nandor dramatically offers to die for the Guide, or the Guide letting him down easy and Nandor spacing out staring at her eyes, those were perfectly funny bits. But they come after multiple false starts that suggest a story and then never capitalize on it. The Guide has said her piece now, but it seems like Nandor hasn't gotten the memo, so are we just going to keep limping through jokes about them for the last few episodes of the show? It feels like they don't actually have good funny ideas with this plot thread and I am increasingly sure that the payoff won't be worth the setup, whatever it is. I wish "Nandor has a crush on the Guide" had been the plot of a single episode, basically. That could have worked.

Pros:

This was such a fun episode! It's got so many classic elements that this show does really well, gives our gang a chance to be involved in all sorts of shenanigans, and has a... groundedness to it? That I can't quite explain - I think it's the fact that a bunch of vampires die in this episode, and a few of them are killed gruesomely by Cravensworth's Monster squishing their heads in, and these deaths have narrative consequences and it feels like our core cast of vamps are in some real mortal peril! It's fun to see Guillermo kick ass as a vampire hunter, it's been a long time since that's happened.

The Baron co-parenting and dealing with babysitters is so funny, as is the fact that Jerry, a character so underutilized this season I almost didn't recognize him when he appeared, suddenly gets killed off at the top of the episode. After Jerry's death it's a mad dash through Staten Island as various different themed gangs of vampires chase down the gang, and they wait for Guillermo to come rescue them.

Guillermo's displacement from his found family is an interesting theme this season, because there's this interesting push-pull from him trying to maintain his independence and make his own choices, but still wanting to be valued by his friends. He's rejected at the start of the episode when he's not invited to the party to honor the Baron, but then validated in the end by Nandor telling Guillermo's cousin that if he's family to Guillermo, he's family to the rest of them too. You get this sense that Guillermo and all the vampires know they'll always be in each other's lives, even if the form of that relationship has shifted. It's sweet!

And seeing Guillermo failing to connect with his family in basic ways is sad, but then the mood turns around when you have Guillermo's cousin go all ride-or-die and call in his buddies to go with Guillermo to save the vampires from potential death. He doesn't ask any questions: if Guillermo's going into danger, he's coming too. And of course he's got the Van Helsing blood in him and his able to be an inexplicable bad-ass when facing down the barista vampires. Or, sorry, the artist and writer vampires who just happen to be working as baristas right now. Lol.

Nadja and Laszlo have a continuation of a plot thread that's been happening a lot this season, where Nadja is irritated with Laszlo for trying to take care of her so much when in fact she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Seeing Nadja single-handedly take on the graveyard vampires was very fun, especially the bit where she just continually slams the one guy's head over and over again. Laszlo is very into it. He reveals that his protectiveness is more about the fact that he cannot live without her, rather than any belief that she needs help. I love that, it's very sweet! And Nadja has a great response, which is to say that she doesn't need Laszlo's protection, but she can't live without him either - it's not his protection that she'd miss if he were gone, it's everything else about them - their relationship and the awesome sex they have and all that stuff.

This was a fun one - I hope we're done with the Guide/Nandor stuff, or at least I hope we can do something bigger and sillier with it. I hope we get lots of good quality time with these characters in the last few episodes. I'm feeling really sad about saying goodbye!

8/10