What We Do in the Shadows: Urgent Care (5x06)

Finally, Nadja knows! What a wild episode.

Cons:

I feel like this has been a Colin Robinson-heavy season so far. I'm not saying I dislike that character, but... let's be real. Not my #1 favorite part of the show or anything. I thought his story had promise but it took up maybe a bit more of the run time than I would have liked. I would have allocated more time to Nadja and Guillermo and Lazlo, and slightly less to Nandor and Colin.

Pros:

But starting with that Colin plot, I did love the conceit where he keeps being accidentally too interesting, and it slowly starts to kill him. As he tries to drain from people, he finds that his black eye looks too interesting. Then he gets hit by a car, and a TikTok is made of him, and he discovers the man who hit him is a famous actor (John Slattery - from Mad Men!), and then when he tries to go into a gas station, it's being held up at gunpoint... no matter what he does, he's too interesting to drain energy! That's pretty funny, as was the bit where Slattery finds Colin's accent so interesting that he's happy to listen to him talk all day.

I also loved the bit at the end, where Lazlo's experiment transferred the energy from Nandor to Colin, but he goes a bit overboard. Colin is forced to be "interesting" in order to feed some of the stolen energy back into Nandor, and he does this by telling him about his original name having initials that spell out A.S.S., and his ex-boyfriend Davy Crockett. Which is such a funny and random detail to include.

But the creme of the crop here is the continuing saga of Guillermo's vampire status. Lazlo does some horrifying experimenting on some frogs, which turn out to be able to fly. Guillermo gives it a shot, and it works momentarily but then he falls and breaks his legs! Nadja is tasked with bringing him to the hospital, but she ends up bringing him to a veterinarian, which also includes a "Familiar Hospital", where Guillermo is tested and treated. The advice Nadja gets is to put him down because he might break his ankle again... and then things take a turn for the worse when the blood tests show that Guillermo is turning into a vampire!

So now Nadja knows the big secret. I loved this whole scene with high as a kite Guillermo, Nadja rushing in to save him, then Guillermo turning around and saving her, too... there was such a lot of (very aggressive) affection between the characters here. I love the juiciness of now Guillermo, Nadja, and Lazlo all having this secret they're keeping from Nandor. The vampires don't seem to really care about Guillermo in the outward way they talk to him, but there's a loyalty and solidarity between them all the same. Nandor is getting more and more needy as time goes on, but it seems the other vampires are starting to see him as more of a person, in many key ways.

I'm so excited to see how this plays out, which I keep saying week after week, but it's true! This show is delightfully insane. I was pleased as punch with this installment, maybe especially Guillermo talking about his love for all the vampires (or should I say bitches) that he lives with.

9/10