Drama
The Wheel of Time
While no Game of Thrones, Amazon Prime’s lavish take on the popular fantasy series adds some problems to an already adult-oriented saga.
There’s more to being a vampire than dressing up in eveningwear and knocking back a few pints of blood. You’ve got familiars to juggle. Werewolves to fight. Civilization to enslave.
Oh, and the rent to pay. Can’t forget the rent.
Sure, if you’ve conscientiously saved all your undead life, perhaps rent’s no problem for you. And if you live back in the old country … well, real estate prices have been a bit depressed in Transylvania as of late, so buying a fixer-upper castle is within the reach of many an undead immortal with a strong credit rating.
But in New York City? Different story. Even Staten Island is expensive these days—especially if you hope to find a place in a good neighborhood where the neighbors don’t mind your all-night carnivorous revelries, your strong aversion to garlic and the fact that you always smell a bit like bat guano.
Yep, if you’re a vampire and hope to live in New York, you’ll need a roomie or two. Maybe three in a pinch. And hopefully, you’ll all get along. After all, you could be stuck together ‘til doomsday. Literally.
Nandor the Relentless, a one-time Ottoman warrior, shares a Staten Island house with English nobleman Laszlo Cravensworth and his wife, Nadja. The three of them have been as close as three undead people can be for, oh, hundreds of years. They always say eating brings people together, and that’s especially true when you’re sucking blood from the very same necks.
But they have their issues. Fidelity is a bit of a rarity in vampire relations. Nadja might’ve turned Laszlo into a vampire and then married him, but she also has eyes (and teeth and everything else) for a guy named Jeff. He just so happens to be the reincarnation of another lover of hers, someone whom Laszlo has beheaded every time the poor mortal is reincarnated.
Meanwhile, Nandor must deal with his human familiar, Guillermo, who’s been serving Nandor for a decade and really thought he’d be turned into a vampire by now. And even though Nandor made a nice glitter portrait of the two of them, Guillermo must wonder whether Nandor has a fear of commitment.
And then there’s Colin. Or there was Colin. Or there maybe still is? Hewasn’t a vampire in the traditional sense: Colin didn’t have fangs or the ability to turn into a bat, and his skin didn’t even shimmer in sunlight. No, he was an energy vampire, which meant that he drained people of their essence by boring them to death (or, at least, nearly so).
But the thing about energy vampires is they’re doomed to die after living for a hundred years. So Colin bit the dust when he turned 100 in Season 3. Then things got weird (or maybe just weirder): A baby with Colin’s face crawled out of his dead corpse. That child has since grown at a remarkable rate. The regular vamps are still trying to figure out what this thing is. But in the meantime, they’re calling him ”Boy” and hoping he doesn’t turn out as boring as the original Colin was.
It’s not a perfect living situation. But it’s workable, and that’s something, right?
FX’s mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows runs with the blood of a zany, 2014 New Zealand movie of the same name. The movie’s creators, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, are the brains behind the new series, too, and in fact directed the show’s first four episodes.
Those who’ve seen Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok have already gotten a taste of the sort of humor we find here: deadpan silliness mixed with just a wee bit of heart, Monty Python on Red Bull.
But let’s be honest: Zany or not, What We Do in the Shadows checks all the wrong boxes for Plugged In.
Let’s start with the show’s spirituality, because vampires. We should at least make note of the fact that our main characters here are undead magical creatures who’ve technically been forever damned by God.
Does that sound churlish, given the show’s wacky ethos? OK, fair enough. But if we forgive the vamps of their undead-ish-ness, let’s not forget that all of them are, essentially, serial killers, luring unsuspecting victims in for a little dinner (little knowing that they’re the main course). We see plenty of blood. Why, even the opening-credit sequence features the trio sitting around a dead, terrified-looking body with blood spatter all around his head.
That’s just what vampires do, you say? Well, then, let’s talk about all the sex being had. Bela Lugosi was never so randy. And then there’s this: As archaic and antique as these vamps can seem at times, clinging to the old vampiric ways, they’ve kept up with the bleeding edge of popular profanity. And they never pass up a chance to use it.
What We Do in the Shadows can indeed be droll and witty. But like its main characters, it comes with a dark side.
A year after Colin Robinson’s pseudo-death, the vamps all return from European trips to find the house in disarray.
A creature with the face of a grown man and body of a child runs around the house, and we hear that it crawled out of Colin’s corpse. Vampires use their powers to fly; turn into bat; and scream with booming, demonic voices. We see a doll possessed by a ghost.
A vampire drains a man of blood then leaves him to die. The vampires casually talk about dozens of other people they’ve killed. A vampire is shot with a nail gun (though he’s OK). Several characters (including human ones) fall through rotting wooden floor planks.
A couple has sex several times (we see them in several positions but their clothing covers the actual act) while their friend watches and casually talks about his overseas trip. (When asked to join, he declines.) People talk crudely about sex.
We learn the vampires locked Guillermo in a coffin to ship him across the Atlantic twice. The vampires mock Guillermo when they think he might soil himself after releasing him from the coffin. They also complain about how boring Colin used to be. Laszlo says he let the boy-creature swim in sewage. We see that Lazlo treats little Colin more like a pet than a person. Guillermo gives Laszlo and Nadja the silent treatment.
We hear ten uses of the f-word, as well as the s-word, “b–tard,” “h—,” “bloody,” “d–k” and “t-ts.”
As they work on their plans for worldwide conquest, Nandor, Laszlo and Nadja learn that their vampiric “dominion” consists of, generously, two streets. So they decide to travel to Manhattan to try to partner with old friend Simon the Devious, who runs a trendy vampire nightclub there. (Vampiric nightclub? Could there literally be any other kind?)
As the standard vampires (plus energy vampire Colin) schmooze in the club, Guillermo hangs out in the “familiar” lounge below. He’d been looking for the bathroom, and a fellow familiar points to a couple of buckets—saying that the vampires added those when the familiars threatened to unionize.
Nadja fondly recalls how she and Simon came across to the New World on the same ship, sometimes going up top to “breathe in the sea air and just seduce and kill sailors.” At the club, a conscious, naked man (his privates are pixelated) is wheeled in, apparently as a meal for Simon. Another vampire threatens to eat Guillermo, not realizing that he is attached to Nandor. Nandor, in a show of politeness, tells the vamp that he can eat Guillermo if he really wants to. Guillermo takes offense and storms off, and Nandor tries to make it up to Guillermo by taking him flying. (Alas, Nandor drops Guillermo en route, and the next time we see him is in the hospital, covered in bandages and casts.)
Laszlo wears a hat made of witch’s skin that is said to be cursed (though he doesn’t believe it). When Nadja reminds him that he was wearing it when a horse threw him and then tried to “make love” to him, Laszlo responds, “I don’t consider that a curse.” He points a hat at another familiar, who’s immediately smashed by a falling bookcase. He falls through a floor, too, and gets his cape caught in a taxi cab—which drags Laszlo for a full block before the car stops. The hat also occasionally bleeds (the apparent reason for which is quite gross).
A woman appears dead (a fly crawls across her open eye) before springing awake as she’s being loaded into an ambulance. “I’m fine now!” she says. “Fine!” something explodes. Ivan insinuates to Laszlo that Nadja was making passes at him. Someone fires flaming arrows, one of which seems to hit someone.
A joke is made about sea men and semen. Guillermo passes a door labeled “sex room” in the Manhattan club. Colin frets about feeling “gassy”. We hear the f-word about a dozen times and the s-word at least five. We also hear sporadic words like “a–,” “d–k” and “d–n.” The British profanity “bloody” is uttered about 10 times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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