TV Review: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 5; Episode 7 — Hit-Or-Miss Plot Abound
by Frank Martin
This season of What We Do in the Shadows has certainly been hit-or-miss. And since each episode has multiple story threads, some of things have been hit-or-miss within the same episode. This week’s falls into that category. There’s a lot going on, and the show should be applauded for not shying away from being as weird and quirky as possible. But it should also remember what the focus truly is and just what makes it so entertaining. Sometimes, some of these plot threads seem to go off the rails unnecessarily.
As Laszlo (Matt Berry) and Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) continued to get to the bottom of his issues turning into a vampire, Laszlo inadvertently created a series of freak animal hybrids with his experiments. He also entrusted Guillermo to euthanize them all rather than have them live as abominations. Guillermo formed friendly relationships with them, though, and ends up allowing them to live out their lives in a nursing home. Meanwhile, Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) has taken up teaching a class on American culture. Of course, it goes terribly wrong. She ends up being conned into giving donuts to a woman claiming to be a witch who could help her break her hex.
The episode also has a fun side story as Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and Nandor (Kayvan Novak) take over teaching the class. They go on a field trip to an immigrant museum, where Nandor actually discovers a lot of his personal items. This side story is in line with a lot of other plots that involve the logistics of being a vampire in the real world. These are some of the things that other vampire stories don’t focus on, but this show does exceedingly well with. In future episodes, they would be more successful by focusing on these quirks of a vampire lifestyle rather than trying to be outlandish with donut excursions.
What We Do in the Shadows streams Fridays on Hulu.
