TV Review: ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ Season 5, Episode 10 — A Mediocre Finale
by Frank Martin
There were many different ways that What We Do In The Shadows could have played its season 5 finale. Given some of the action pieces that took place in episodes past, it’s kind of strange that the situation came to this resolution. Compared with the program’s other season finales, this one didn’t necessarily feel like a let down, but it did feel like it didn’t rise to the stakes that the season had built up to. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) wanted to kill Guillermo (Harvey Guillén). In fact, he had more rage in this finale than he has had throughout the entire season. And yet, nothing strong particularly came of it. In fact, the show pretty much went backwards.
The episode starts with Guillermo hiding at a motel. He tells Derek (Chris Sandiford), the vampire who made him, and the secret of his location is out. Everyone pays him a visit after that. Meanwhile, Nandor is on the hunt for Guillermo by staking out a Panera Bread. Instead of finding Guillermo, Nandor finds comedian and actor Patton Oswalt. After an emotional conversation, Nandor realizes that it’s best to repair his relationship with Guillermo instead of killing him, which unfortunately results in Patton’s accidental death. The episode ends with Guillermo deciding he doesn’t want to be a vampire. They kill Derek, reverting Guillermo to a human form, then they resurrect Derek in secret to become a zombie.
It would have been nice to see some sort of physical confrontation between Nandor and Guillermo, but it’s also important to remember that this show is a comedy. So an action fight scene of that magnitude probably wouldn’t have satisfied fans. Instead, the show took a round about way to reset Guillermo’s human status. While it was fun to see him experiment as a vampire, having Guillermo as a human is definitely the show’s status quo. They did something similar with Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch). So the finale wasn’t bad. It just ended in a relatively stale place.
What We Do In The Shadows is now streaming on Hulu.
