It’s a disco bloodbath for Guillermo on a cursed What We Do In The Shadows – The A.V. Club

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One of the best VHSes I ever found at a thrift store was an instructional tape called Surfing For Seniors, one of a wave of videos on how to use the internet produced in the early 90s. It wasnt as manic as the one for moms, or as mortifying as the one for kids. It was very dry, actually, just monotone voiceover and grainy footage of elderly people in front of ancient desktop computers. But it was definitely among the most condescending of these tapes, comparing a computer mouse to using a claw machine and helpfully pointing out that no, gramps, you cant reach inside the screen and pull information out.

I thought about that tape a lot while watching this weeks episode of What We Do In The Shadows, where the vampiric cast embraced their inner pop-pops and mee-maws by scaring themselves shitless with an email forward. As the episode opens, Nandor wants to check his email, so Guillermo sets the computer up for him. (I assume he set up the email address as well, even though Nandor was pretty proficient with the thin machine, all things considered.) Turns out, hes only gotten two over the past decade: One for a preview screening of The Blind Side in 2009, and a chain email saying he will be horribly cursed by Bloody Mary if he doesnt forward it to 10 people by sunrisea real thing that was a sort of proto-Creepypasta in the 00s, for the young ones in the audience.

This plot, which kept Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo together in the same room for nearly the entirety of the episodeand we all know how much I love their group dynamicshowed a different side of their characters, one that casts them in a different, and more helpless, light than usual. Screaming at the sound of the phone ringing and confidently asserting that the email address shop must be closed this time of night, they seemed like a bunch of doddering old fools, which is slightly different from the more general sense of cluelessness they normally exhibitand a marked contrast with the ruthlessness Nandor, who was a big ol undead teddy bear in this episode, showed in life. Besides, it was a fun change of pace to have the three of them just running all slapstick-like around the mansion like they were in an Abbott and Costello movie.

Meanwhile, Guillermos evening begins with stepping out for a fun evening of staking practice (thats not a euphemismthese are all virgins, remember?) and ends with him arriving home with a Tide Pen and some change after standing in line at an all-night Duane Reade soaked in blood while everyone pointedly pretends not to notice him. The out-of-touch vampires at home obliviously freaking out about an email while Guillermo was out murdering their brethren dovetailed so nicely with the idea of being shut away in a house for 50 years. (Yes, 1970 was 50 years ago now.) Vampires being out of touch with contemporary society is an idea thats milked for laughs in pretty much every episode, but a whole household of vampires being stuck in the 70s is an intriguing new variation on the theme. Were they turned in the 70s, or was that just the decade when they decided to retreat into the mansion forever? Why were there so many of them? Communes were big then...

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The strong writingboth in terms of structure and in terms of jokes; I laughed out loud a lot this weekwas complemented by the great direction in the assault on Disco Vampire Mansion, which added a lot of fun found-footage touches as the show briefly transformed into the climactic scene of a horror movie. But what put The Curse over the top was Harvey Guillns performance; he really acted his ass off this episode, going through a whole seasons worth of emotions in less than 30 minutes. His crisis is deepening as his secret double life gets more violent and complicated, and although they had that sweet moment towards the end of the episode, it seems that Guillermo might not be Nandors lapdog too much longer.

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It's a disco bloodbath for Guillermo on a cursed What We Do In The Shadows - The A.V. Club

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Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero
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