Vampires may be eternal but TV shows are not, including What We Do in the Shadows, whose celebrated run on FX comes to a hilarious close with its sixth and final season. Having long since outshone the feature film upon which it’s based, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s series is a superb blend of horror tomfoolery and The Office-style faux-verité drollness, and that continues to be the case with this return engagement, which once again finds its characters struggling with their pasts and striving to figure out their futures, themselves, and their feelings for one another. As amusing and inventive as ever, it heads to the grave at the top of its game.
Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) has left the Staten Island mansion that he shared with his vampire masters/friends Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), but he’s not been forgotten by his bloodsucking pals, especially Nandor, whose professed disinterest in his former familiar’s fate is totally unconvincing. The individual who actually has been disregarded by the quartet is Jerry (Mike O’Brien), a prior roommate who’s apparently been in a super-slumber since 1976. “A vampire with a plan,” Jerry had asked his friends to awaken him on New Year’s Eve 1996. Thus, they’re more than a bit embarrassed about admitting that he had not crossed their minds in 50 years. Sheepishly, Nandor confesses to the camera, “This one’s on us.”
The reason the crew has finally remembered Jerry is that Nandor and Laszlo are engaged in a heated battle for ownership of the small crawl space beneath the stairs that used to serve as Guillermo’s bedroom. For Nandor, that nook is an ideal place for his exercise equipment, whereas Laszlo covets it for his own designs.
Both think that Jerry will recall the original use for the area. However, upon rising from his coffin, Jerry is more concerned with the fact that during the past half-century, his undead compatriots haven’t completed their mission of conquering the New World; the best they’ve accomplished is taking over their street and part of the one next to it. This breeds self-recrimination in Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja, who are soon rethinking their life’s paths. Colin Robinson, meanwhile, is upset that Jerry—whom he thought liked him—can’t even recollect his name, and he’s gradually transformed in unwanted ways by his housemates’ discontent.
This is the usual What We Do in the Shadows nuttiness, and it’s predictably highlighted by excellent performances. Berry elicits the premiere’s heartiest laughs thanks to Laszlo’s admission that he was once consumed with a science project aimed at reanimating the dead. “Like Frankenstein?” asks Nadja, to which the buffoon sincerely replies, “Who?” Laszlo’s cluelessness about his endeavor’s derivativeness is matched by his zeal, and his ensuing partnership with Colin Robinson is typically inspired.
So too are a bevy of asides scattered throughout these storylines, from Laszlo’s masturbation machine (which is powered by a raccoon named Jacob), to Guillermo testing if Nandor is sound asleep by whispering “wazzup” to him, to Colin Robinson searching for human connection during his nighttime work as a ride-share driver. Its inanity consistently rooted in its characters’ craving for companionship, the comedy proves that it’s lost none of its outlandishness.
As always, What We Do in the Shadows’ mythical protagonists are torn between their crazy idiosyncrasies and impulses, their immortal urges and ambitions, and their petty humanity, the last of which is a nagging annoyance to Jerry, who baffles them all by asking perhaps the most obvious question ever uttered on the show: Why is a human camera crew filming them, and for whom is this footage intended?
Unsurprisingly, the vampires have no good answer for that query, and Jerry, fed up with his roomies, turns to the Guide (Kristen Schaal) to figure out the best way to take over America. This is great news to the Guide, who comes to suspect that Jerry is the “chosen one” coveted by the Vampiric Council, and though his ultimate designs aren’t revealed in the season’s first three installments—which were all that were provided in advance to press—it appears likely that he’ll play a key part down the home stretch.
Because Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin Robinson are hopeless incompetents, they quickly turn to Guillermo for help. Fortunately, he’s not far away, considering that he’s been living for months in Laszlo’s “jack shack” while working at Panera Bread. Guillermo claims that he doesn’t want anything to do with his batty buddies, particularly once he lucks into a job at a financial services firm owned by Jordan (Tim Heidecker).
Nonetheless, he can’t escape their presence, with Nandor posing as the company’s janitor and Nadja—eager to resume her study of humans—taking a job there and manipulating things to facilitate Guillermo’s rise up the corporate ladder. This scenario is ripe for absurdity and the series doesn’t waste its opportunities, all while peppering its action with random ridiculousness, such as Colin Robinson trying to catch Jerry up on the decades he missed by showing him the music video for “We Didn’t Start the Fire”—a clip that makes Jerry interested in learning more about the “rock and roller cola wars.”
What We Do in the Shadows’ characters are so well established that the series is often funniest when riffing off their familiar peculiarities, and yet that doesn’t mean its loopy action is predictable. Be it a gag about Latin jazz or a protracted impersonation of Richard Nixon, the proceedings are defined by their unexpected left turns, all of which are enlivened by the cast, whose comfortably combative repartee remains the material’s lifeblood. Of particular sweetness this time around is the dynamic between Nandor and Guillermo, given that the former is not-so-subtly pining for his underling’s return. Still, there’s ultimately no point in singling out one star when everyone involved is doing such funny work, both alone and opposite each other.
No doubt the conclusion of What We Do in the Shadows will find a simultaneously goofy and touching way to send off its clownish vampires (to the great beyond? Or maybe just to another borough?). After six classic seasons, they’ll be missed, although there’s solace in the idea that they may yet find a way to live forever via the magic of small-screen syndication.
