I can’t believe it took me this long to watch ‘What We Do in the Shadows’. The comedy style felt fresh and innovative and I was happy to see true vampires overtake our screens once more. ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ is a TV series developed by Jemaine Clement taken from the 2012 feature film of the same name he made alongside Taika Waititi.
The show is a mockumentary-style sitcom that follows the daily lives of four vampire roommates: Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Lazlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) on Staten Island, New York. They go on miscellaneous adventures from trying to convert all New York residents into their servants, to their future roles as leaders of the Vampiric Council.
It also stars their familiar, a human servant to the supernatural, Guillermo (Harvey Guillen) who has wanted to be a vampire since he was a kid and is hoping that through his servitude he might one day achieve his dream.
So, what did I mean earlier when I said that it was nice to see true vampires on our screens again? This is meant to say that it was nice seeing something different from the 2010s romanticized supernatural phenomena.
In the 2010s we saw the rise of movies like ‘Twilight’ and shows like ‘The Vampire Diaries,’ as well as its spinoffs ‘The Originals,’ and ‘Legacies’ which all saw a romanticization of vampires. This makes sense given their genres and the placement of vampires in the lead character role, studios want them to be hot, marketable, and pretty much just like a human except they are super strong, super fast, and immortal. They’re practically superheroes.
However, when vampires step into these roles, they are both softened because they aren’t deemed violent monsters and strengthened because they aren’t given many consistent weaknesses. Here are a few ways as to how ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ combats this (Ha! Bat!), specifically with their non-energy-vampire vampires.
Vampires can’t walk in Daylight
As the show states, ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ is exactly that, nearly all of the show takes place at night because that is when the vampires are awake. They can’t go out in the sun and frequently we see vampires burn or explode when exposed to any sort of sun. It shows why Guillermo the human is so useful to him because he is the only one capable of going out in the day to run errands for them.
While this can put a bit of strain on storylines, the show doesn’t run out of ideas, the vampires mainly stay in their house, but they have gone out to nightclubs, gyms, carnivals, restaurants, and places that are open or operate late at night. They don’t attend high school and if they are ever in a school building, it is a night school class, keeping with the rules of traditional vampire lore.
The Hunt and Kill
The reason vampires are so dangerous is that they need to drink blood to survive. This is why they have been depicted as monsters in cinema for years, occupying villainous roles. This remains true in works such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘The Vampire Diaries,’ where the villainous vampires are deemed evil hunters who drink human blood, while the good vampires and romantic leads prefer to drink animal blood or suppress their hunger.
This is not the case for ‘What We Do in the Shadow.’ It is a dark comedy and it makes a point that 1, the vampires cannot eat human food or they will get sick so if they’re hungry they need blood and nothing else, 2, they constantly hunt and kill humans. As we see in the pilot one of Guillermo’s tasks is to bring humans to them to eat, no different than fetching groceries.
Season 2’s episode, ‘On the Run’ also shows that sinkholes occur on their lawn because of the number of corpses buried out there, even making a game out of it with who can find the most. The show is not afraid of making these kinds of jokes and it helps establish that while we laugh at their antics, they are dangerous creatures.
Presentation of Immortality
When most of your vampires are seen around high school age, either because they are new vampires or they are trying to blend in, it can be easy to forget how much time a vampire has lived through. After all, if you were immortal, why would you spend all of your time going to high school? Additionally, many of these vampires don’t have much history about them brought up at all unless it’s plot-relevant, we don’t get much backstory on them other than how they became vampires.
On the other hand ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ always reminds the viewer of how long the protagonists have lived, such as when they are being interviewed. When someone reminisces on an experience, the show displays historical paintings and drawings to demonstrate how long ago the event was.
Nandor the Relentless is also a good example of this because in his time as a human, he was the ruler of Al Qolnidar, a small nation that he claims existed centuries ago in present-day South Iran, yet the nation no longer exists. In the season 2 episode, ‘Ghosts’ Nandor also discovers that after so many years speaking English to blend in, he forgot the language of his native tongue Al Qolnidarese. This was a great way to build lore and history around a character as well as show the age of them.
In their interviews, they also reference events in history that they were a part of. Laszlo, for example, has an extensive resume in his time as a vampire, such as being a musician who wrote the first version of ‘Come On, Eileen,’ a lawyer, a collaborator with Sigmund Freud on the foundations of therapy, and he confessed to being Jack the Ripper. These are presented as jokes to make the audience laugh but it also just shows the length of time he has lived to gain these skills.
The Consequences of Being a Vampire
All that I have stated so far has helped showcase the negatives of being a vampire. So many times in the romanticization they exclude these factors, these drawbacks so much so that it almost begs the question, why not be a vampire? If you can walk in the sun, go to high school, turn your loved ones into vampires, and survive off animal blood, why not just get the cool powers?
While the show is a comedy, by showing these aspects of vampirism it displays the toll the lifestyle takes; you can no longer enjoy the sun, you can’t eat anything except blood, and you live so long that you lose people. The romanticized vampires will brood on the idea of loneliness, however, without the factors mentioned above, it doesn’t seem to affect them because the positives always outweigh the cons in their cases.
There is a real dissociation that comes along with being a vampire and there are moral sacrifices one has to make. While you might get super strength or the ability to turn into a bat, there aren’t many cases where these are necessary and they just aren’t enough for all the other aspects of living you’d give up.
‘What We Do in the Shadows’ is a new favorite of mine for its ability to have such a good satirical dark humor about everything and how it can keep finding new stories to tell while sticking to traditional vampire rules. I know I’m excited to see how they explore these factors more in their final season.