'What We Do in the Shadows' Season 2 Episodes 1 and 2: Hilarious jokes, an agile Guillermo and a zombie Topher
Spoilers for the first two episodes of ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 2
Season 2 of FX’s vampire mockumentary ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ is as good as the first one -- perhaps, even a little better in terms of writing. The season began with a two-episode premiere and both episodes make you laugh till you cry, something that has been sorely missed in these tough times with everyone locked inside their homes, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
Episode 1, ‘Resurrection’ sees a new familiar in the household. Haley Joel Osment of ‘Sixth Sense’ fame joins the vampire household as Topher, an obnoxious social media manager/part-owner (fractional) of a brewing company. He was Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Laszlo’s (Matt Berry) new servant (after the couple had managed to kill around eight other familiars). And he was annoying but only to Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Nandor’s (Kayvan Novak) familiar.
Everyone else thought Topher was cool, much to the annoyance of Guillermo, who could not stand the fact that his own master favored the new guy, and not him. But Guillermo had a lot of other stuff going on. Armed with the knowledge that he was the descendant of the vampire-killer Van Helsing, and in a bid to protect the master he so loved, Guillermo had turned into a vampire-killer himself, although he killed only the ones that the Council sent to kill Nandor.
When Topher dies after getting electrocuted, the coven decides to get him resurrected, even if Laszlo doesn’t quite believe in hokum like that. The result is a Topher zombie that climbs walls, tries to kill Guillermo and somehow, still wants high-fives.
Episode 2, ‘Ghosts’, sees the vampire flatmates discover a ghost infestation in the house. One thing leads to another and they soon realize that even they had ghosts because vampires are technically dead. So, they conjured their own ghosts and things got weird. Laszlo had to sexually gratify his ghost to finish his unfinished business on earth. Yikes.
And Nadja and her ghost somehow got along, way too well. That can never be a good thing. The highlight of the episode is Colin (Mark Proksch), who has been experimenting with humor to drain human energy. When no one kept biting his “updog” joke bit, he ended up conjuring his dead grandmother’s ghost to get a laugh.
Jemaine Clement’s ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ is often called the supernatural, gothic-horror version of ‘The Office’, and that is a mischaracterization at best, and an insult at its worst. While there is a structural similarity to both shows, the sheer absurdity of ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ can not be matched by any other mockumentary, save perhaps Clement and Taika Waititi’s original 2014 film of the same name, or ‘Four Lions’.
The show's writing treads the dangerous rope of jokes being straight-up childish and being too clever by half, and successfully. Not a single moment is bereft of humor. And not a single joke fails to earn a hearty chuckle. The two episodes solidify our faith that the whole season is going to be phenomenal.
‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 2 airs on FX every Wednesday at 10 pm ET/PT.