Chain Mail
What We Do In The Shadows is one of those shows that effortlessly oozes charm and cleverly written comedy consistently through every episode. Every now and then though, the show steps it up a notch and delivers a truly magnificent dose of comedy. Episode 4 is one of those examples. Playing on old trends and anachronisms for our vampires to tackle, Shadows delivers another wonderful episode. Episode 4 of What We Do In The Shadows begins with Nandor checking his postal mail while things start to become tense between him and Guillermo. While his familiar heads off to “infiltrate” the vampire hunters, Nandor turns his attention to his e-mail. To his horror, he starts reading a chain letter and learns he’s going to be visited by Bloody Mary unless he forwards the email on to 10 recipients He gets Laszlo and Nadja involved and together the trio try to work out the best way of dealing with this curse. Scrambling around the house, they find a few different email addresses before reluctantly asking Colin Robinson for help obtaining the rest. At the same time, Guillermo learns that the hunters have found a suspicious house that may hold vampires – a house that matches the description of Nandor’s. Despite his best attempts, the group race off to attack which leads Guillermo to whisper a voicemail message to Nandor and the others, warning them they’re going to die. Only, when the trio of vampires hear this they believe it’s the curse starting to manifest itself. Guillermo joins the hunters as they enter a different house to that of Nandor’s, prompting Guillermo to save the others and stake the vampires living inside. Heading home, the vampires manage to forward the email on as a blood-stained Guillermo returns and helps put Nandor to sleep for the night, which is where the episode ends. With much more focus on Guillermo this season, What We Do In The Shadows cleverly merges these two narratives together again but this time through a cleverly written segment involving chain letters. Given how prominent these were around the early 2000’s, seeing it resurface here in the wake of Nandor reading his old emails is such a great blast from the past and works ever so well to add a hilarious spin to this episode. More so here than the other ones we’ve seen this year, Shadows maintains a consistent amount of comedy dished out through its episode and almost every scene manages to advance the narrative or deliver the comedic goods. This is certainly one of the must-watch comedies of the year and this episode is definitely one of the best of the season so far.
