TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 4

TV #43 of 2022:

What We Do in the Shadows, season 4

Probably the strongest run of this supernatural comedy yet, with clear arcs for just about every major character except the Guide. Colin Robinson has been replaced by a rapidly-growing junior version of himself — a concept allowing fresh new jokes for his different ages with each passing episode and some inspired effects creepily placing Mark Proksch’s head on a succession of child body doubles — and is being brought up by his old friend Laszlo, who gets to work through his own daddy issues on top of the bittersweet parental feelings of watching his ward’s childhood end too soon. Meanwhile, Nadja is focusing on her new dream of opening up a vampire nightclub (“like in the movie Blade!”), and Nandor is trying to find love again, generally by using a weary djinn for all manner of hilariously petty wishes.

And then there’s Guillermo, who’s back to his long-suffering bodyguard / familiar / caretaker / aspiring vampire status, and getting increasingly frustrated with his housemates. (In another runner throughout the year, their home has been absolutely trashed in everyone’s temporary absence, due to Laszlo’s neglect and halfhearted HGTV-loving renovation efforts.) If I have one complaint about this stretch, other than how quickly it undoes all the cliffhangers from the season before, it’s that the show still doesn’t quite know how to approach its central relationship. The pieces are there: Gizmo finally comes out as gay to his family and to us, and Nandor is shown to have more explicit sexual interest in men, rather than simply being open to Laszlo’s occasional passes. There’s ample romantic subtext between them, especially when Nandor wishes for his current partner to like everything he likes and she begins falling all over his human companion.

And yet, this element of the plot again doesn’t go anywhere, even in a fairly momentous finale. I can handle Nadja’s embezzlement thread ultimately serving as a futile punchline, but four years into this will they / won’t they dance, in an era of television that’s delivering canonical queer romance in stories like Our Flag Means Death — which shares two executive producers with What We Do in the Shadows!! — it’s frustrating for this one to remain so nebulous and deniable. I wouldn’t even say I particularly ‘ship’ the two characters involved; I just don’t understand what the writers are doing with the shape of their story if it isn’t intended to lead down that route.

So that’s why I’m still holding off on a five-star rating, despite the program demonstrating a steady improvement of characterization and structural complexity and a serious preponderance of laughs. This is a very funny and distinctive and ambitious sitcom! It just needs to either commit to bringing its two leads together or work out something different to try with those protagonists. Until its final scene, the last episode hits the reset button hard on this season, reining in its excesses like Baby Colin and the club and the ruined house for a return to the old status quo. Only that closing moment, paying off Guillermo’s own established stealing and a minor figure from earlier, suggests that we might be in for a significant change ahead. But Shadows has walked back such important-seeming endings before, which makes it difficult to get my hopes up too high over this one.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog