There’s no star in the third season of “What We Do in the Shadows,” FX’s wonderful adaptation of the 2014 horror mockumentary from Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi; there is only the ensemble. For clarity’s sake, the show has always rested on the strengths of its cast: Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillén, and Mark Prosch make one heck of a sitcom family, four vampires and a familiar, except that the familiar is now a vampire slayer promoted to bodyguard status after Season 2’s violent climax. Guillén, the beset upon Felix to Novak’s Oscar, was the protagonist through the second stretch of the series’ narrative; Novak (somewhat arguably) served the same role in the first. Now, POV duties fall evenly on the shoulders of everyone, because everyone has a clear arc with a clear (if yet unwritten) destination. This is to “What We Do in the Shadows’” benefit: Now, each actor has more space to stretch their legs and give their characters further sculpting.
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The season opens with Guillermo (Guillén) locked up in the recesses of his master’s house, as Nandor (Novak), Nadja (Demetriou), Laszlo (Berry), and Colin (Prosch) arguing over his fate. Do they let him go? He did, after all, save their lives from certain doom as the Vampiric Council orchestrated their executions to near completion. Sans his intervention, they’d be really dead. But he’s also a descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, and keeping a Van Helsing near your coffin is like sleeping with a loaded gun under your pillow.
Nandor wants to let Guillermo live, a show of gratitude in accordance with the “warrior’s code.” Everyone else, Nadja most of all, wants to kill him. Colin, for reasons fathomable to none but him, is content sifting around in Guillermo’s shit bucket, but wouldn’t object to his death, either. The joke is on them, naturally, because Guillermo is clever, they’re a bunch of idiots, and he breaks out of his prison cell each morning to do his chores and grab an actual meal instead of raw chicken, which the vampires seem to think qualifies as people food. (Again: Idiots.) When The Guide (Kristen Schaal) informs the quartet that they’re the new heads of the Vampiric Council (of the Eastern Seaboard (of the New World)), all’s forgiven and the bickering over who the number one leader begins.
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If Waititi, Clement, and fellow EPs Paul Simms, Garrett, Eli Basch, Stefani Robinson, and Scott Rudin had let “What We Do in the Shadows” make drama out of the gang botching their duties running the Vampiric Council, that might’ve sufficed for a few episodes alone. But it wouldn’t have sustained the season from start to finish, so they’ve provided the cast with individual woes, each tied around loneliness. Lovesick Nandor is looking for a wife (a new wife; he’s gone through his share already), someone he can turn and who will keep him company for eternity; Guillermo is figuring out his place among vampires, especially his housemates, as both a child of Van Helsing and as Nandor’s familiar-cum-praetorian; Colin, surprisingly melancholic over his unknown origins as an energy vampire, starts researching to learn where he and his kind come from.
Nadja and Laszlo’s stories are left slightly fuzzier but still given shape. She’s eager to lead the Council with an iron fist, and she’s not shy about staining that fist in the blood of her subordinates; Laszlo is nose-deep in the Council’s endless library, specifically the porn section, and also feeling a bit abandoned as Nadja embraces her responsibilities as Councilwoman with gusto.
“What We Do in the Shadows” doesn’t sacrifice good humor for vampiric ennui, thank goodness, not that that’s worth worrying about; without jokes, the show simply wouldn’t have a reason to exist, and in Season 3, the jokes fire off in fusillades of banter and slapstick. The hypnosis sequence in the premiere, “The Prisoner,” is a particular delight, as Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja account the stages of hypnosis gone bad, weak brain to the thoughtless Sallies, brain scrambles to the purple screaming Henries, and worst of all, half-man, half madness; Guillermo, having been hypnotized one too many times in his service to Nandor, is immune, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them. (He has to play along, though, so whenever Colin says Guillermo’s name, he meows to maintain appearances. Such is the life of a vampire’s bodyguard.)
But being a vampire, for all its surface benefits, is a king bummer, and being a council chief is a 24/7 stress headache. It’s hard being immortal. Everyone you meet who isn’t a vampire eventually kicks the bucket, and every vampire you meet tends more likely than not to be kind of an asshole. (Exhibits A, B, C, and D: Laszlo, Colin, Nandor, and Nadja, in that order.)
At one point or another “What We Do in the Shadows” would’ve had to confront that undying weariness, so the show’s getting it out of the way now that Sseason 2’s conflicts are resolved, the stakes are settled, and Guillermo is on the same playing field as the rest of the team. He isn’t, of course: He could slay them all if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, so he won’t. Watching Guillén teeter between badass and bumbling makes for good fun. As the unexpected vampire hunter, Guillermo hucks wooden stakes and performs acrobatic feats like diving through air conditioning vents; as the show’s de facto schlemiel he busts through those vents and lands flat on his face, with Laszlo so absorbed in ancient porn— the Knobnomicon, Gutenberg’s Vaginarium, de Tocqueville Lusty Discharge Pamphlet— that he doesn’t notice.
Hilarious, in-character, and so cleanly integrated that the gag doesn’t clang against the series’ new depth of sadness: That’s how “What We Do in the Shadows” makes us laugh. [A]
“What We Do In The Shadows” Season 3 debuts on September 2 on FX.