What We Do In The Shadows drops an instant classic

What We Do In The Shadows has had a lot of great one-shot guest stars and recurring characters over the years. But none are as near and dear to my heart as Anthony Atamanuik’s next-door neighbor Sean, one of those secret weapons the show deploys a couple of times per season to really goose its comedy muscles. Laszlo Cravensworth’s good-time boyyh makes any episode he appears in better pretty much automatically, not just because Atamanuik is a gifted comic performer—although he is, as “The Railroad” makes clear for the dozenth time—but because of how he alters our existing characters. Even beyond Laszlo, who’s never more charming and affable than when in Sean’s orbit, the character’s genial nature and hypnosis-resistant brain puts all the vamps on their awful versions of their best behaviors. All of which is an admittedly long-winded way of saying that “The Railroad,” being basically a sequel to “Headhunting” (already the best episode of Shadows‘ season-opening three-parter) except with Sean in it, is an instant classic installment of this series.

We kick off with a brief reminder of seasonal business, as the vamps fail to sit through a planning session from Mike O’Brien’s Jerry about the ongoing plot to conquer America. (In case you were wondering: The Joke Of Jerry is still that he’s exasperated with his former roommates’ bullshit. We’ll let you know if a second Joke Of Jerry develops.) There are a few cute bits here—Nandor’s apparently still crushing on The Guide after “Sleep Hypnosis,” and Laszlo fakes the least-committed fake phone call ever. But it’s mostly table setting (and not just the kind where bodies are laid out for snacking, with blood types helpfully noted on little place-setting cards). The real business is in our A/B plots, as we return to Guillermo, Nandor, and Nadja’s jobs at investment firm Cannon Capital, while Laszlo and Colin Robinson’s latest experiments with their Frankenstein-style Monster get interrupted by a work-seeking Sean.

See, our rotten soldier has recently lost his job at the TSA (possibly because years of vamp hypnosis have turned him into “a proper idiot,” in Laszlo’s phrasing), and so he couldn’t help but wonder if Laszlo and Colin could hook him up with an interview at The Railroad. This is where, of course, they (and Nandor) all work, as they’ve now been telling him for six seasons and counting any time questions about their day-to-day lives come up. It’s the kind of premise you can only really deploy after a comedy has been cooking for a good few seasons: Of course we should see The Railroad (which is to say, Laszlo and Colin should be forced to invent The Railroad) before this show takes its final bow. And so they do, hiring a bunch of actors and renting an office, steadily improvising themselves into increasingly absurd situations that climax in a job interview between a half-brain-dead Sean and an all-brain-dead Monster, standing in as Railroad boss Mr. Smith (who not only doesn’t go on a cattle prod-demanding rampage, but “likes the cut of Sean gib” so much he spontaneously offers the delighted dope a non-existent job). The whole thing will end up colliding beautifully with our other plot-line at the episode’s climax, but even just on its own merits, what a joy it is: Matt Berry, Mark Proksch, and Atamanuik play phenomenally well together, with Colin stuck as the unlikely straight man wedged between Laszlo’s knee-jerk agreements and Sean’s enthusiastic stupidity. We kind of wish they had gotten to see all those trains that don’t actually exist.

Our other storyline, meanwhile, is more emotional and grounded (in a “two vampires watch over their human friend as he climbs up the corporate ladder” definition of grounded). Guillermo is continuing to thrive at Cannon thanks to Nadja’s machinations and his own endlessly servile nature. (Tim Heidecker continues to play “asshole, but not crazy asshole” as corporate boss Jordan, creating an interesting contrast between Guillermo’s new master and his old one.) On a surface level, the big conflict happens when a fight breaks out between Nadja and Gizmo, when the latter comes home drunk from a meeting with “the team.” Pumped up on their adulation, and believing he’s succeeding on his own merits, Guillermo does that Guillermo thing where a tiny bit of success immediately goes to his head, and he picks a fight with Nadja. (We’ve noted before how much fun Harvey Guillén and Natasia Demetriou have with their characters’ ongoing tussle over who can be the least incompetent person in the room, and it gets some great screentime here.) But the real dilemma is with Nandor, who’s rarely been more of a sweet puppy dog than he is tonight. After irritating Jordan one too many times, the new boss orders Guillermo to fire “Andy” the janitor, a process that ends up taking pretty much the whole episode to play out. When it finally hits, it’s genuinely harrowing stuff, as Guillermo is forced to chip away at Nandor’s armor of blithe stupidity until he just lays it out for him: He’s being fired. By Guillermo.

There were multiple points during “The Railroad” when I found myself expecting one of Shadows‘ occasional shocking turns toward violence to break out. (The other big one was when Nadja, trying to out-do Guillermo, tries to lure her new co-workers into investing in The Railroad, only for their non-brain-scrambled brains to notice the con almost immediately. Luckily, that one is defused by good ol’ corporate greed, which also handily finishes out the Sean plot.) Instead of showing off his “warrior” nature in the face of this humiliation, though, Nandor just gets quiet, and sad, ripping off his microphone and storming away from the camera. The show has gone to this well before, admittedly—it always leans on the Nandor-Guillermo relationship when it needs to get access to the audience’s heartstrings—but Kayvan Novak still plays the moment with remarkable humanity and vulnerability. Nandor is so sweet, when he’s not being awful, that you can’t help but feel for him, no matter how absurd the actual situation is. (Novak has a lot of fun tonight finding a hundred different ways to be the world’s most fireable janitor.) The episode tacitly suggests that the corporate world, which seems ready to pump up our boy Gizmo with all the power and validation he’s always craved so badly, might end up turning Guillermo into a worse monster than vampirism ever could. Certainly, his reluctant willingness to kick his former master/actual best buddy to the curb suggests he’s already starting down a pretty miserable path. Not What We Do In The Shadows, though: This season is cooking.

Stray observations

• • “Immediately! Ah, alright, person on the end of this mobile.”
• • Nadja’s costumes are always good, but her ’80s business hair and power suits are phenomenal.
• • Colin suggests they try the Monster “out on the road, see how he does at a quinceañera or something.”
• • Colin on Sean: “He doesn’t usually ask questions, which is good, because we don’t know dick about The Railroad.”
• • “ShaaaaawnAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!”
• • Sean’s hopeful that this new job opportunity means his wife will let him “back in the big bed.” (Also, he reports a minor maintenance issue as “elevator box don’t go-go.” Atamanuik is really, really good at delivering these idiotic lines with a straight face.)
• • “We brainstormed several ways out of our Sean dilemma, but in the end, the simplest plan was the best. Which was to rent an entire corporate office floor and hire a bunch of actors to pretend they’re working at a railroad office.”
• • It would be impossible to catalogue every very funny thing Nandor does while being the world’s worst janitor, but carefully emptying trash cans—and then chucking the now-empty bins into the big one—is our personal favorite.
• • “I don’t remember working at Kinko’s…”
• • “I will hold you responsible if today turns into carnage.”
  “It won’t.”
  “It might.” I love The Colin And Laszlo Show. Matt Berry makes Lasz sound almost cheerful about that last line.
• • “FRANK SMITH STOP YOU THERE.” Andy Assaf is quite funny here as Cravensworth’s Monster.
• • “And you’re all sitting around with your dicks in your hands.”
  “Why not? It’s our house.”
• • We’re now four for four on the show acknowledging the camera crew this season. That has to be building to something, even if it’s just a joke as the series prepares to wrap.