What We Do In The Shadows recap: God, this is a weird show

Every now and then, it feels worthwhile to step back for a moment and appreciate what a profoundly strange TV series What We Do In The Shadows is. This is, after all, a fundamentally good-natured sitcom where its main characters nevertheless kill and eat people on a regular basis, and where an episode can reach a genuinely happy sort of ending—but only by seeing a donut wench brainwashed into servitude to a pastry-craving con artist, abominations of god set loose in an old folks home, and children being exposed to a double-fisted mannequin handjob. It’s an odd one, is all we’re trying to say.

But let’s rewind for a second, because it takes “Hybrid Creatures” a minute to build up to that full fever-dream intensity. Although the cold open does take a few strong steps in that direction pretty quickly, after Laszlo reveals that his experiments into merging Guillermo’s half-vamp DNA with the animal kingdom have significantly progressed. (And then failed; this plotline continues to serve up little dividends of warm feeling, as Laszlo declares that he’s giving up on the experiments, but not on Gizmo.) Unfortunately, that’s left Lasz’s lab filled with some of the most upsetting creations this show has ever put on the screen, in the form of a series of animal-human hybrids with Harvey Guillén’s face plastered on them with CGI (and who will, once they start talking, repeatedly refer to him as “Daddy” in the creepiest manner possible).

Meanwhile, Nadja’s back on hex duty, trying to clear that pesky curse on her by running a night class on American assimilation for her fellow Antipaxans. (She figures that, since she burned down a school when she was a kid, she needs to do some teaching to make up for the damage. It’s sound, for WWDITS logic.) But while the night class does get us some great quickfire gags (her vision of Thanksgiving involves worshiping a frozen turkey before “acknowledging the onion”), it’s mostly a feint. Nadja gets sidetracked by the easier solution offered by “Helen The Magic Woman,” played by Reno 911!’s Kerri Kenney-Silver, pretty early on, leaving Nandor and Colin to take over teaching the class.

The Nadja storyline turns out to be the slightest of tonight’s three plotlines, so let’s dispense with it first: Kenney-Silver is funny enough as a fake witch conning Nadja for donuts, with her description of a cauldron as her “big bowl” being an especially good touch. But the actual story here is exceedingly predictable, as Nadja goes from gamely excited to increasingly suspicious of her new guide. (Meanwhile, the actual Guide gets literally zero lines tonight. Stop wasting Kristen Schaal, show!) The biggest payoff of the whole thing is hearing Natasia Demetriou make multiple mouthfuls out of the word “cruller,” and while that’s probably enough to cover the cost of admission here, it’s a pretty simple comedy carb.

Deeper, surprisingly, is Nandor and Colin’s takeover of the night class, which allows Mark Proksch to deliver his typically impeccable and/or horrifying impression of “The Cool Teacher,” apparently a classic go-to energy vampire drain. As with last week’s steady buildup of unwanted fascination, Colin is the ideal character for a swift, improv-esque series of escalations like this: In the span of about two minutes, we get him handing out condoms to his confused students, rapping about Shakespeare, and, of course, sitting on a desk so that, in Nandor’s words, “Everyone can see his nut hanging out his short.”

As for the good Mr. DeLaurentiis, he’s initially pretty happy when a late-night field trip to the local heritage museum reveals a mannequin wearing traditional Al Qonidar clothing as part of its exhibit on the immigrant experience—only to be outraged when it’s revealed that, not only is it his lost stuff, but that the writer of the informative plaque on hand believes Nandor was just an overly-imaginative virgin with tiny weapons. (“Those were my travel weapons!” he declares, angrily defends his arsenal.) The story wraps up with our second surprisingly sweet Nandor/Colin scene in as many weeks, as Colin reveals that, since history is bullshit anyway, he rearranged the exhibit to declare that Nandor was a badass who “set the record for the most constant sexual intercourse.”

All of which brings us around to Team Guillermo, more crowded than usual this week. It really cannot be emphasized how effectively unpleasant the hybrids are to look at, so kudos to all involved. They’re actually a bit reminiscent of Jemaine-Clement-as-a-cat from the original What We Do In The Shadows movie, especially the rat-Guillermo who appears, if we’re not mistaken, to have sex with an unconscious Gizmo’s face. (He also says he got the Guillermo-Frogs pregnant. This show!)

Laszlo dips erratically in and out of the subsequent plotline as the demands of his wank schedule dictate—Matt Berry, in typical fashion, finding about a dozen different ways to emphasize that particular word. But Harvey Guillén is good as ever keeping the plates spinning, tapping in to five seasons of practice at being simultaneously protective of, and horrified by, his scene partners for a whole new level of chaotic horror. And, like we said, the end result is actually pretty sweet, as Guillermo fakes the hybrids’ deaths and then smuggles them into an old folks’ home as service animals, where all involved seem genuinely happy. (That is, until the damage from those floor-dissolving shits starts wrecking serious havoc on the home’s infrastructure. This show!)

If there’s meant to be a uniting theme to all this madness, it’s beyond our ken to parse—beyond all involved finding some comfort in a trio of pleasant lies. But What We Do In The Shadows also isn’t a show where that kind of tonal dovetailing is necessary: It’s a delivery mechanism for surprising, hilarious weirdness, and on that score, “Hybrid Creatures” delivers far more often than not.

Stray observations

• Nadja teaches her students the words of “The Star Spangled-Banner”: “Burgers and fries…Mickey Mouse, Mount Rushmore…yee-ha!”
• She also believes the United States is made up of three regions (“Hollywood,” “New York,” and “Texas”), which produce one thing apiece: movies, newspapers, and beef.
• “No! Watercooler does not talk!”
• The show takes a long walk to set up Kenney-Silver calling herself “Helen The Magic Johnson Woman” but I’d be lying if it didn’t get a smile out of me—ditto the final shot of her lounging on a Dunkin’ countertop as the poor donut wench is forced to feed her.
• The Lamb-Guillermo was, by Laszlo’s admission, an accident; it grew out of some wool from one of Guillermo’s “HIDEOUS sweaters” falling into a petri dish.
• NOLEJ.
• Picking one most disturbing hybrid is probably a fool’s errand, but Blinky the fish loudly asking, “Daddy, what is wank?” is somewhere near the top.
• Don’t call it an amulet: “That is a keychain given to me by my mommy!”
• This show loves putting kids adjacent to the vamps’ degeneracy; it’s one of the more low-key laughs in “Pride Parade,” too.
• “It was a…crrewlan?”
  “Cruller.”
  “Crrulo?”
  “Cer-uller.”
  “Crewrwrwr…rwrwler.”
  “Close enough.”
• “Who here has seen Garden State?”