This review contains spoilers
If there is one thing What We Do in the Shadows is good at, it’s keeping you on your toes. The FX comedy’s fourth season concluded on September 6th, and there is a lot to talk about. On the surface, season four has everything that makes past seasons of the show so beloved by audiences and critics alike, but as last season showed, What We Do in the Shadows is not afraid to push its own boundaries. The result? Ten episodes of some of the best comedic writing and acting on television this year, and a (once again) tense, somewhat muddled finale that leaves the doors for season five wide open.
When the core group went their separate ways at the end of last season, I wanted to explore every path placed in front of me. Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) in London, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) backpacking through Europe, Laszlo (Matt Berry) raising a baby Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) — I wanted it all. Of course, that’s not what happened. When season four opens it’s a year later, and all of the housemates make their respective returns to Laszlo in Staten Island. I experienced a brief moment of disappointment that we wouldn’t get to see their year apart, but that disappointment quickly melted when I saw Laszlo feeding a toddler-aged Colin Robinson Count Chocula out of a dog bowl and I realized just how absurd the antics were going to be this time around. The premiere episode sets up the ridiculousness that is to be expected throughout the next nine episodes, and boy, do they deliver.
Baby Colin Robinson might be my favorite thing to ever happen on What We Do in the Shadows. The show found a way to reinvent a character that, while always funny, ran the risk of becoming stale. Watching Colin Robinson go from rambunctious toddler to a musical theater and Roblox-obsessed child to an angsty teen was both side splitting and slightly off-putting. Mark Proksch’s face on a child actor’s body is a bizarre thing to say out loud and to visually witness, but the absurdity is part of what makes it perfect. Mark Proksch has been one of the highlights of every season, and I was worried that the idea of Baby Colin would hinder that, but those worries were unfounded. Every vocal change, Sondheim reference, and “Hey Laszlo, guess what,” proved that Proksch thrives no matter what situation they put him in.
I loved Baby Colin so much that when regular Colin Robinson returned in the season finale, “Sunrise, Sunset,” I was admittedly a little sad. There’s a real feeling of loss around the moment that feels new to the show. Watching Laszlo “parent” Colin Robinson was weirdly endearing. He was, of course, a pretty bad parent, but I found myself emotional as I watched him walk hand in hand with little Colin Robinson and respond warmly to the boy’s repurposed Into The Woods quote. When the original Colin Robinson returns, seemingly the same as ever, Laszlo asks him if he remembers the two of them singing and dancing to the music Laszlo played — he doesn’t. It’s one of the first times I’ve ever felt true melancholy while watching this show. In any other situation, it would be easy to view the absurdity of the arc for what it is, but Matt Berry plays it with such earnestness that you feel that strange sadness at the same level that Laszlo does. It’s been said hundreds of times at this point, but Matt Berry is operating at a level of excellence that feels rare to watch. Few can mix emotional depth with the career-best comedic performance he delivers every single week. His lack of Emmy awards will go down as one of modern television’s biggest crimes.
The Laszlo parenting arc isn’t the only moment that had me emotional. In fact, the season is chock-full of them. Guillermo gets a heartfelt coming out moment surrounded by supportive family in “Pine Barrens” that will surely serve as one of the standout character moments in the series. Harvey Guillén is the beating heart of this show, and I know I’m not alone when I say I want Guillermo to come out on top when all of it is over. For that reason, I feel confident in saying this was not Guillermo’s season. You know when you’re watching a kid ice skate and they keep slipping and falling? You just continue saying “Don’t worry about it, you’ll get it this time!” but no matter what, they keep getting dealt those gravitational blows. That’s what it felt like to watch Guillermo this season: shoved in a crate for weeks, going out of his mind trying to plan Nandor’s impossible wedding, Baby Colin’s only YouTube subscriber, forced to participate in a familiar fight club — he was truly in the trenches. But none of it compares to the horrors of episode nine, “Freddie.”
When I say “Freddie” is evil, I mean it with a capital “E.” There had been hints throughout earlier episodes that Guillermo had a new boyfriend, and every interaction he had with Nandor with that context felt like a ticking time bomb. Nandor had been a mess for a while, grappling with his eternal life and seemingly bored out of his mind. His marriage (or remarriage, technically) to Marwa (Parisa Fakhri) felt insincere from the beginning, simply another way to try and change the endless monotony of everyday life. It’s enough of a change that it entertains him for a miniscule amount of time before he begins sabotaging the marriage he literally resurrected a woman for.
When Guillermo introduces Nandor to Freddie (Al Roberts), Nandor develops an obsessive crush on Freddie almost immediately. That crush then turns into Nandor asking the Djinn (Anoop Desai) to turn Marwa into an exact copy of Freddie, because in his mind, he can avoid cheating on his wife that way. As Guillermo and the real Freddie enjoy their outings in the city, we see Nandor and the other Freddie (Marwa) doing the exact same activities behind Guillermo’s back. When Guillermo discovers what is going on and the Freddies come face to face, everything hits the fan. Nandor hypnotizes both Freddies to stop screaming in horror at their clone, but Guillermo is a different story. It’s a betrayal that feels seismic, particularly when Guillermo cries to the camera crew and travels back to London to visit his Freddie only to discover that Freddie and Freddie (Marwa) have fallen in love after Nandor attempts to make amends by sending Freddie (again, Marwa) to travel the world. Evil! I watched almost the entire episode with my hand over my mouth shaking my head for poor Guillermo.
While trying to comprehend all of that madness, we still have two other plots occurring — the downfall of Nadja’s club and Child Colin Robinson turning into a teenager. It’s a lot all at once, and left me wishing there was more room to explore every moment, since any one of those plots could have had an entire episode dedicated to it. Going into the finale I had no clue what to expect, but after watching it over a few times I’m left feeling like there were no consequences to anything that happened throughout the previous nine episodes. That’s not true of course. Colin Robinson is back to normal, leaving Laszlo to reckon with his brief stint at fatherhood, Nadja’s club dreams have gone up in (partial) flames, and Guillermo has finally decided to outsource becoming a vampire.
Still, the finale is quiet compared to the rest of the season’s frenzied energy. A bulk of the time and focus is dedicated to seeing Laszlo and Colin Robinson’s arc through, and as a result, other major events like the Guillermo-Nandor betrayal feel like afterthoughts. Despite feeling disjointed at times, I remain confident in my hunch that it will all be taken care of in future seasons (or at least I hope it will).
What We Do in the Shadows pushed its own dramatic boundaries this season – some doom, some gloom, some mess. Still, they proved with stellar performances and episodes like Ayo Edebiri and Shana Gohd’s “Private School,” that when it comes to the state of TV comedy, they’re the ones to beat. Every line is gold, even background moments like a ringmaster at the familiar fight club remarking “Looks like [Guillermo] is voguing now, he’s ‘Phantom Menacing.’” I’m looking forward to the future of What We Do in the Shadows, and in the meantime I’ll be campaigning for Matt Berry’s Emmy Award for his delivery of “Gay is in. Gay is hot. I want some gay.” Truer words have never been spoken.
