What We Do in the Shadows Episode 4 recap: The bloody cursed hat

The trio attends a vampire nightclub in Manhattan in an attempt to ally with Simon the Devious in the fourth episode of What We Do in the Shadows.

With a show like this, I didn’t think they’d follow up with what happened to the LARPing girl Jenna back in What We Do in the Shadows Episode 2, “City Council”. I assumed they’d forget about her as they do with most of their supporting cast, but she returned for a brief update on how her vampire transition is going, and it’s not going well. She has no idea what’s happening to her nor has she consumed any fresh blood, halting the transformation process and leaving her an undead halfling for now.

Thinking she’s sick, her roommate goes out for some cold medicine but comes back to find her body dead and cold on the bed, with a fly buzzing around her eyeball. However, when the paramedics come, she wakes up and runs back inside, confusing everyone because she had no pulse.

Alliances and a cursed witch hat

The vampires are still set on taking over America but unfortunately, they only have dominion over five houses on their street. To rectify this issue, they decide to form an alliance with a fellow vampire, Simon the Devious (Nick Kroll), whose coffin was next to theirs on the boat ride over to America.

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Unlike the trio, Simon worked his way up the social ladder and became the leader of the Manhattan vampires, using a nightclub called the Sassy Cat as his headquarters. Nadja and Laszlo used to attend his parties in the 1920s and decide they’re all good enough friends to ask a favor.

Laszlo decides to wear his favorite hat made from 100% witch skin that Simon has always envied, however, the hat has a curse on it so bad things happen whenever he wears it. The second he puts it on, a bookcase falls on his new familiar (a new kid named Joshua that has about five seconds of screentime) and the floor caves in, but despite the clear, obviously unlucky things happening around him, Laszlo denies the hat is cursed.

The Sassy Cat Club

For some reason, they go to the party separately, Nandor with Guillermo and Nadja with Laszlo, and it takes the latter a little longer to get there on account of the hat. It’s hard enough to navigate New York but doing so with a cursed hat is a real struggle, and it makes Nadja and Laszlo bicker like an old married couple (which I guess they technically are).

Nadja points out random things she dislikes, then blames them on the hat; the bad traffic, everyone on the street with a sad face, and the bad smell in the cab. At one point, Laszlo’s cape even gets stuck in the cab’s door and drags him down the street.

When they’re all finally at the club, they locate Simon the Devious who lives up to his name by being a devious hat stealer. He agrees to an alliance but only if Laszlo hands over the witch hat, because a hat so nice belongs on someone worthy, at least in Mr. Devious’s opinion. It’s not an honest exchange considering Simon’s vampire posse were prepared to take it by force if necessary, but once Laszlo hands it over, Simon calls them miserable excuses for vampires and throws them out. However, because the hat is cursed, Simon accidentally blows up his own club not minutes after from a game of flaming arrow.

The problems of a familiar

During the course of the episode, Nandor’s familiar Guillermo starts having doubts about his job, if a job is what you can even call it. He feels unappreciated, especially when they call him Gizmo, and grows more perturbed each day as Nandor continues to show no signs of turning him into a vampire.

While at the Sassy Cat, Guillermo finds a breakroom/bathroom designated for vampire familiars, including a cat named Sam, but they all seem much happier with their masters than him. If no one was sure if the familiars were second class citizens before, the state of their bathroom should be enough to convince them, it’s a storage closet with two buckets and pee on the floor.

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As if the talk with his fellow familiars wasn’t bad enough, Guillermo’s almost eaten by another vampire when he walks back in the club and though Nandor intervenes, he doesn’t seem to care if his servant dies or not. Nandor even gives the other vampire permission to eat Guillermo if his heart was truly set on it. This, of course, this upsets the poor, very stupid, human very much and he seemingly quits but changes his mind after Nandor apologizes. This is gullibility at its very worst.

To make it up to him, Nandor flies Guillermo around the city but ends up dropping him from the air, landing him in the hospital. While at the hospital, Laszlo finds his witch hat taken in with the burn victim found at the Sassy Cat.

The next episode of What We Do in the Shadows airs Wednesday night on 10:00 p.m. EST on FX.