What We Do in the Shadows Episode 5: Shapeshifting has its downsides

On the fifth episode of the wacky comedy series What We Do in the Shadows, Nadja reunites with her long-lost lover and Laszlo gets captured by animal control.

I’m starting to wonder how the writers for this show brainstorm their ideas. Do they dress up in vampire-ish Halloween costumes and spend all night out in random social gatherings, completely drunk, then later recount their experiences in a smoke circle like in That 70’s Show? Things are just getting weirder and weirder, but in a good way.

Living next to a bunch of vampires pretty much guarantees that you’ll become a snack at one point or another, which is what almost happens to their human neighbor Phil. Laszlo and Nadja are thinking up ways to spice up their love life when Laszlo spots Phil through the window and graciously offers to let Nadja watch as he drinks from him, calling it a kink activity. Is it though?

Unsurprisingly, she finds this boring and unromantic and leaves, but Laszlo does it anyway. Turning into a bat, he flies into the house only to have Phil’s wife knock him out with a broom and call animal control, the prison where animals go when they don’t get a fair trial. That’s a bit of an extreme reaction though. Just direct it out the house, don’t beat it with a cleaning device and send it to jail.

Adventures at the animal shelter

The whole rescue mission to free Laszlo from the animal prison does nothing to help the vampire’s campaign for world domination. After they, not so discreetly, follow the truck to the shelter by flying behind it the way skaters used to hang off car bumpers, they struggle to get past the half-asleep guard in the front office.

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Most of this struggle is because they have to wait to be invited in the building, but they get stumped again when Nandor appears unable to hypnotize the animal control employees to free Laszlo. According to him, you can’t hypnotize anyone unless they already want to do something, and according to Craig Roberson, that means it isn’t really hypnotism. This is what happens when you’re immortal, you have nothing valid to argue about anymore.

Nandor sneaks in the back and frees Laszlo still in his bat form, but it turns out to be a real bat with rabies and Laszlo is still in the shelter. Meanwhile, inside the shelter, Laszlo turns back into his human form inside his cage and attempts to rally the other animals into a rebellion, pledging to free them if they help him escape.

This plan seems to almost work until the cat jailed beside Laszlo refuses to unlatch his cage. Outside, Nandor has another plan to transform into a dog and get in the shelter himself, but they end up locking him in a cage too.

Adventures of Nadja and Gregor

Remember Jeff from the pilot who Nadja believed to be the reincarnation of her lover Gregor? Well, because Nadja is bored with being married to one vampire for centuries, she seeks her once beloved Gregor/Jeff out for some excitement.

According to Nadja, Gregor has been reincarnated multiple times, not just the one, and she runs into him each lifetime where they embark on a passionate affair until he’s ultimately decapitated. Apparently, he gets his head cut off in every lifetime.

The only problem now is, he’s a very boring human working at a parking garage and he’s nothing at all like how she remembered. He takes her to the carnival and tries to do human date activities with her, like win her a stuffed animal and buy her popcorn, but his archery skills are unimpressive and human food makes her projectile vomit.

She gets so sick of his boring human self that she forces him to remember his past lives, launching a strange montage of reenactments where he imitates the times he was a soldier, a fisherman, and the one time he was reborn a horse. It’s odd but much more exciting than the date they were having.

Once Gregor gets himself in check, becoming somewhat lucid in reality, he and Nadja have a grand time stealing a police horse and shooting kids with rubber-tipped arrows, kissing like starving dogs handed a bag of steaks.

However, just as he suggests they make wild animalistic love on the ground of the parking garage, Nadja gets a call from Guillermo informing her of Laszlo’s situation and she chooses her husband over the exciting new Gregor, no matter how much she wanted that wild sex on the dirty concrete.

A wife knows best

It takes Nadja less than five minutes to do what the boys couldn’t by simply walking in the shelter, invited by Guillermo, and hypnotizes the clerk to tell her the code to the back room so they can get Laszlo and Nandor out.

Laszlo keeps his promise and frees his animal companions but they end up attacking him, namely the cats. In the end, Gregor is arrested as he runs around Staten Island claiming to be a fierce warrior. So, it was an unusual night for everyone.

What did you think of this episode of What We Do in the Shadows? Do you think Gregor will return or do you think he be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of his life?

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