I adored the first three seasons of What We Do In The Shadows, especially the second and third. I was very happy to call it one of the funniest shows in years. Unfortunately, Season 4 didn't just hit the same for me. It's a big step down from prior WWDITS.
The previous season of WWDITS ended with a series of cliffhangers, Laszlo is left at home alone with a baby version of Colin, Guillermo is sent to London with Nadja, and Nandor is traveling the world alone. There was a lot of potential for a fun globe-trotting season that split up the cast, but then Season 4 starts with the cast immediately reuniting at home, wasting pretty much all of it. It's not like the storylines Season 4 did end up settling for were all that great either. Lazslo was the highlight as usual, as he spent the season taking care of Baby Colin. It's definitely the best storyline of Season 4, but it's dragged down by the (purposefully) ugly baby CGI and the fact that Baby Colin is just not as interesting as his adult counterpart. Nadja finally gets a storyline, which is nice, but it's just to start a nightclub that ends up failing by the end of the season. It feels really one-note. But worst of all is what's going on with Nandor. Having gotten 57 wishes from a genie, he decides to revive and remarry one of his dead wives, only to repeatedly make wishes to change her appearance. I get that Nandor's supposed to be a bad person and this is likely to be a big cornerstone in a character arc for the guy, but I'm sorry, this just crossed the line. The entire Marwa storyline was mean-spirited at best and borderline racist at worst (Nandor turns his Iranian wife into Guillermo's white boyfriend, how is that okay?!).
So the story didn't work for me this season, but how is the comedy? Well, thankfully, it's still as great. It's so easy for a mockumentary to start deviating from its origins and presenting more like a standard TV show, both The Office and Parks And Rec did this, so it's great to see WWDITS still has a lot of fantastic camera-related gags. The cast is also still on point, even in the weaker episodes, and Matt Berry in particular is probably at his absolute best. But probably the biggest thing, when WWDITS puts the plot in the background and focuses on comedy, it ended up giving us some of the best episodes in the whole show. Episodes like Private School and Go Flip Yourself show that WWDITS never really declined in quality because it's just as funny as it's ever been, if not even funnier. Instead, I'm left thinking that WWDITS would probably just be at its best if it focused less on telling a dramatic story and focused more on just being funny. But that's strange since I thought Season 3's story was really good, maybe the show just can't balance out those two sides of itself.
Highlights:
Private School: This is peak WWDITS. It takes a simple premise of the main group interviewing for a private school and cranks it up into complete and utter insanity when they decide to repeatedly hypnotize the headmaster until they get things just right. It also doubles as a hysterical commentary on crack shipping, with not a single pairing left unreferenced.
Go Flip Yourself: This is my favorite episode since On The Run, it captures that same unhinged energy, disconnected from the rest of the show. On top of that, it's a parody of reality shows (more specifically home improvement shows), which is something I can always get behind. I don't think anything topped the shock value of Nadja killing one of the hosts mere minutes into the episode, but Laszlo's fandom, the bleeped curse words, the "bad news" cut, and of course, that brilliantly ridiculous twist at the end came really close.
Overall, Season 4 of WWDITS isn't a bad season of television, not in the slightest. The writing, acting, and comedy is still on-point. Season 4 is just dragged down by a really lackluster story, which sucks since it ended up having some of the best episodes in the series whenever it put it off to the side and focused on the comedy.
2/5 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment