What We Do in the Shadows season 4 is underway, with the fourth season making a two-episode premiere last night. In episode 2, “The Lamp,” we see the Staten Island crew seamlessly fall back into their usual shenanigans as Nadja continues renovations on her vampire nightclub, Laszlo tries his hand at psychology, and Nandor plays vampiric The Bachelor. If you’re worried you missed a detail or two, check out our recap of the episode below!
Moving Things Around
Renovations to transform the Vampiric Council building into a vampire nightclub are not going smoothly, to say the least. Unfortunately for the Staten Island crew (mostly Nadja), the Guide and her wraiths can (and do) undo any of the renovations completed in the mere blink of an eye — so clearly this venue isn’t going to work. Nadja and Laszlo aren’t the only vampire facing obstacles, however, as Nandor’s search for a wife is not going well despite the fact he once had 37 wives. To sweeten the search, he has smuggled hundreds of pounds of his ancestral treasure back to Staten Island as a dowry for himself which he now hides from everyone (but Guillermo, who discovers the treasure). As we all know, Nandor definitely lacks in the social skills department and can never quite manage to say the right words to a potential partner.
Nadja always has a way of getting what she wants, however, and lies to the Guide to ensure her plans can go forward. The Guide calls a wraith meeting.
Counterclockwise
While sorting through Nandor’s ancestral treasure, Guillermo discovers a djinn lamp. Nandor insists that the lamp holds no real power, but thanks to Guillermo’s suggestion to rub the lamp counterclockwise a djinn emerges from the lamp. This particular djinn can grant 52 wishes, but in typical trickster spirit fashion immediately begins tricking Nandor into using the wishes on silly things, like knowing how many wishes he has. Nandor remembers that he once had love — his 37 wives of varying genders, it seems — and even remembers loving one of them particularly more than the rest, but he cannot remember the name of his special wife.
“Some of my wives were girl wives, some of them were guy wives…it’s not that different.”
Nandor uses another wish to bring all 37 of his wives back from the dead. The plan immediately proves to be horrible and he has to wish for them all to be able to speak English, and the plan continues to be horrible as it seems all of the wives are cross with him.
Wanting of the Wang
There are so, so many wraiths. The Guide instructs the team of wraiths to stop harming the human workers and instead help them, which the wraiths immediately ignore because they know the Guide’s inner desires since they’ve been together for so long. Ever the solution man, Laszlo steps forward to say he can fix the Guide’s inner feelings using psychology — as it turns out, he was there at the conception of psychology as a practice and hung out with none-other than Sigmund Freud (which honestly makes so much sense for Laszlo). Not only did he hang out with Freud, he was the inspiration for the idea of “penis envy,” which he himself refers to as “wanting of the wang.”
Vampire Therapy
I’ll just say it: I want Laszlo Cravensworth to be my new therapist. Are his methods questionable? Of course they are. Did they get a result? Also questionable, but hey, at least we’re all having fun. Laszlo gives the Guide her first therapy session which the woman really needed because as it turns out, she doesn’t even remember who she was before she became the Guide at the Vampiric Council! Laszlo apparently has a solution to make her remember this information … that might hurt. Laszlo has hypnotized the Guide, and honestly … this woman is a mess. She ends up in a storage closet opening boxes that are full of smaller boxes that are marked that they are full of … (you guessed it) smaller boxes. Laszlo was afraid this was the case and immediately pulls her out of her hypnosis.
Once again under Laszlo’s hypnosis, the Guide stumbles upon a door marked “Shame, do not open” which he influences her to see a strong man next to her so they can open the door together. Finally someone in this show is putting respect on Guillermo’s name because that is who she envisions helping her answer the door. It turns out the Guide is stuck serving the Vampiric Council as punishment because she was a very slutty vampire. She also slept with a vampire killer — Van Helsing — which is why her memories had been erased up to now, and also explains why she’s thinking about naked, glistening Guillermo.
All-in-all … Laszlo DOES cure the Guide, so I stand by my earlier statement.
Matchmaking
Nandor has to figure out which of these 37 wives is his true love, which is a task because there are a lot of them and he isn’t a patient man. He seems to be cycling through them in a What We Do in the Shadows/The Bachelor-type situation, with Nandor himself conducting “interviews” of the various wives. For the women, if they answer his question incorrectly, the djinn simply poofs the unchosen women/men away — seemingly using up another wish. For the men, it seems they have to face him in combat, and if they win they’re not his true love — because the love of his life never beat him at anything.
Guillermo, it seems, has finally found a special someone for himself as we see him rather cheerfully hanging up a video chat with someone who tells him he “misses him very much.” Guillermo hangs up the call and tells the cameras that he isn’t going to be jealous of Nandor’s romantic life because he’s doing “very well right now” in that area himself … but those are the only details we are offered into this relationship. Guillermo delivers the clothing he purchased from Target to the remaining wives so they can cover themselves up and look good for their chance at winning over Nandor.
Guillermo and Nandor are bickering like an old married couple again (after Nandor lost “baby” Colin) and I’m screaming at them to get a clue … again. Ultimately, Nandor chooses one of his newly-undead wives, Marwa, to propose to — but Marwa seems far less than enthused to say the least.
Our coverage for season 4 of What We Do in the Shadows can be found here. Episodes air on Tuesdays weekly on FX and are available to stream on Hulu.
