Posted in: FX, Opinion, TV, TV, What We Do In The Shadows | Tagged: fx, Harvey Guillén, kayvan novak, Mark Proksch, matt berry, Natasia Demetriou, opinion, what we do in the shadows

What We Do in the Shadows Squandered Guillermo's Vampiric Potential

What We Do in the Shadows had a huge opportunity to explore Harvey Guillén's Guillermo as a vampire, but it ended up squandering it.

With the conclusion of season five, we hit the reset button again for one of the core characters in FX's What We Do in the Shadows. In this case, it's Guillermo de la Cruz, played by Harvey Guillén, who finally achieved his dream of becoming a vampire, only to find out it's not the life he wanted after all. His major drive was to become a vampire hoping for years that his master Nandor (Kayvan Novak) would turn him, but unfortunately never felt his familiar was ready. At the end of season four, Guillermo "turned" to Derek (Chris Sandiford), who never really benefitted from his vampirism. Season five was basically about Guillermo trying to figure out his powers with the help of Laszlo (Matt Berry) while hiding it from Nandor because if he found out, the series reminds us it would be a guaranteed murder-suicide from the humiliation.

What We Do in the Shadows Squandered Guillermo's Vampiric Potential

Naturally, the series jumps through many hoops with the other characters to fill up the time while "Gizmo" adjusts to his new life as one of "them." While it turned some hilarious results, there wasn't any real progress, which is perhaps the season, no, series biggest disappointment aside from leaving us dangling from Colin Robinson's (Mark Proksch) power trip, death, and reincarnation that's treated like some throwaway anecdote now. Guillén is a talented actor, make no mistake. In fact, his finest performance of the entire series was in season four as he was coming out to his folks while also hiding the fact that he comes from a family of vampire killers and living with vampires as a Van Helsing descendent on top of how his desperation drove his fateful decision. With most shows, his coming out as gay would have been milked for every LGBTQ cliché ad nauseam, but refreshingly, his family accepted his sexuality.

As far as where they went in season five, we see Lazlo trying to conduct experiments that evoked shades of 1996's The Isle of Dr. Moreau to its expected absurdity. While it tracked as far as the resourcefulness of the show, it seemed like it rushed to the conclusion of the ethical dilemma of most vampire fiction: the life of preying upon innocents to quench bloodthirst. Five seasons in, I can understand Guillermo's logic in not wanting to take an innocent life, even when his friends do, but as a parody of the vampire genre, it seemed like an awfully lazy copout.

What We Do in the Shadows is legendary for its self-awareness as one of the franchise's biggest strengths. The vampiric council was literally composed of pop culture's most famous vampires while alluding to the film actors who couldn't make it, like Interview with the Vampire's Tom Cruise. They even included Blade star Wesley Snipes who was "conferenced" in. His character is famously known as the daywalker, a vampire hybrid who satiates his hunger through a serum that keeps it at bay while hunting his evil brethren.

You're telling me, after going through the trouble of bringing in a vampire hunter vampire, that wasn't a possibility for Guillermo? To flip on the existing vampire stereotypes and live by alternate means? There was another protagonist in the CBS series Forever Knight in Det Nicholas Knight (Geraint Wyn Davies), a vampire who doesn't have any serum like Blade does but is able to curb his thirst for human blood by harvesting and acquiring a taste for animal blood stored in wine bottles.

Turning Guillermo back to normal (by killing Derek and resurrecting him as a zombie) in the most recent season finale, after all the effort he put in, is a tremendous waste and almost deflates any real progression of the character – leaving serious question marks for the sixth season. Guess the only consolation is that some empathy seeped in from all the aloofness from Nandor, but it becomes the same note on repeat with all the characters. I would go as far as saying they at least finally gave Kristen Schaal's The Guide something worthwhile after getting taken for granted by the three in the season's penultimate episode. At this point, it doesn't seem like there's anything meaningful for the characters to do, as there isn't anything worthwhile to build now in WWDITS season six, which is a shame considering what Guillermo and Nandor have been through all this time.

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