Interview With the Vampire
Raglan James (rejected stage name for Michigan J. Frog) must have heard the news about AMC green-lighting a Talamasca spinoff series, because the international man of mystery is bringing his sassy ass around again. As Debussy plays in the background, Da Bussy himself pulls up a stool at the omakase counter, where Daniel asks if the Talamasca can protect him. “From being killed? No! We’re particularly poor at keeping our assets alive.†RJ also has this ominous advice: “You fear Armand. You should fear the other one.†Cut to: Armand and Louis, literally just staring at a blank wall in the apartment, fighting in even-toned voices after last week’s revelations. And now that Daniel remembers what Armand’s like on a bad day, he’s worried he’s not gonna make it out alive. It doesn’t help his chances that the boys down in whatever the Talamasca version of Quantico is have a list of “a few hundred questions†they want him to ask the vamps during the interview.
Back on the interview couch, though, Louis and Armand just want to talk about ancient infighting at the repertory company. Daniel thinks he’s in Silence of the Lambs; Louis and Armand think they’re in Slings and Arrows. “Indulge the buffoon†is what Louis had advised Armand at the time regarding growing disquiet in the Paris coven. “Feed Santiago’s own ego back to him and smother mutiny with praise.â€
“In retrospect, the buffoon was in the audience,†says Armand, referring to himself. Here’s the deal: Sam has written “a flaccid, full-length†play for Santiago that’s intentionally meandering and circuitous and happens to have no roles for women (typical). Armand thinks that running rehearsals for this extremely long and difficult-to-memorize play will keep Santiago under his thumb every night in the theater. Au contraire. The whole thing is a Mousetrap (befitting Ben Daniels’s Santiago-Hamlet headcanon), a ruse of a show designed to ensnare its watcher. The theater is a front that Armand takes way too obsessively seriously, and the play is just pretentious and brooding enough to completely work on Armand. So while he’s getting lost in script notes and staging, Santiago is orchestrating a coup … with his mind! He has stolen Claudia’s diary and has the whole crew passing it around to each other to rile up discontent. Because there are no roles for women, he sends Estelle and Celeste on a mission to find Lestat and invite him to the premiere. This season has already established the fun trick of a character like Santiago or Lestat reciting their lines onstage while also having a full-fledged telekinetic conversation with someone else. Now we can see its mutinous applications.
But Armand can’t. Armand’s distracted. He’s in love! And he’s in love with a guy going through something. Louis has gone kind of Dark Louis mode ever since that guy told him he’ll never be Gordon Parks. He’s colder, harder. He’s got a good eye, so he’s turned it toward art collecting, bringing home a Jackson Pollock. Armand doesn’t see the vision; he thinks it looks like someone got sick on the canvas. “Watch,†says Louis, pairing his love of art and beauty with a ruthless, exploitative knack. “I’ll sell it for five times the price in a year. Thirty times if he keeps drinking and dies.†(Pollock died in 1956 … Louis, what did you know!) As if this show didn’t already delight me completely, making its lead a vampire art collector investing in famous artists and reaping millions in rewards decades down the road is just too rich. He’ll flip the Pollock and reinvest in more art, in stocks and dividends, in a plane. We saw a bit of this side of him in episode one when he was running his businesses; he dampened that side of himself and let emotions and instincts govern for so long, so I’m not sure if this turn feels like development or a retreat. “The first vampire capitalist, the first vampire pilot,†Armand jokes, Frenchly.
Louis, looking away, tells him to take off his clothes. Armand says he’s busy and that he has to read Sam’s latest pages. “Clothes off, face down, in the coffin. You can read ’em to me while I fuck you.†Who is gonna match these guys’ freak?!
Claudia and Madeleine, that’s who. Madeleine Eparvier is on the verge of getting assaulted by a gang of French hooligans who have broken into her dress shop, when Claudia comes to her rescue, killing them all and revealing her nature. Madeleine, all things considered, takes it pretty well. She asks “What’s it like to drink blood? Is it like drinking life itself?†She’s not going through the usual doomed-human-vampire-lover plot beat of disgust and horror. She’s into it. Louis is not. He walks in on them and yells at Claudia and asks if it’s romantic (Claudia: “Noâ€; Madeleine: “Not yetâ€), and Claudia gives a lovely plea about being a third all her life and getting to choose one thing for herself. “And it’s her, a weird white lady I met by happenstance.†Paris is truly the city of Love! She wants Armand to turn Madeleine because Louis’s got that tainted Lestat blood. “I wouldn’t’ want that for anyone.â€
“Good enough for us,†he says.
“Not for her.†It’s funny to think that they’ve got that Lestat brand of crazy in them. It’s also a little sad. Louis appeals to Armand, who’s resistant, by saying that they’ll be happier as a couple when he loses the “burden†of Claudia. Ouch. In his office, Armand interviews Madeleine, a bad bitch with no fucks left to give eating an apple with a spoon. She could not be less intimidated by Armand. Their interview is almost entirely in French and about existential questions of life and survival, so it plays like exaggerated art-house pastiche, which is fun and a compliment, actually. Meanwhile, Claudia and Louis smoke in the parlor like 1950s dads outside a delivery room. She can also tell that Louis has turned harder and stronger. “I can feel it. But you’ve got to give up something to get something.†It’s a no from Armand for now because he’s essentially a vampiric ace volcel: He’s never sired a vampire, and the idea disgusts him. He’d much rather hyperfixate on community theater. Speaking of …
Okay, remember a few episodes ago when Jean-Paul Sartre casually popped up as Armand’s friend and I commended the show for taking a big swing with the Midnight in Paris thing? The swings are, uh, they’re a-swangin’ now. Because the play that Sam has written for Santiago as a decoy, the one that’s long and existential and meandering? It’s called Enduring for Guido. The cast is holding bindles and wearing boulder hats and wondering when something will actually happen and when bloody Guido is going to bloody arrive.
Irish-accented playwright … Samuel “Barclay†… “Enduring†for “Guido†… Bowler hats … No discernible plot … Oh no… Oh God …
THIS SHOW IS SUGGESTING THAT SAMUEL BECKETT WAS A VAMPIRE WHO WROTE WAITING FOR GODOT AS PART OF SOME VAMPIRE SCHEME TO TRICK ARMAND.
This is absolutely unhinged, uncalled-for, unprecedented TV-writing behavior. I’m gooped and gagged. I am the very spirit of a million chefs, giving a million kisses! Mwah! This is so very cuckoo. This would already be a wild-enough turn, but what sets it over the edge for me is that they’ve changed “Beckett†to “Barclay†and Godot to Enduring for Guido, because now we are no longer in Midnight in Paris territory. We are in Riverdale. This is deeply, fundamentally, a Riverdalian act. Could they not get the rights to Godot? Did the Beckett estate oppose? Doesn’t matter. I’m pleased as punch.
“Plays require events, Sam! And there are no events in your shitty little play!†Santiago yells at the world-renowned playwright Samuel Barclay while flying and storming off and telling him telepathically, I love your work, Sam, apologies. Sam answers, well played, maître. The coup is underway. Armand is losing control. Some months pass, and Louis tells Armand he’s going to do it; he’s going to turn Madeleine and try to bring a vampire into the world in a way that could be beautiful for once. He wants Armand to attend, and Armand goes, “Are you asking or making me?†In that sub-way, he does, which makes Louis draw back a bit. He’s just really at sea, y’all. He’s been used to certain things being certain ways for hundreds of years. He can’t just let go and let god.
Louis and Claudia perform a backroom operation on Madeleine, and we learn something (I think) new about how vampires gain people’s feelings and memories as they drink from them. It seems to be much more intense of an exchange when it’s a full-on turning. This doesn’t happen every time they feed, right? Is it only when you make someone a vampire? Book readers, please advise. Anyway, we get an almost Barbie or Tree of Life–type hazy montage, in which Louis sees Claudia as Madeleine sees her in her mind’s eye. The two leave town and Armand finds Louis later on, his wrist slashed back open. He says he can feel his fledgling and that he tried to throw the blood back up. “I thought I’d feel like I was losing Claudia. I did not care.†Armand has been banished from the coven and moves in with Louis.
In present day on the interview couch, Armand finally brings up the elephant in the room: Louis and Daniel have their memories back, and Louis is very angry at him. “You asked me to do it,†Armand tells him. He doesn’t know what to believe. “I failed Louis once in my life. It wasn’t in San Francisco.†And as for the missing pages in Claudia’s diary, that was “to protect me from you, Mr. Molloy. Why did I owe you my shame? Why did I owe you my one act of cowardice? The series of abhorrent consequences that followed? I spent the rest of my life trying to make up for it. I’ll never make up for it. But he forgave me for it.†Brace yourselves, because we are about to learn a mystery that’s hung over the entire series: what that big transgression was.
Back in Paris, Armand and Louis are catching up with Claudia and Madeleine for a drink at a jazz bar. The new couple is happy, and Louis and Madeleine share a moment where they talk about how they can feel each other as fledgling and maker. He’s weirded out by the experience, the intimacy of it, so he cuts through it with awkward joking. Then, Armand does the mind-freeze trick so the coven can ambush and kidnap Louis, Claudia, and Madeleine. The choice he made with the coven was not to be killed or leave; it was be killed or give up the others. Despite the violent hijacking, this isn’t mob justice … It’s drama club justice! The coven, led by their new maître, Santiago (wearing a Timmy Chalamet–style harness), stage their first-ever, one-day-only matinee performance, called Trial!, for a laughing, raucous crowd. “Are you ready, you filthy animals? The jury may be seated!†Santiago calls to them, before donning a barrister’s wig and pulling the hoods off of a bewildered Madeleine and Claudia and beat-and-bloody Louis. Downstairs, an illustrious guest performer is smoking at the vanity as one of the covens gives him his ten-minute warning.
“Thank you, ten minutes,†says … gaspé! … Lestat!
Notes on Vamp
• “Like the Light by Which God Made the World Before He Had Made Light†is a great episode title.
• “Fuck these vampires.â€
• Big LOL at Claudia reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. This troupe was just not having her, and girl was trying! She really was!
• “She says another word, I’ll break her arms and throw her out the window.†Again, Louis has just been so cold lately! He’s back to how he acted as a human whorehouse owner, fronting, aggro. There were a lot of reasons for it then: constant racism, stresses of providing for his family and dealing with his brother, the closet. The thing that changed it all was Lestat. And now that he’s banished his Lestat hallucinations … he’s right back to how he was behaving before they met.
• “Oooooh, what’s up your arse tonight? [swishes cape]. Is your [cough] companion stuck up there chewing on your inner bits like a hamster?†Santiago should be arrested, and this show should be illegal, actually!
• “I can’t believe my last glass of wine is a Chardonnay.†Madeleine, tu me tues.Â
• “Madeleine welcomed my fangs. The lamb smiling up at the wolf with unsettling passivity.†What in the Forks, Washington, is this?Â
• Madeleine’s sister was called the family idiot because “she would eat pinecones.â€
• “So, if you wanna kill your lover or fuck your mother, it’ll have to wait!†Santiago, ça suffit!
• Okay, so we learn that Armand and Louis had a house in Sausalito as recently as 1973. Do you think they still had it in 1976? Do you think they ever partied with Stereophonic? Do you think I should write this crackfic?