When is it fate, and when is it attrition? For six seasons — really more like four and a half; he was pretty content in season one — Guillermo has been trying to escape his life as Nandor’s unpaid servant, only to find himself falling back into old patterns every time. At least he’s not technically a familiar anymore: That ghost ship sailed when Guillermo asked Derek to turn him into a vampire at the end of season four. However, that transformation only partially succeeded, bringing us to what will end up being Guillermo’s final unsuccessful attempt to build a new life away from Nandor and the vampires of Staten Island.
My prediction that Cannon Capital would turn out to be a den of literal bloodsuckers, with Jordan as their vampire king, turned out to be incorrect (although I suppose they could reveal themselves in next week’s series finale). Instead, Guillermo’s boss turned out to be something far more common: just a regular old selfish human willing to take advantage of an ambitious but naive underling. Jordan is a creature of pure instinctual self-interest who says whatever the person in front of him wants to hear with no consistency from moment to moment. If he contradicts himself, or lets someone down, who cares? It’s not like words have consequences.
Or do they? An ongoing thread in the series that “The Promotion†ties up satisfyingly is the presence of the cameras — sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not — that have been following our vampires around since the very beginning. Like Guillermo, you get used to them and forget that they’re there after a while. And like Guillermo, they’re always watching. (If Guillermo was a superhero, he’d be The Accountant, given his penchant for receipts.)
Here’s where Jordan’s contempt for his underlings combines with his ego, to potentially devastating consequences: We know Guillermo has tons of footage of Jordan blithely committing fraud because we’ve seen it — not just on this week’s episode, but all season long. Dude can’t talk for more than five seconds without confessing to a white-collar crime. It remains to be seen if Guillermo will actually report him to the SEC or if said report will do anything, but the threat alone seems to be enough to shift the power dynamic between them. Plus a little vampire super-strength, just to make a point.
Anyway, the immortal monsters living on human blood looked pretty good in this week’s episode. Sure, they’re blunt, cruel, and murderous, but at least they have standards! This aspect of vampire culture was also highlighted last week in the form of the gang’s loyalty to their maker/lover/boss, Baron Afanas. But respect extends downward in their hierarchy as well: Nandor, the oldest and most old-fashioned of the vampires, is offended by Jordan’s lack of appreciation for Guillermo, who may do “shit work†but does it well.
Nandor may see a bit of himself in Jordan’s plan to keep promising Guillermo a promotion while never actually delivering; he strung his now-ex-familiar along for more than a decade without making him into a vampire, after all. Nandor also clearly regrets letting the familiar who’s also sort of the love of his afterlife — a subtext that came across more strongly earlier in the series — go: The detail in his “joke†about there being two Guillermos who are also in love with each other was too specific to be off the cuff.
Still, the best he can do is offer him a sidekick position, the Robin to his Batman. We’re back where we started but with different labels. It’s what Nandor wants. Obviously, he can’t live without Guillermo, both on emotional and “can’t be trusted not to accidentally kill himself†levels. I’m less convinced this is what Guillermo actually wants, though, which made his return to the mansion at the very end of this week’s episode oddly deflating.
Another element that didn’t totally come together for me in “The Promotion†was the subplot developing the dynamics between Laslzo, Colin, and Cravensworth’s Monster. There are clear parallels between the Monster’s anxiety about pleasing strict daddy Laszlo and Guillermo’s attempts to impress his indifferent boss. There’s also an attempt here to use the Monster to resolve an unspoken resentment between Laszlo and Colin I didn’t really realize was there — at least not to this extent. But Colin’s compassion for the monster was out of character for an energy vampire, who you’d think would thrive on the unholy thing’s social awkwardness. I did enjoy Nandor’s demented grin when the Monster demanded that his daddies kiss, though. Nadja didn’t seem that into it, which surprised me.
She was having a fun time “fuck[ing] up as much shit as possible,†making sure that the vampire crew can never return to Cannon by destroying her soon-to-be-ex-coworkers’ egos in what she thinks is a traditional human parting ritual when one departs from a company that makes and/or sells really enormous lamps. Another recurring bit in What We Do in the Shadows is the vampires showing their centuries-long age by falling for scams that prey on the elderly, and Nadja sending $10,000 and pictures of her feet to someone who cold called her(!) on her work landline(!) certainly applies. (Not that she cares — she got a new head for her mantel on her way out.)
That vulnerability is another reason these vampires need a Guillermo to watch over them — although, again, I’m unsure if that’s what he wants. Does he even know what he wants, though? It’s a question I’ve asked many times in these recaps, and there’s only one more episode left for him to decide.
Craven Mirth
• One comedic detail I particularly enjoyed in “The Promotion†was the way Harvey Guillén held his chopsticks in the cold open, so that maybe one or two grains of rice from that Chinese-food container actually made it to his mouth.
• The phrase “not tonight, Josephine†supposedly originates with tiny Frenchman Napoleon, who famously could not keep up with his more experienced lady empress in the bedroom. Tori Amos wrote a song about it!
• Matt Berry casually struts in and takes the line-reading prize once again, with a one-two punch of “He’s no Patrick Sway-zay†and “Go get yourself a cocktailllllll.â€
• That being said, I love the deep Midwesternness of the way Mark Proksch says the word “monster.â€
• “You might be more successful and richer and smarter and better looking and have a generally cooler vibe than him, but you do not get to speak to him like that.â€
• Their bizarre bar orders really underlined the vampires’ nonhuman nature.
• “He really takes after his daddy. Horny little freak.â€
• This is a weird week to have a bit about targeted assassinations of evil rich people in a TV show, huh?