User Reviews

I'm not sure what people expected from the second to last episode of the season; they've always been dramatic and revealed a foreshadowed event. This time it was Guillermo's first boyfriend and Baby Colin Robinson's growth spurt. Both major plotlines hit a breaking point which will irrevocably change the course of the next season. I can see how that'd tick some people off but I'd say it was a long time coming. Nadja's club couldn't last forever, Colin couldn't stay a kid forever, Nandor couldn't live with Marwa any longer, Guilermo couldn't be forever alone-oh wait scratch that last one. Unfortunately Marwa never became more than a cardboard cutout; that's unfortunate for a show with such vibrant side characters. Even though it was a lot of cringe and misery this week I still thought the creators made it funny. Could it have used more jokes to lighten up the drama? Yes, absolutely it could've. Tonally this was a huge shift from the rest of the season. I found the self sucking clown joke a little too nasty but they made up for it with the director/writer cameos from Sofia Coppola. Trusting non-actors with with comedy routines is rarely a good idea unless they get beheaded violently!

The ending was done for humor purposes, but you have to wonder what any of us would do if we met an exact copy of ourselves. I hate myself so I guess it would not be an issue for me to turn me down, but I don't know, maybe for some others out there it might be.

Either way, let's get out of the weird element and instead focus on the story at hand. Nandor wanting to steal Freddie away from Guillermo just to prove a point was a great use of all of the characters involved. It felt like something Stewie would do to Brian on Family Guy or something.

A clever episode, somewhat original and made good use of the main cast for sure tonight.

Usually this series'episodes are hilarious, but this episode striked me hard.

Let me get straight to the point: Marwa.

I don't know whether it was the usual dark comedy, or something else. I might be wrong. I guess that the writers wanted to deliver a message here. And here's my assumption: An Iranian woman, her appearance, her free will, and finally her character, is changed by her husband and king's whims. At last, the only way she can find the happiness was by magically turning into a white man.

That was incredibly sad... What do we know about Marwa? I mean beside her being a sidekick. Was she good? Bad? Interesting? Annoying? What did she like or detest? We don't know. Because she remained a shallow, obedient follower, against her will.

Anyway I appreciate the writers.

Not sure what I think about this. The humor is more what I expect from Rick & Morty or Curb Your Enthusiasm, really go for the jugular (no pun intended) with the cruelty of the characters. This show has always been sweeter natured than some of the real out-there comedies.

At least this hopefully ends Guillermo's idea that Nandor would ever be a good boyfriend. The guy is a horror show and I don't mean the vampire part. Still very funny, but eesh. Even though this was hard to watch, I won't ding the show too much. It does push forward Guillermo's storyline, and since the other characters either are static, or have a circular plot arc back to the status quo (Colin), it's al down to Gizmo to get this show moving before it stalls out entirely.

And I have to wonder what Fred's neighbors are thinking in London. Oh Fred has a twin brother he's never told us about, who he is in an um romantic relationship with? Perhaps for the best we'll never know more.

This episode had a great premise in that we find out he has secretly been dating Freddie, a sweet and polite stereotypical British man. It would have been funny seeing him interact with Lazlo and Nadja and their opinions of the Freddie/Guillermo relationship.

Instead we get Nandor behaving incredibly out of character and being jealous of Guillermo (not Freddie??)

Nandor states that he is against cheating on his wife but completely okay with taking away her entire personhood and turning Marwa into a clone of a white British man for his enjoyment.

The actor that plays Freddie tries his best with the script but this episode just feels unpleasant and unfunny.

The writers have clearly been pushing Nandor and Guillermo romantic undertones but it doesn't work if, as a viewer you start to dislike one of the characters in the pairing.

Guillermo (a recently out gay man) has his heart broken, Marwa (a woman of colour) gets basically killed off and the whole nightclub thing begins to grow stale.

While I did enjoy some of the Laszlo and Colin subplot (and it was nice to see old Colin back), the majority of this episode either felt old (Nadja's subplot) or bizarrely cruel (the Freddie plot).

To start with the Freddie plot, I could see how on its own in a vacuum that cloning someone and eventually having the clone and the original person dating themselves would be humorous and could fit in with the show's comedy. However, I found Marwa's "transformation" a horrible end to her character. All season she had her body changed ("the grand opening") and her free will taken away from her ("the night market" and "the wedding"). While I didn't enjoy seeing what she was going through, I assumed all of these wishes used against her would eventually blow up in Nandor's face and she would - somehow - get herself back.

But what happened instead? She got completely erased - body, personality, and soul - into a white man, and never got turned back. In fact, the narrative (through Nandor) states that she would be much happier now living as Freddie. What kind of ending was that for her? An intelligent Iranian woman gets everything taken away from her in service to a man she's forced into marrying, never getting to pursue her own interests or ambitions, and then gets told as Freddie that he can pursue his dreams. It was just misogynistic and racist writing, with no thought or regard to its implications.

Guillermo was also not immune to this episode's poor treatment of its characters. While Guillermo has often been the character most likely to be treated badly by either Nandor or someone else in the show, the narrative itself has never felt so cruel to him. Having to see not only his first boyfriend in the arms of his boss/friend/former crush, but also having the ""joke"" at the end of the episode where he sees Freddie cheating on him with himself? It felt pointlessly callous and mean to Guillermo's character, and for no true reason. Guillermo and Freddie's relationship was probably never going to last, but a stronger way to end it would be because of Guillermo's flaws - with him lying to Freddie - rather than having his first love go up in flames through no fault of his own. Also, to focus on the misery of a very recently out gay man feels, again, cruel and not funny.

While it's not as important, Nandor's sudden infatuation with Freddie felt odd and out of character, since this whole season has been building up Nandor's character to show him being more kind to Guillermo and most likely having deep feelings for him (as shown through Marwa kissing him many times in "the wedding"). It would have felt more in-character if Nandor had just been extremely jealous or passive-agressive towards Freddie, which was where I thought this episode was initially going.

Lastly, while I liked some of the intro jokes and Nadja's attempts to save her club, the plotline itself had already been done. "The grand opening" showed her struggling to find entertainment, and "the night market" had her trying to solve workers' disputes. What occured this episode? The same exact thing, with the difference being Laszlo arguing for Colin to get a contract instead of the wraiths unionizing. Also, to just have the nightclub plotline be done for this reason, and not because of Nadja or Guillermo's embezzlement or any actual character conflict feels like cheap and lazy writing.

Overall, I really had high hopes for this episode when I heard about it, but the writing's tone turned excessively harsh and cruel towards its characters, with barely any actual jokes that weren't just "look at this character suffer". Marwa as a character deserved a better send off, and her whole plotline this season shouldn't have happened if this was always the planned end.

I love this series. I think it's well-written, the characters are fascinating and it's unbelievably funny. I feel like this season has been the best so far, but the show itself has never let me down. Until today.

Although the scenes related to Nadja's nightclub and Baby Colin were the same awesome brand of hilarity I've grown used to in this show, the scenes related to Marwa-turned-Freddie, Guillermo and Nandor just made me sad and upset, and not even in a way a tragicomedy would.

This episode left a bad taste in my mouth that I never expected coming from this series. Hopefully the season finale will make it feel a little more like the What We Do In The Shadows that I love.

The star I give this episode is for Colin and for Laszlo. Their small plot this episode was interesting and funny, promising of hilarious things to come, and worth watching. Everything else was a disappointment.

Nadja's fumbling and drunken misery regarding the nightclub was boring, Nandor's reaction to Guillermo's boyfriend was nonsensical, Marwa's I-love-what-Nandor-loves reaction to Guillermo and Freddie was surprisingly absent (what a lost opportunity!), Nandor turning his mind-enslaved Persian wife into a British white man was mysoginistic and racist and the two Freddies getting together at the end was bizarrely cruel and disturbing. And the irony is that it might all have been acceptable in this series if any of those things had been funny. But they were not.

This episode was not enjoyable, it was unpleasant. It was poorly written, the characters were poorly used (especially Marwa! All that potential lost!). It was the worst episode of the show so far.

Where do I even begin with this trainwreck of an episode.

First, all of our main girls for the season have been done so dirty this episode. Nadja? She wasn't acting like herself. The guide? Barely in the episode. Marwa? Oh my poor love Marwa, she was absolutely decimated.

And Guillermo... He was almost crying at multiple points in the episode, I felt so bad for him. I've not been one for killing off main cast before, but Nandor should go. Guillermo should stake him.

Back to Marwa, I absolutely can't believe our only recurring lady of color has been magically transformed into a british white guy. Not only has she lost her personality and autonomy so far, now she isn't even herself.

This is, undoubtedly, the worst episode of What We Do In The Shadows. The writers dropped the ball immeasureably and ruined what this entire season had set up.