Your Boy’s in Love

Nandor (Kayvan Novak) is falling hard for anyone giving him the time of day, eh, I mean night. Picking up right where “The Cloak of Duplication” left off, “Gail” has Nandor abandoning new love and pursuing an old flame.

That old flame comes in the form of Gail (Aida Turturro) the one and only Janice Friggin Soprano. Gail and Nandor have been on again, off again for decades, with Gail never wanting to fully commit to an eternal love. Nandor, being the hopeless romantic, can’t take a hint, and thinks it’s time to propose to Gail and make her his vampire bride. Nandor is at his best here the more pathetic he appears. At one point he’s down to a t-shirt dancing for Gail, while she eats strawberry yogurt. (weirdest sentence I’ve written all year).

Opposed to Nandor’s aloof plan are Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou). Both come don’t want to see Nandor get her (which Gail has had no problem doing before). Guillermo plays the role of the unapproving mother. No one will ever be good enough for his master. The bit with everyone convinced Nadja hates Gail because she is a woman, does feel a bit tired. It’s been done plenty of times, but it does have it’s payoff toward the end of the episode.

For the third episode in a row, Laszlo (Matthew Berry) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) are off on their own adventure. While browsing the library for EV origins and pornography, both happen upon one of Laszlo’s old cars. Laszlo reveals that it runs on petrol and coal, to which Colin calls it a hybrid. It’s a solid back-and-forth, but this new pairing still feels a bit unnatural and the show knows it. Comedically, they both point out that they’re hanging out with the other because they get a sense that they are lonely. It’ll be interesting to see how this relationship grows the rest of the season.

Laszlo and Colin rebuilding the car to get it out is a fun bit (we even get a cool fire stunt), but it’s ending can be seen coming from a million miles away. Things get better when the cast unites for the last third of the episode.

The highlight of the episode is easily the return of the werewolves from season one. Gail being romantically involved with one of the werewolves, puts the two groups at each others throats. Before they can murder each other, Guillermo steps in with arguably the greatest line in the series. “There’s better ways to settle your differences…”

What follows is a shot-for-shot spoof of the Twilight baseball scene (but with kickball). Even Muse’s Super Massive Blackhole is played. Easily my favorite scene of the series so far, and one I did not know that I wanted to see. The game for Gina’s heart ends, when Nadja kills her with a kickball to the face. To save her life, Nandor turns her, and the world of What We Do in the Shadow’s introduces its first werewolf/vampire hybrid.

“Gail” continues to build off the themes this season of looking for love in the wrong places, women fighting to be taken seriously (amongst the idiots around them), and bromances growing in the weirdest of places. A strong episode, made stronger by an amazing reference to a scene from an OK vampire movie from the mid-2000s.

More fun bits:

• The documentary crew labeling Gail as “Nandor’s Friend”
• The dead bodies around the house and “Shame it wasn’t his face”
• “Remember Gail? I am inside her right now.”