#Nandor was so needy for Guillermo this episode

[ghostoftonantzin]

I know Nandor clutching Guillermo's sweater was a setup for the scenting joke, but from a character perspective, there's no non-Nandermo explanation for this

[sbocconichilista]

"I am a warrior, but maybe this is not my fight."

[WWDITS S6EP5 SPOILERS!!!]

Just finished episode 5, and you can bet your ass I have some shit to say. As it is something I've already discussed and like analyzing, I'll go on about the Nandermo situation for now, but I'd like to talk about other topics too, maybe in another post.

This episode was a rollercoaster, and I think all my worries are now at peace (at least the one regarding Nandor's growth). I imagined that Nandor was just about to throw another ginormous tantrum about the stupidest of the things, but I was positively surprised when I saw his attitude towards the situation: he honestly had valid reasons to be angry, reasons I didn't even think about at first, but they came to me as a slap in the face as Nandor spoke, as I can imagine they did to Guillermo. Obviously, the solution wasn't war, but I can see why he would react like this. He was a warrior, after all.

"You live a thousand years, and you think you know what betrail is, what horror is, but then, in a single instant, you find out you haven't the slightest idea of what men is truly capable of."

This is what he says. And although it seems so extravagant and exaggerated, his pain is real. He was so sure about Guillermo's loyalty, not because he expected it as a Master, but as a friend, as a companion, given that he has always been loyal to him: "I may have done a lot of things, Guillermo, but I never got rid of you". He's right when he says so, and honestly I, as probably Guillermo, never really realized how much has probably costed Nandor to protect Guillermo from the vampire world, how much he risked to keep him safe. He really has done a lot for him, and he also finally addresses his mistakes.

Nandor felt betrayed and this time I can do nothing but agree with him. Guillermo tries to justify it all saying that it's the "human world way", but Nandor was human too, and the type of loyalty he shared with his comrades he expected from Guillermo: this makes me understand how he really perceives him in his life. He feels bonded to him, and reserved fidelity to him; not always respect or recognition, but fidelity yes.

Still, I agree with Guillermo about some points. At first he sees the whole thing as another big absurdity came out from Nandor's neediness and I can't blame him for having been prejudiced (i was myself), but then he understands how hurt Nandor felt.

Although, as he said in the previous episode, maybe this thing between the two of them isn't meant to be: he now has a new purpose, and he invites Nandor to start healing and find a new one too.

"I am a warrior, but maybe this is not my fight" it's with this statement that Nandor finally aknowledges that he needs to let it go too. The relationship between them started with all the worst moves, and it can't go any further without continuing to inflict wounds to both of them.

When Nandor tells Guillermo to go away using Alexa, these lyrics are used: "get out, right now, it's the end of you and me", and I'm starting to think it could really be like it says. Maybe Nandermo will never happen, and maybe it's for the best. Still I keep my hope close, and I wish that all of this was just a big demolition to build a new foundation for a stronger and healthier relationship, but I won't bet too much on it.

This episode was a huge statement fr. I feel like I've left out so many details, but I guess if something comes up to my mind, I'll just post about it later. Also, I wrote all of this as fast as I could, so please forgive me if you've encountered some errors.

"When one is burned, one feels most at home among the ashes" said Nandor, and I think I'll do the same and go cry about this while re-watching the whole series 😔.

[honesttoglob]

*****SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE WWDITS SERIES FINALE*****

Ok, that Nandermo ending (plus the whole finale episode) left me with a kind of bittersweet feeling about the ship as a whole. Like, the implication that Nandor and Guillermo *could* have worked out (as seen in the final alt ending), and there definitely always *was* something between them romantically speaking, but they couldn't actually be happy together because of what Nandor fundamentally is? By that I mean, the final episode illustrates how the vampires are incapable of change and essentially blind to the passage of time: they do the same thing over and over for centuries, repeating the same story beats in a seemingly endless loop with almost no recollection. They never grow, and they never learn. Had Nandor been human (as he was in the alt ending), him and Guillermo would have hit it off and been able to compromise as equals, but since Nandor's a vampire, no matter how much Guillermo needs him to change or how much Nandor in turn wants *himself* to change to keep Guillermo by his side, he's fundamentally incapable of doing so because his mind simply doesn't have the flexibility of a human's anymore and in a way he (along with the rest of the vamps) is doomed to keep repeating the same cycles over and over again. When the show started, I shipped Nandermo as much as anyone, but as it went on, seeing Nandor's continuous inability to change and his cruel treatment towards Guillermo, I eventually stopped seeing the relationship as viable, and viewed this as a fault of the writing or perhaps even queerbaiting to some degree. It wasn't until this episode that I realized that the romantic subtext had always intentionally been there, but that it would and could never be acted on because Nandor and Guillermo fundamentally can't work as a healthy romantic relationship, even if both of them seperately secretly have some desire for one. Guillermo being turned into a vampire wouldn't work either, because his brain would essentially be frozen in the exact mental state he's in now- one in which he's needy, distressed and lacking self-actualization. A romantic relationship between the both of them as vampires would have still been awful, and likely even more destructive and harmful as a result. Nandor and Guillermo ending the series as friends with Guillermo establishing boundaries and sticking to them is literally the only healthy, mutually beneficial releationship they could hope to have (at least as a vampire and a mortal ;-;). Tragic shit. Basically, tl:dr the 3rd alternate ending of the wwdits finale reignited all the Nandermo feelings that I haven't felt in literal *years*, and idk what to do about it.

[nellie-elizabeth]

What We Do in the Shadows: Urgent Care (5x06)

Finally, Nadja knows! What a wild episode.

Cons:

I feel like this has been a Colin Robinson-heavy season so far. I'm not saying I dislike that character, but... let's be real. Not my #1 favorite part of the show or anything. I thought his story had promise but it took up maybe a bit more of the run time than I would have liked. I would have allocated more time to Nadja and Guillermo and Lazlo, and slightly less to Nandor and Colin.

Pros:

But starting with that Colin plot, I did love the conceit where he keeps being accidentally too interesting, and it slowly starts to kill him. As he tries to drain from people, he finds that his black eye looks too interesting. Then he gets hit by a car, and a TikTok is made of him, and he discovers the man who hit him is a famous actor (John Slattery - from Mad Men!), and then when he tries to go into a gas station, it's being held up at gunpoint... no matter what he does, he's too interesting to drain energy! That's pretty funny, as was the bit where Slattery finds Colin's accent so interesting that he's happy to listen to him talk all day.

I also loved the bit at the end, where Lazlo's experiment transferred the energy from Nandor to Colin, but he goes a bit overboard. Colin is forced to be "interesting" in order to feed some of the stolen energy back into Nandor, and he does this by telling him about his original name having initials that spell out A.S.S., and his ex-boyfriend Davy Crockett. Which is such a funny and random detail to include.

But the creme of the crop here is the continuing saga of Guillermo's vampire status. Lazlo does some horrifying experimenting on some frogs, which turn out to be able to fly. Guillermo gives it a shot, and it works momentarily but then he falls and breaks his legs! Nadja is tasked with bringing him to the hospital, but she ends up bringing him to a veterinarian, which also includes a "Familiar Hospital", where Guillermo is tested and treated. The advice Nadja gets is to put him down because he might break his ankle again... and then things take a turn for the worse when the blood tests show that Guillermo is turning into a vampire!

So now Nadja knows the big secret. I loved this whole scene with high as a kite Guillermo, Nadja rushing in to save him, then Guillermo turning around and saving her, too... there was such a lot of (very aggressive) affection between the characters here. I love the juiciness of now Guillermo, Nadja, and Lazlo all having this secret they're keeping from Nandor. The vampires don't seem to really care about Guillermo in the outward way they talk to him, but there's a loyalty and solidarity between them all the same. Nandor is getting more and more needy as time goes on, but it seems the other vampires are starting to see him as more of a person, in many key ways.

I'm so excited to see how this plays out, which I keep saying week after week, but it's true! This show is delightfully insane. I was pleased as punch with this installment, maybe especially Guillermo talking about his love for all the vampires (or should I say bitches) that he lives with.

9/10

[cookinguptales]

You know, it’s odd... I was talking to a friend about Nandor (as... I often do) and I was thinking about timelines...

One thing I’ve always been interested in is the way that the three (normal) vampires clearly lost touch with the modern world. They haven’t always been completely out-to-lunch! That’s the weird part! We see in photos that they used to keep up with the latest fashions, they talk about being friends with both human and vampire celebrities in the 20s through 60s, they had jobs, they mention going out to clubs and parties often, they use a lot of references that wouldn’t have been out of date when they learned them.

So like... what happened, exactly? What made them withdraw? Some of it probably is that it is easier to withdraw these days, but with Nandor in particular...

I was joking that Benjy might’ve been around when Nandor started dating Gail for the first time, or if he wasn’t, then he would’ve been right before her. (I know that Benjy was 70s and Gail was 80s, but it was kind of unclear how long Benjy was actually around. Definitely at least 5 years based on cultural clues but...) And then I really thought about the Nandor that we saw in the pictures with Benjy.

He’s... pretty different from the Nandor we see with Guillermo. This Nandor was going to parties, going out dancing with his familiar, going to political protests, dressing up as characters from pop culture, etc. He didn’t always seem, um, super savvy about the politics, so it’s arguable that the decline had already begun. (Or he’s just always been an idiot.) But he was undoubtedly more clued-in than he is now. And you see that he seems a little less culturally active when he’s with Gail, but still going out, doing things, going to concerts, etc. Still wildly different from the current Nandor.

It sort of seems to me that Nandor is one of those people that gets drawn into things by the people around him. He went to that Bob Seger concert for Gail. He went to a Superb Owl party and Atlantic City for Sean. It’s not that he’s opposed to going out and doing things and learning things. It’s just rarely his idea. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that some of the 70s stuff was Benjy’s doing.

So what exactly changed in this period? Well... Nandor kind of lost his human support system. He ditched Benjy because Benjy was starting to become needy and disaffected and was asking too much about vampirism. (We can draw these conclusions from the photos and Nandor’s complaints.) He was then dumped (repeatedly) by Gail, a woman who he seems to be genuinely in love with. This really does look like the beginning of the end for Nandor, because by the time Guillermo met him in roughly 2010, Nandor seems to have been pretty much the way we see him now, if not worse. Like, Guillermo has never been shocked, exactly, by Nandor’s naïveté or unpopularity, so this isn’t a recent development.

So... Nandor loses touch with the human world right around the advent of the internet. He has very mild familiarity with the internet, but only the oldest and least useful parts of it. That means he really misses the information boom and the era of interconnectedness that we’re currently experiencing.

From everything we know about Nandor, my guess is that he was pretty depressed in the 90s, as well. He was on-again-off-again with Gail and apparently took it really hard every time she left. He does not appear to have had a long-term familiar in this era, at least not that we’ve heard anything about.

I guess what I’m saying is... Nandor said in the cult episode that it was the happiest he’d felt in decades, and yeah, that makes sense to me. Nandor’s current depression seems to be the end result of several decades of loss, disaffectation, and a profound sense of loneliness. (Spurred on now by losing his country, his love interests, his metaphysical understanding, and to some degree, his sense of self.) He has the vampires, he has Guillermo, but it’s not like Guillermo was really pushing him for a lot of that time. He was much mousier than Benjy and didn’t really try to force Nandor out of his comfort zone or invite him out to places.

Nandor joined a cult. lbr, it was a cult. It was a cult of community, of humanity, of... the eighties. It really feels like him reaching back to a period in his life when he was happier and more connected and felt much less lonely. It was all fake, obviously, but he was very happy to believe in the lie. 

Guillermo was clearly very hurt when Nandor said he hadn’t been this happy since the period before Guillermo, but I don’t think it was personal, if perhaps said out of spite. I think Nandor’s just very prone to nostalgia and believing that his life would be better if it were more like it was in happier periods. But... Gail dumped him in the 80s. His wives hated, feared, and left him in the 1200s. They have never actually been happier, less lonely times. He’s just fallen prey to nostalgia.

Anyway, it’s interesting to see him finally making human friends again. He’s going out, going places, meeting new people, learning new things, consuming new media. It all seems to be really overwhelming for him because he’s drastically out of practice. Guillermo has been a big help in that now that he’s finally standing up for himself and standing up to Nandor. They’re not quite treating each other as equals yet, but they’re approaching it. 

I think it’s really interesting that Nandor wanted to take Guillermo on this trip around the world with him. It really feels like the ultimate in getting out of his comfort zone with a person that he loves, which is how we’ve seen him interacting with the world of the recent past. (And now! See: Jan.) I desperately wish they could have had that together, but I still hope that getting out and seeing/doing new things helps push Nandor out of this ennui and maybe makes him learn some stuff about himself. (And Guillermo...)

I fully believe that a large portion of depression is stagnation, and more than any other character in the series, Nandor has stagnated. But maybe a little Eat, Prey, Love will help him out? We can only hope. :<