3x10 The Portrait

[7.2/10] This one isn’t bad, but it’s a bit of a letdown as a season finale. It feels too plotty, too focused on big, status quo-challenging changes than on humor or even the smaller scale stories that the show does so well.

There’s parts of it I like. Guillermo trying so hard not to be the “last guy at the party you devoted twelve years of your life to” is a good beat for him. Lazlo revealing that he was kicked out of “The Sherwood Club” because he fell in love with a “peasant girl” like Nadja and vowed never to return to England due to the prejudice his classist mates showed her is unexpectedly sweet. And I even like the payoff to Colin Robinson’s quest to find out where Energy Vampires come from being that they’re born from the husks of the last Energy Vampire.

But so much of this episode is light on jokes and heavy on moving around narrative heavy machinery. Nandor deciding to go on a world tour is fine. Nadja getting promoted to the International Vampiric Council in London is fine. The housemates breaking up and saying goodbye is fine. But all of it feels like plot twists in lieu of genuine character-motivated turns.

More to the point, there’s less in the way of humor in this one than in the average WWDITS episode. Donal is actually the most hilarious part, with his weirdly specific painting/showbiz stories tickling the ribs. Everything else is unnecessarily serious, despite the show’s ludicrous tone. More time with the Baron and the first vampire is fun, but for the most part, this one’s, while not exactly dry, more dramatic than you’d expect from a loony show like this one.

I do appreciate Guillermo and Nandor having it out a bit, but them having a fight felt like too much. I don’t want to say it was pointless action, but the whole “I thought you’d gone soft” bit from Nandor feels unmotivated and out of nowhere.

And I don’t know how I feel about the closing twists either. Lazlo deciding to send Nadja without him, with only Guillermo to protect her, feels out of character for him, even if the notion of him playing dad to Colin Robinson Jr. is a promising setup. And the situation where Guillermo’s conveniently not available to look after Nandor is a rug-pull that doesn’t land with me. Again, feels more like the show’s shooting for dramatic twists than building on what came before.

Overall, this season was a step down from the prior one. It still had its moments -- “The Wellness Center” being the high water mark. But to use the phrase a tad ironically, it also felt like the show lost the plot a bit in its overall directions for the characters this season. Still, hope springs eternal, and with any luck, we’ll get a return to form in season 4.