What We Do in the Shadows: Urgent Care
August 13, 2023 8:14 AM - Season 5, Episode 6 - Subscribe
When Guillermo is injured, Nadja takes him to Urgent Care. Colin has trouble feeding.
Colin becomes the most interesting energy vampire and nearly starves, even John Slattery is captivated. After Guillermo sort of learns to fly, he needs to visit urgent care with Nadja. Laszlo embraces science and creates tiny flying frogs with Guillermo's hair.
AV Club recap
Vulture recap
Colin becomes the most interesting energy vampire and nearly starves, even John Slattery is captivated. After Guillermo sort of learns to fly, he needs to visit urgent care with Nadja. Laszlo embraces science and creates tiny flying frogs with Guillermo's hair.
AV Club recap
Vulture recap
The frog puppets are delightful
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:46 PM on August 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:46 PM on August 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
This was a great episode. "Did he just call us peasants?" and "Ipso facto, shithead" followed by kicking down the entire railing both cracked me up. Always good to see Nadja kicking ass.
I can't wait to see where Guillermo's vampirification goes, and if they somehow spin it to having few to zero lasting changes on the show, like everything else that's gone on so far.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 9:18 AM on August 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
I can't wait to see where Guillermo's vampirification goes, and if they somehow spin it to having few to zero lasting changes on the show, like everything else that's gone on so far.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 9:18 AM on August 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
I couldn’t watch a big portion of this episode because I had to keep looking away whenever poor Gizmo’s twisted backwards foot was being shown!
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:08 PM on August 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:08 PM on August 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
So far I've really loved this season -- definitely feels like they are back in top form after a slightly disappointing S4.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:57 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:57 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm so happy with Guillermo's transformation. It's a great source of comedy, and Guillermo remains totally himself. I love his "bitches" nicknames for all the vampires, and his "Hey, girl" for Nadja's entrance. I love Nadja's screaming power.
I was completely sure that John Slattery was going to be some kind of vampire. Nope, Colin is just that compelling.
Laszlo didn't have a ton to do this episode, but he did get to say that Nandor has the IQ of a Russian toilet.
posted by gladly at 6:44 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was completely sure that John Slattery was going to be some kind of vampire. Nope, Colin is just that compelling.
Laszlo didn't have a ton to do this episode, but he did get to say that Nandor has the IQ of a Russian toilet.
posted by gladly at 6:44 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Nadja's genuine defensiveness of Guillermo really got me, especially since it was paired with her reflexive belief in the rightness of honor killings.
I loved that as Colin got too weak to police his own behavior, it became clear that he really is fascinating! (I've always wondered if he is a bit of a freak by energy vampire standards. Every other energy vampire surrounds themselves with tedium. He surrounds himself with Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor. It's very suspicious!) When Slattery started driving them toward Brooklyn, I started to wonder if we were getting a "John Slattery is a serial killer" storyline, but I guess that was just meant to imply that the actor-ly narcissism was so intense that he wasn't really listening to anything Colin was saying anyway.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:03 AM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I loved that as Colin got too weak to police his own behavior, it became clear that he really is fascinating! (I've always wondered if he is a bit of a freak by energy vampire standards. Every other energy vampire surrounds themselves with tedium. He surrounds himself with Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor. It's very suspicious!) When Slattery started driving them toward Brooklyn, I started to wonder if we were getting a "John Slattery is a serial killer" storyline, but I guess that was just meant to imply that the actor-ly narcissism was so intense that he wasn't really listening to anything Colin was saying anyway.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:03 AM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Colin Robinson is my favorite character on the show. Largely because I love the actor Mark Proksch, all the way back to his K-Strass days. Also it seems like a great gag, an energy vampire, completely outside the usual gothic silliness that's the meat and potatoes.
So this episode was a delight because Colin Robinson finally gets to be the center of the show. With a significant expansion of energy vampire lore, along with the Energy Vampire Council from the first episode this season. They're also finding ways out of the writer's trap of "his whole character is to be bland and boring". Still slow burn comedy but truly hilarious to me.
Slattery was a fantastic guest actor! I assumed we were meant to understand he was himself an energy vampire or else at least some creature with a related supernatural power. But the read here seems to be he's just a profoundly self-absorbed and annoying human. Hmm.
posted by Nelson at 6:37 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
So this episode was a delight because Colin Robinson finally gets to be the center of the show. With a significant expansion of energy vampire lore, along with the Energy Vampire Council from the first episode this season. They're also finding ways out of the writer's trap of "his whole character is to be bland and boring". Still slow burn comedy but truly hilarious to me.
Slattery was a fantastic guest actor! I assumed we were meant to understand he was himself an energy vampire or else at least some creature with a related supernatural power. But the read here seems to be he's just a profoundly self-absorbed and annoying human. Hmm.
posted by Nelson at 6:37 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
100% certain John Slattery is an energy vampire. If Colin were saying the exact same things- including saying STFU to the one person in the tableau that he couldn't drain- it would be completely obvious. And I think the joke is made even funnier by the fact that John Slattery is obviously interesting.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:25 PM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by oneirodynia at 9:25 PM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I wanted to drop some links to expand on my admiration of Mark Proksch, the actor playing Colin Robinson. I'm tempted to post these to the blue but the remarkable part of the story happened over a decade ago, so it's a little late. Also half this stuff was posted in 2016.
Anyway, Mark Proksch, weird nerdy comic actor. He calls himself a character actor. He's hilarious to me and I love his origin story.
He got famous in 2010 thanks to Deadspin noticing a below-the-radar situationalist thing Proksch had been doing, appearing on morning TV shows with a character. Proksch was pretending to be K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy and basically talked his way into a lot of shows because they had time to fill. His shtick was to completely flop and fail on TV, not even being able to do a single trick. Super cringe stuff and somehow mocking midwest American niceness while also fully inhabiting it. (He credits working with Joe Pickett to develop the idea.)
The K-Strass videos are still online, here's a compilation. I really admire his courage and commitment in doing these performances, it was very clever.
Proksch broke down the history and intent of the K-Strass project on a little-scene vlog, ADrinKWithDave. See part 1 and part 2. It's remarkable to see him speak straight about it, he basically invented a career for himself with this wacky viral video stunt without ever exactly intending to go viral. (The original plan was to do more performances and then release them all at once, but the Internet figured out the joke before they were done.)
Proksch talks about the rest of his career from between K-Strass and Colin Robinson in this AV Club video. His first proper paying role came because the writers of The Office saw the Deadspin article and liked it, brought him in to be a supporting character Nate. From there Proksch hustled and did a lot of tryouts and did some Tim & Eric stuff, then Better Call Saul, then it's off to the races in a variety of roles, some forgettable. In 2017 he does Adult Swim's Dream Corp LLC which is particularly odd and interesting. He eventually does a tryout for What We Do in the Shadows, forgets about it for six months, then gets the call he gets the part.
posted by Nelson at 6:48 PM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Anyway, Mark Proksch, weird nerdy comic actor. He calls himself a character actor. He's hilarious to me and I love his origin story.
He got famous in 2010 thanks to Deadspin noticing a below-the-radar situationalist thing Proksch had been doing, appearing on morning TV shows with a character. Proksch was pretending to be K-Strass the Yo-Yo guy and basically talked his way into a lot of shows because they had time to fill. His shtick was to completely flop and fail on TV, not even being able to do a single trick. Super cringe stuff and somehow mocking midwest American niceness while also fully inhabiting it. (He credits working with Joe Pickett to develop the idea.)
The K-Strass videos are still online, here's a compilation. I really admire his courage and commitment in doing these performances, it was very clever.
Proksch broke down the history and intent of the K-Strass project on a little-scene vlog, ADrinKWithDave. See part 1 and part 2. It's remarkable to see him speak straight about it, he basically invented a career for himself with this wacky viral video stunt without ever exactly intending to go viral. (The original plan was to do more performances and then release them all at once, but the Internet figured out the joke before they were done.)
Proksch talks about the rest of his career from between K-Strass and Colin Robinson in this AV Club video. His first proper paying role came because the writers of The Office saw the Deadspin article and liked it, brought him in to be a supporting character Nate. From there Proksch hustled and did a lot of tryouts and did some Tim & Eric stuff, then Better Call Saul, then it's off to the races in a variety of roles, some forgettable. In 2017 he does Adult Swim's Dream Corp LLC which is particularly odd and interesting. He eventually does a tryout for What We Do in the Shadows, forgets about it for six months, then gets the call he gets the part.
posted by Nelson at 6:48 PM on August 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Aw. Nadja saving Guillermo because he's Nandor's to kill was kind of sweet.
posted by kyrademon at 2:38 PM on October 31, 2023
posted by kyrademon at 2:38 PM on October 31, 2023
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by Kyol at 8:50 AM on August 13, 2023 [23 favorites]