The Finale

Well they made it to the end and that's something. And they at least attempted to do something original or clever to get them there, points for that too.

What was clear over this last season is they'd lost their way, and they even acknowledged that as an insider joke in this episode although that didn't really excuse the end result. Knowing you're off course and not fixing it doesn't really make it better.

The writing definitely drifted in the last few seasons. More brutality where there used to be understated charm, more pushing for shock value instead of intelligent comedy.

The best things we're left with from the show are the characters who were always the core of the show, and making them jump through writers 'whim hoops' is what damaged it at the end. The corporate shades hurt some of the characters, even though the set up was promising, it didn't really deliver.

The higher budget sets and staging looked impressive but didn't help the core of the show, the characters.

After a shaky first few episodes "What we Do In The Shadows" has been one of the best sitcoms of recent times. This sixth season, whilst still good, perhaps shows that it's time for the series to end before it's forced into repeating itself.

Guillermo (Harvey Guillen) leaves Nandor's (Kayvan Novak) service and goes to work at Cannon Capital Strategies, a finance company led by Jordan (Tim Heidecker) who has similar traits to Nandor. Both Nandor and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) join the company at similar times, though keep their connections to Guillermo and each other secret. Laszlo (Matt Berry) taking no inspiration from any gothic novels, resurrects a man made of various dead humans sewn together. He quickly tires of his monster though with Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) picking up the slack.

Again, generally I thought this season was good. I enjoyed the cameos particularly from Steve Coogan as Laszlo's long dead father Roderick and from Kevin Pollack as the star of a long running cop show that ends up filming in the area.

I wasn't wild about either the office or the Frankenstein storylines though. Nurturing Laszlo does appear to be a recurrence of a previous plot and office politics has been done in a number of shows. They were fine, but it's well covered ground. It still made me laugh regularly, all of that cast can just make me chuckle on line delivery alone so it's still somewhat said to see the show end, even if I can see that it's probably the right time.

When I started the series, I couldn't have hoped that it was going to end up being as good as it was and I'm sad to see it end, but excited for whatever the cast decide to do next.

This episode was far better than I expected to be honest. Because the whole season it didn't feel like it was building up to a finale, and they definitely touch on this here and go full meta about how sudden the ending feels.

So for the final season itself, it's been pretty mid compared to the rest of the show, but it's been mostly 7/10, and not one episode reached the heights of the previous 5 seasons unfortunately.

My biggest problem with the final season is how disjointed it felt from the beginning to the end. Each episode had its own different story and even the ones you thought were gonna lead to something big in the next episode, like episode 9, actually just got concluded in the very same episode. And it's not like the other seasons' episodes didn't have their own different storylines that ended in the same episode. But they actually had a full season storyline that built up little by little and crescendoed in the finale. Every season had its own overall plot. You'll think that this season is gonna have that too with the Jerry thing in the beginning, but it never goes anywhere.

And the episodes themselves this season were very underwhelming apart from maybe 3 episodes including this finale. The episodes were not even as half as funny as the previous seasons'. They didn't have the creativity you felt even in the 5th season. And without a clear overall storyline for the season where you think the story might end up at, the whole season just felt unnecessary and underwhelming from the beginning to the end.

Now as for the finale, I feel like they did a decent job considering everything I said. It actually does make sense to end it like this based on the context of the show and its documentary nature, and they touch on that a lot. So I'm not disappointed in the finale or how they ended things, I just wish this finale was a follow-up to funnier, more creative, and better-written episodes before it.

Like they said comedically in this finale, they should've ended the show in season 5 and made a similar finale for that to the end of the show after Gizmo decided the vampire life isn't for him.

Overall I think the finale was pretty good and after seeing it I honestly don't know how else you can wrap up this story. The finale was also full of references to the show's better and more famous jokes, and a lot of "remember this?", but it didn't really feel like forced to me or that the writers were desperate to artificially make you think you liked this finale because it had callbacks and memberberries. It's a bittersweet ending but they do a decent job of wrapping it up in a somewhat satisfying way. The show is still a 9/10 to me even though this season should've brought it down to an 8/10, but the first 5 seasons are too good and way too funny more than this season is bad, so the whole show gets a 9/10 from me even with the underwhelming finale.

Last night I decided to watch all three showings of the Finale. Without giving away too much, we are hypnotized into a scene of a perfect ending. It was a clever, well done ending to one of the greatest movie endings of all time. The show goes on. My sappy self cried at the first end, but then it comes back a second time, giving a much happier ending. I walked off during the commercials of second showing. Hypnotized again, I was starting to believe it worked. There was a second Hypno-scene. Did I miss something during the first watch? I decided not to scour the internet to find out what was going on and watched the third showing. Sure enough there is a third scene. If you watch on Hulu, they show what I believe is the happiest version. One fans would be content with and maybe expected all along. If you didn't get Hypnotized to watch all three original showings, you can go to the Extras to see the alternates.

I'm sad my Vamily is not being documented any longer. And I can mostly agree that it was time to end. They seemed to run out of steam, or maybe they were just drained.

It seems that a constant problem for any show-runner is how they end a show. This is no exception.

The normal insanity of WWDITS is lost a little with some attempt at finalising six seasons of brilliant mad-cap writing.

Yes, there's allusions to Cravensworth's Monster and his anatomical detachment, but it's incidental. There's no oomph deserving of the wonderful vampires (and whatshisname) that inhabit their soon to be conquered Staten Island.

I loved this show so much -- I think it's my favourite comedy of all time -- so this was a bit of a let down.

But, that doesn't change the fact that the show -- on the whole -- is brilliant.

I'll miss it.