What We Do in the Shadows – Season 2 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Office Space

What We Do In The Shadows is arguably one of the strongest comedies on TV right now. After the excellent episode last week, Shadows turns its attention to Colin Robinson for a 20 minute slice of comedy that hones in on the energy vampire. The tonal shift is a good one too, and helps add more depth to his persona while allowing us to see exactly what happens when energy vampires are given an endless stream of life-force to feed on.

Episode 5 of What We Do In the Shadows begins with Colin Robinson getting a promotion at work. When he heads home to tell the others, they shun him and believe he’s just trying to drain their energy. Colin’s bad mood doesn’t last long though and when he heads to work he manages to feed off the energy of the workforce, with them listening to him give a presentation and conducting some “drain on demands” with impromptu performance reviews.

Meanwhile, Nandor and Nadja have an argument over a painting of her old village which he destroyed in the past. As they argue, Colin Robinson returns and realizes he now has an endless supply of energy both at work and at home, prompting him to start transforming, complete with a bigger head and long, flowing hair.

The group try to work together to stop him but unfortunately don’t have the energy to fight back. Instead, Colin ends up being his own worst enemy as he makes copies of himself that drain one another. They drain so much that it prompts the three Colins to kill one another.

Collapsing on the ground in a heap, the Colin Robinsons are buried and presumed dead… until our Colin awakens and reveals it was all a big ploy to see if the guys actually cared about him. As the episode closes out, Colin starts work at a new job after revealing his old employees were so drained it led to the company experiencing financial ruin.

With a return of the familiar slice of comedy we’ve come to expect, the changed perspective to Colin Robinson offers up a nice change of pace and it does so with some clever jokes throughout. Seeing Colin disrupting the conference call or calling people in for performance reviews are all throwbacks to those usual office job roles but spinning that so Colin feeds on their energy by dong so offers up some of the best comedy in the episode.

As we reach the halfway point of this season, Shadows continues to impress and solidifies itself as one of the best comedies on TV right now.