[Recap] Keeping Up with the Shadows Season 2 Episodes 5 & 6
EPISODE 5 — COLIN’S PROMOTION
Episode five opens with our favourite energy vampire, Colin Robinson, as he drains the folks around him at his office. He’s then summoned to his superiors office and he thinks they’ve finally figured out that he has no idea what the company does. Instead they’ve decided to promote him and he’s not happy about it because he doesn’t want to abandon his roommates for work.
But when he tells them they don’t treat him too kindly, and we see Colin talk about how sometimes people think he’s trying to drain them when in fact he just wanted some reassurance and comfort from his friends. It’s a sad moment and all I wanted to do was give him a hug.
So Colin takes the promotion, he becomes the boss and he has fun with the power he’s been given, a little too much fun as he forces his subordinates to listen to him and begins to drain the entire office.
When he returns home and doesn’t try to drain the the vampires and they notice, so Nadja tries to ask him how his day was, but he shouts that she doesn’t give a shit and leaves, which isn’t the Colin Robinson we know and love.
During all of this the vampires have been rotating the artwork in the house and they find a painting that shows Nandor burning and pillaging the village Nadja grew up in. She had heard stories about it, as it had happened before she was born, and tells us how it all happened.
Obviously she’s furious at him, at first he tries to deny it, and in the end Nandor admits that it was him and blames it on the fact that he’d pillaged so many villages, how was he to remember hers?
Nadja wants to murder him and wear his flesh as a dress, and I would expect nothing less for my favourite vampire.
Colin Robinson feeds off their fighting as the vampires turn against one another, he’s feeding off everyone at work, and he’s growing more and more powerful. Pretty soon he doesn’t even have to talk to someone to drain them, he grows hair for the first time in the show, and he even develops the ability to fly. He even drains a camera operator.
Colin Robinson is out of control.
Soon they don’t even have enough energy to move or fight with one another, and after Guillermo realises it’s Colin Robinson that’s turning them all against each other they try to escape. And they fail.
When Guillermo tries to leave Colin Robinson steps in his way and multiplies, splitting himself in to three copies, and at first they’re more powerful than ever. But then they begin to drain one another and in the end there’s only one of them left alive, though he doesn’t tell the others until after the funeral, since he wanted to hear the nice things they had to say about him.
Colin Robinson, having destroyed his company over the course of the episodes, moves to a new one and starts fresh. And Lazlo makes some changes to the painting that please his wife and left me laughing as the credits rolled.
All is right in the house again.
It’s clear that Colin Robinson isn’t weak because he’s incapable of being powerful, it’s because his power was too strong and became bad for him, and all of his roommates.
By the end of this episode the group does feel a little more tightly knit, and Colin Robinson feels like more of a central character, after being very much on the outskirts of the last four episodes. By the time the credits rolled I felt happy for him and I can’t wait until we get another Colin Robinson episode.
EPISODE 6 — ON THE RUN
The sixth episode begins with a game!
Okay, it’s not really a game, they’re all marking the sink spots in the garden that were created by all the bodies buried and decomposing under ground. But the vampires are having fun and keeping score of who’s winning, while Guillermo is still just trying to keep them all alive.
Suddenly, landing in the middle of the garden, a menacing vampire arrives. Jim the vampire is played by Mark Hamill, who has to be the most impressive guest star in this yet. And he’s there for Lazlo, who failed to pay him a months rent in California almost 200 years ago, and Jim has been looking for him ever since. He gives Lazlo the option to either pay his debt or duel him. Lazlo agrees to a duel. But instead of fighting Lazlo runs, turns in to a bat, and flies away.
Lazlo flies all the way to a small town in Pennsylvania, because it sounds like Transylvania, and takes control of a bar. With his human disguise making him unrecognisable, a toothpick, he takes on his new persona of Jackie Daytona. No one knows he’s a vampire and he’s admired by the entire town for how hard he parties but also his skills as a coach for the girls volleyball team. Lazlo has a great time and comes to love the town as much as it loves him, and it REALLY loves him.
Lazlo, who has fallen in love with volleyball, can’t stand the idea of them not going to state, so he decides to throw a talent show in the pub to raise money for the team and sets about preparing the bar.
In the meantime, Nadja is having a hard time with Lazlo being gone, and Colin Robinson seizes the opportunity to try and kiss her, not because he wanted to kiss her, because he wanted her to reject him so he could feed off her. But the dolls rejection stung.
Jim, who has been searching for Lazlo this entire time, pays a visit to the bar he’s running but doesn’t recognise him because of his disguise, the toothpick.
Lazlo knows he should run, but because he made a promise to the town he decides to stay, and they manage to make enough money to send the volleyball team to state..
When Lazlo accidentally reveals himself a vampire, and then takes out the toothpick, Jim knows it’s Lazlo and they fight in the bar. Everyone realises they’re vampires and chaos ensures.
It ends up with them accidentally burning the money for the volleyball team and they feel so bad that they stop fighting with one another and make a tentative truce.
Lazlo gives him the billy the bass, a singing fish, and he tells jim there’s only one in the whole world and that it’s very valuable. Jim tells him his debt is paid and leaves. Lazlo ended up having to hypnotise the entire town and got Jim a job coaching the volleyball team, but he finally returned home, and Nadja wass ecstatic to see him walk through the door.
Nandor however isn’t too bothered since he’s only been gone a week.
Like Nadja I’m just so happy that Lazlo is back where he belongs.
Again, there was a lot more to both of these episodes than I could cover, each one has so many little nuances and small touches that make them perfect and hilarious.
Both of these episodes felt like offshoots from the main story, we got to take a little break from Guillermo’s turmoil and all the other problems the vampires will run up against, and I have a feeling that break will be over when the new episode comes out tomorrow.
