“Private School” might not be my favorite episode of WWDITS Season 4 so far. But the self-contained episode does a phenomenal job highlighting unconventional families and showcases just how much fun it is to watch this unconventional family of vampires, a possessed doll, and a familiar-turned-vampire hunter/bodyguard-turned-friend-turned-family-turned-love-child who crawled out of the chest cavity of Colin Robinson’s (Mark Proksch) corpse and will literally do anything for him.
Spoilers for WWDITS Season 4 Episode 5 follow.
The episode follows the entire gang, Nadja Doll included, and an actor they hire at some point, as they band together to get Tween Colin Robinson into private school. Things get kicked off with the reveal that Colin doesn’t seem to want to sleep; he stays up all day and night, wreaking havoc on the house and not letting anyone rest. It isn’t until Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) discusses sending Colin to a private school that WWDITS Season 4 Episode 5 gets going. While against private school initially, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) joins in on the effort, providing a selection of amazing private schools to consider. But Laszlo (Matt Berry) finds himself unable to choose until their neighbor, Sean (Anthony Atamanuik), a notorious d-bag and not really the poster boy for class or sophistication, suggests they send Colin to his alma mater.
With this, Laszlo has made up his mind. The rest of “Private School” is a mix-and-match gag where the vampires plus Guillermo switch up their identities, along with those of Colin’s parent(s), while interviewing the headmaster and making themselves more and more “appealing” with each of Nadja’s reset hypnoses. That is, until the headmaster falls ill and dies of “natural causes,” leading the vampires to simply enroll Colin in as many extracurricular sports they can to tire him out.
Sadly, the singular storyline relies on a joke that’s funny the first few times but isn’t enough to be the only thing carrying the episode. And while hypnosis is hilarious, and watching the external characters’ reactions to the many iterations of Colin’s parents is amusing, the joke got repeated so often without evolving that I considered skipping this episode altogether. However, within all the repeating chaos, Laszlo delivered one of my favorite jokes of the entire season: “We need to be gay. Gay is in. Gay is hot. I want some gay. Gay it’s gonna be. Nandor?” The joke quickly became a trending TikTok sound, and I find myself quoting it regularly.
WWDITS Season 4 Episode 5 is also a showcase for Nadja’s insane powers – like her auditory, high-pitched voice commanding respect and breaking glass and her hypnosis, which can (almost too easily) kill a man. A lot of Nadja’s Season 4 arc has focused on how easily she could be running the world if she wanted to. But what she does want is to live a life of local stardom with her husband and the rest of the undead she loves. (This is something girlboss Nadja would never admit to but is nonetheless clear based on the disproportionate power and status Nadja had and claims she wants).
“Private School” also sets up another side of Guillermo, one I’ve been very excited to see blossom, and that is con man Guillermo. At the start of WWDITS Season 4 Episode 5, we learn from Guillermo in his capacity as Nadja’s club’s accountant that the club isn’t doing well enough to cover the costs of an elite private school. Then, after Guillermo’s interview at the end of the episode, the film crew secretly follows him to a very nice neighborhood, into which he’s moving his mother (Myrna Cabello). It turns out Guillermo has been embezzling money from the club to “pay himself” and take care of (one of) his families. The joke adds to Season 4’s fully realized version of Guillermo. He’s definitely crossed the line from being confident and self-sufficient to taking advantage of his position and screwing over his vampiric family. Watching Nadja eventually find the truth and confront him will be very interesting.
Another of “Private School”’s subplots is Nandor’s bout with plastic surgery, provided by the Djinn (Anoop Desai), who continues to be a standout this season. Nandor slowly changes his appearance throughout WWDITS Season 4 Episode 5, as part of in his ongoing quest to become the “perfect man” for his fiance, Marwa (Parisa Fakhri). This can only be described as a long con against himself, as Nandor tries desperately to find things other than his true feelings about the whole ordeal on which to hyper-focus. Instead, Nandor’s continues doubling down on his already-crumbling decision to marry a woman that he once “loved” but now needs magical help “controlling” and shaping into the only person that could ever be better than Guillermo. With his and Marwa’s wedding fast approaching, it’s increasingly evident that Nandor would rather pretend everything is fine and pick apart the physical, unimportant parts of himself and his life than admit he was wrong.
Rating: 6.5/10
