What We Do in the Shadows season 4 episode 8 recap & review: Go Flip Yourself

Episode 8 of What We Do in the Shadows season 4 sees the vampires’ mansion make an appearance on the renovation reality show, ‘Go Flip Yourself’. The episode is now streaming on Hulu.

Recap

Bran and Toby Daltry are twins who host a reality show called ‘Go Flip Yourself’ where they visit what looks like a disaster and turn it into a masterpiece.

They arrive outside the Staten Island mansion where the vampires live and rush in to surprise them with the news. Bran walks straight up to Laszlo who admits that he’s a huge fan but Nadja swoops down on Toby and kills him.

To continue with the show, Nadja hypnotizes Bran and the entire crew to believe that Toby is temporarily ill and that they will have to do the episode without him.

A run-through of the house is shown along with the various issues that each resident is facing like the lack of enough space or the worn-out and dated interiors. Nandor begins to feel annoyed with the consequence of his wish as Marwa just agrees with him on everything.

Bran asks them what their budget is for renovations and then shows them a presentation of the changes he’s got proposed. He talks about letting a lot of natural light and suggests converting the area where Laszlo and Nadja sleep into a His and Hers closet.

For the attic space, Bran suggests making a nice bedroom for Nandor and Marwa but when they’re not happy with that idea, he suggests turning it into a man cave for Nandor where he can spend time away from Marwa.

To win over Nadja, he tells her that they plan to put a golden toilet in the bathroom and this excites Nadja even though she cannot defecate. Despite Guillermo’s doubts, the others agree to have the house renovated by Bran.

Work begins in earnest as walls are torn down and old furniture is removed. Guillermo tries to take advantage by pretending to be from the City Building Inspector’s office on the phone to convince Bran to make a bigger, cleaner room for him.

Marwa works on the man cave too and finishes it by herself. She reveals it to Nandor and then locks him out of it as Nandor begins to doubt whether Marwa made the man cave for him or for because she likes whatever he does.

The time comes for Bran to reveal what the house looks like and when Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja and Guillermo remove their blindfolds, the house mostly looks the same.

When they walk in, they realize that there’s barely any change apart from a few cosmetic ones. They bring up their doubts with Bran who says that they’ve saved the best for last.

He shows them the walk-in closet, which is now solely for Laszlo. Laszlo notices that his cursed witch’s hat is missing and when he asks where it is, Bran reveals himself to be Simon the Devious, who loves the hat as much as Laszlo.

Simon admits to creating and producing an entire show just so that he could eventually gain access to their house and grab Laszlo’s hat from him. He then introduces his entire crew who are other vampires, including Elvis.

Nadja says that she did kill Toby so his entire crew didn’t make it but Simon says that Toby was a normal human who Simon met and convinced to learn design architecture and construction so that they could work on the show together.

He gloats about his triumph over Laszlo before leaving, knocking against the windowsill on his way out. Nadja blames it on the curse that Simon and Laszlo refuse to acknowledge.

Nadja, Nandor, Laszlo and Guillermo fein delight at the ‘improvements’ that have been made to the house as a glimpse into Bran’s next episode of Go Flip Yourself is shown where the house blows up after he talks about a gas stove with the tenants.

Review

• The reality show within the already existing mockumentary setting is positively funny. Using such a well known and well liked concept like house renovation is a great choice.
• The fact that they barely did any work by the end of it could be a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that many improvement reality shows only focus on the good bits and don’t always deliver a good final product.
• The side plots do feel a little neglected. There hasn’t been a lot of clarity on the Colin Robinson story and this episode barely includes him. Even Nandor and Marwa’s side plot has gotten a little dull.
• Nick Kroll is a great character actor and his role as Simon makes for a a fun rival to Laszlo but he doesn’t get to long to shine after revealing his truth.

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