Review: A Vampire Mockumentary Takes on Local Politics
“It’s really no surprise, the amount of energy vampires in politics," says a fictional candidate for Staten Island comptroller.
On the outside, Colin Robinson looks like every other boring schmuck who wears a boring tan suit. But he's no ordinary man. He's not even a human being. Robinson is an energy vampire—he feeds not by sucking blood, but by draining people's energy by boring or annoying them.
One episode in the FX vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows' fifth season sees Robinson enter politics. What better way to drain people than by campaigning for Staten Island comptroller, bothering voters on the street, and doing a three-hour monologue on the debate stage? As he says, "It's really no surprise, the amount of energy vampires in politics."
It helps that Robinson doesn't even want to win—until he's kidnapped by the local Supreme Council of Energy Vampires. His opponent has been promising to automate paperwork and eliminate bureaucracy. The council can't allow this, and it tortures Robinson (a 543-page slideshow is involved) until he agrees to start running a good campaign.
"Bureaucracy is the gum that clogs the gears of every human endeavor," the vampire council's chairwoman says. "All hail bureaucracy."