Copyright Vulture
I would like to start this recap by publicly announcing, before man and God, that I am resetting my expectations for Talamasca: The Secret Order. As a result of the show being (a) clearly greenlit as a result of the critical success of AMC’s wordy, character-driven Interview with the Vampire, (b) actively trying to get Interview fans in the door with cameos from beloved character Daniel Molloy and (in this episode) somewhat less beloved character Raglan James, and (c) spending its first few episodes focusing intensely, albeit incompetently, on its principal characters’ motivations and psyches, I’d assumed that this was a show that wanted to be character-driven and was simply failing at that task. Having now seen the (delightfully titled!) “Wet Work,” though, I’ve got a new hypothesis: this is a show that, secretly, wants to be Dumb Fun. Like, rot-your-mind, hindbrain stimulation, violence/gore/goofy villains-type fun. Guy Anatole was a big old lump of nothing in the first half of Talamasca’s premiere season, in which he was angsting out about which faction of magic spies to trust; here, surrounded by plot contrivances and latex-heavy setpieces that feel tacky in the most delicious way, he’s no less uninteresting, but he seems to have acepted his fate as a mere vessel through which plot occurs. If that is what Talamasca wants to be, well, what a blessing! I would have loved a show that took Interview’s poignant, small-scale Gothic approach to an ancient and decaying order of spies, but given a choice between Talamasca’s lumbering attempts at pathos or this new, stupider kind of program, I’ll pick the latter each time. (Astute readers may note that this improvement in Talamasca is not reflected in the star rating for this episode. That is because I cannot justify giving an episode this unintentionally silly more than three stars. But please know that those stars are given tenderly. Talamasca has shot the moon for me. It is now the toddler I am hugging rather than the line cook I am calling a donkey.) We can see this change in what Talamasca aspires to be in this episode’s opening. Last time, Guy, in what I thought was a striking piece of spycraft, had struck a deal with Jasper, our vaguely Texas vampire baddie, to help him get the 752 in order to get back at the Talamasca. It was an interesting choice Guy was making, but I was sick to death of the tortured-sadboy act that preceded it. Thankfully, this time, Guy’s out of choices: he wakes up in a bed in Jasper’s apartment looking like Picard waking up next to Q. Jasper very kindly treats him to a huge breakfast spread, of which Guy eats approximately 30 calories before getting into a bit of a tiff with Jasper in re: whether he’s sincere about defecting from the Talamasca. Guy insists that he is, and, regrettably, I am starting to believe him; he theoretically might still be double-agenting, but this episode is full of choices and reactions from him that make no sense if he’s not fully committed to Jasper. I have learned my lesson here: never bet against Guy Anatole making the stupidest choice possible. Jasper, peeved, takes Guy down to his special torture basement to take a look at Chester, our newly created gurgly zombie-vampire (we’ll come back to him in a second!) and give Guy his own tragic backstory. He explains that he grew up a human in a vampire coven that got slaughtered due to internal vampire political bullshit, and that he blames the Talamasca for this since they were the ones who gave the slaughterer in question the whereabouts of the vamp he had a grudge against. “That’s what they do, Guy,” he says. “They break families apart. Mine, and yours too.” This feels like a bit of a generalization, but sure! Thus bonded to Guy, Jasper lays out his plan for getting and using the 752. After having watched the whole episode, here is my best understanding of that plan: I am sure there are things Guy, and thus we, the audience for whom he serves as surrogate, do not yet understand about this plan, such as how it will work or why Jasper would want to do it or that kind of thing. But I think it is beautiful that he accepts it entirely at face value. And thus begins the gorgeously dumb part of “Wet Work.” Guy has been enlisted to engage in his signature rudimentary brand of spycraft — “Guycraft,” if you will, and I certainly will — at the Westcroft Hotel, where the vast majority of our action will take place from here on out. The show knows what is has with this sequence, I think; it goes out of its way to tie up its other plot lines (Helen, finding her long lost telepathic sister in an apartment that I guess is owned by a third sister; the police team, finding the envelope Soleded left behind in the show’s cold open) before bringing us to the Westcroft’s lobby, where Guy is using his special eavesdropping powers to listen in on the patrons in the hotel bar. Swiftly, in signature Guycraft fashion, a succession of people arrive from nowhere to warn Guy away from completing his obviously doomed mission. First is Raglan James, a mid-tier Interview side character who’s here on obviously shady business; Guy assumes he’s making a deal for the 752 with some nasties and ignores Raglan’s many, many entreaties to leave him alone. (One of these entreaties features Raglan mentioning “ticklefeet,” a Britishism I had never heard before. I attempted to Google it and bailed after realizing that the first result was a DeviantArt link. Welp!) Soon thereafter, Doris arrives at the hotel and also warns Guy to leave, which he also ignores. This is very fun, and I think each episode should ramp up the number of obvious harbingers Guy turns away. Guy, persistent in the face of these harbingers, tells Raglan he’s a Talamasca agent here to interdict whatever he’s about to buy and insists on going up to the main mob vampire’s suite with him. In said suite, in which pop music is playing extremely loudly and every man is a six-foot by six-foot square, Raglan immediately betrays Guy to the mob vampire (who, it must be said, is styled to look like if you had to draw latter-day Jeff Bezos from memory), offering his mind-reading prowess in exchange for the goods. Mob Vamp agrees, despite Guy’s dozen or so whiny protestations of “I can’t read minds!”, shoots Raglan in the shoulder, then forces Guy to extract a memory that looks and sounds like the 2011 Spielberg movie War Horse from his mind. As always, Guy has found himself in a pickle entirely of his own making. But unlike many other times in Talamasca, Guy’s got someone to bail him out of this particular catastrophe. While he’s doing his mind reading, Chester, summoned thanks to Doris’ generosity, is in the other room disemboweling the Mob Vamp’s minions, and, summarily, Mob Vamp himself when he goes in there to see what all the fuss is about. When we get a clear glimpse of this room, it is full of comedy gore that single-handedly makes me believe the showrunners agree with me about Talamasca’s mission change. The walls are drenched in blood; unconvincing latex heads lie limply on the ends of dressers and nightstands; the room is absolutely covered in legs, to the degree that I think they may have accidentally put more prop legs in there than there were leg-bearing people in the room to begin with. It’s something between a Final Destination movie kill, a nasty bit of giallo excess, and a drawing that gets a kid sent to live with a strict uncle in Maryland. It all looks astonishingly, beautifully fake. It is the funniest and best thing Talamasca has done yet by a very long shot, both in terms of defining the show’s tone and voice and in terms of eliciting an actual, unironic laugh out of me. Many developments passed before my eyes in the next few minutes — the suitcase was full of ancient vampire blood from a guy they’re keeping in the next room; Raglan knew Guy was lying the whole time; Guy is inspired for reasons beyond my understanding to dump his pills out the window — but I could barely focus on them. All I cared about was Leg Room. Even when Jasper came in at the scene’s end to clarify his evil intentions for using the 752, thus making Guy wipe a ton of marinara sauce off his lips in anxiety, I found myself wanting to yell at my television, “Okay, but are you guys seeing how many torsos there are? Look! Torsos!” Sometimes, television is an art form, using the distinct advantages of episodic storytelling to create profound themes and indelible characters from a slow and intentional accretion of moving moments. Sometimes, though, television is not art. It is a series of images you see on a screen for a while, probably while eating takeout. I think it is good that Talamasca is realizing that, at least some of the time, it is okay to be the latter. There is no shame in being a machine that puts attractive actors who cannot do accent work into various elaborately designed environments while on-the-nose musical cues play. It may not be memorable, but at least for now it isn’t boring. Observations of the Order • This episode’s Most CW Network-ish Line Award goes once again to Guy Anatole! Congratulations to Guy. He wins for, in response to Raglan James thinking, “He’s going to muck up my deal,” saying, “You’re not here on company business, are you? You’re here for a … deal. A … transaction.” • A working theory of when Guy’s accent slips: when he’s supposed to be a little aggravated but not screaming angry. Yelling or mumbling? Probably convincing-ish-ly American. Anxiously snapping at someone? That’s when we get that accidental New Yawk-yness the people love! • My favorite non-Guy guy in this episode: a Zach Galafinakis-looking dude wearing one of the show’s beloved statement necklaces in the Westcroft bar who leers at a businessman and very loudly thinks, “yeah, the bearded one will do nicely … for showtime!” at him.
