Richie Suck in What We Do in the Shadows: “The Grand Opening” Recap

Richie Suck in What We Do in the Shadows, explained

Nadja's aim in this episode is a nightclub that vampires will talk about for a century. In "The Grand Opening" she gets as far as a velvet rope, a queue around the block and an opening-night headliner who has not performed in years. That headliner is Richie Suck, a reclusive rapper whom the episode describes, with a straight face, as the Kanye West of the vampire world. His catalog, as the script lists it, includes the albums Bitin' My Style, Sundown Funtown and Throat Juice.

The episode is the third of ten in a fourth season that ran on FX from July 12 to September 6, 2022. Kyle Newacheck directed it, and Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil wrote it. Affion Crockett plays Richie Suck, and Fred Armisen plays his manager and familiar, Doctor Tom. Anoop Desai returns as the Djinn from the season's second episode, "The Lamp".

Anyone searching for Richie Suck in What We Do in the Shadows is usually trying to place the character, and the short answer is that he is a one-episode guest built to puncture Nadja's ambition. Every great vampire club needs a star, and Nadja needs this one to cement her standing as a ruler of the night. The joke is that the star has already quit his own act, and nobody around him is allowed to say so.

The show started life as a 2014 film by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, and the series keeps that mockumentary habit of treating mundane problems with total seriousness. A booking, a no-show headliner and a performer's nerves matter more here than any ancient feud. The episode leans on that habit all the way to its final song.

It also helps to know where the season stands. Season 4 opened on July 12, 2022, with two episodes back to back, "Reunited" and "The Lamp", and "The Grand Opening" is the first installment released alone on a Tuesday. By then the household has a new baby to look after in the form of Colin Robinson, an energy vampire who feeds on boredom, and a nightclub project that Nadja treats as her destiny. The episode weaves both into one evening, so the plot never has to pause for exposition.

For new viewers, the setup in one breath: four vampires and one long-suffering familiar share a house on Staten Island, and an FX camera crew records their attempts to live among modern humans. Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) is the ambitious one, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) the conqueror whose conquests mostly fail, Laszlo (Matt Berry) the dandy with a taste for antiques and theater, and Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) the familiar who actually runs the place.

Recap: the tower, the wish and the Playbills

Nadja and the Guide (Kristen Schaal) climb to Richie's tower after he cancels the gig. Doctor Tom blocks the door until Richie lets them in, and it becomes clear that the manager controls the money and the creative direction alike. Tom demands virgin blood as payment and insists on new material only, at twice the usual fee. The episode itself reaches for the Colonel and Elvis as its comparison.

Back at the Vampire Residence, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) spends the episode trying to become a better fiancé by means of a wish, and Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) spends it trying to stop the wish from going wrong. Djinn magic punishes careless phrasing, so Guillermo negotiates every clause. The result is a wish that technically works and then curdles: Nandor ends up unable to stop thinking about Guillermo at precisely the wrong moments. Later episodes lean on that setup.

The third thread belongs to Baby Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who is aging at a startling pace and has built himself a small online career. Laszlo (Matt Berry) is appalled by his taste. He takes the boy to Snug Harbor on Staten Island to teach him to steal art, and Colin spends the heist talking about musical theater instead. Laszlo's irritation has a history: as a boy he had a nanny and a piano, and his father took both away and sent him to boarding school.

Masters and familiars: the episode's quiet theme

Placed side by side, the two strongest relationships in the episode are both between a vampire and a familiar. Guillermo guards Nandor from his own wording, and Doctor Tom bleeds Richie Suck for every dollar and every ounce of new material. One familiar protects a master from himself, and the other farms him. The comedy comes from how rarely either vampire notices which kind of servant he has.

That contrast gives Nadja's pep talk its force. When she tells Richie that he is the master, she is also, without meaning to, describing her own house. The scene is short, but it is the one that explains why Guillermo remains the best character on the show.

How the club night falls apart

On stage Richie is frightened and flat, and Nadja gives him a pep talk about who the real master is in the relationship with his familiar. It works too well. He throws Tom into the crowd, announces new material and turns out to be a stand-up comedian, which the audience hates. They start shouting for the jazz trio back.

The crowd turns ugly, and Nadja is shoved into it. Then a child's voice sings a Cole Porter tune from the stage. Colin has found his audience, the vampires melt, and the club is saved by a performance nobody booked. Nadja is repulsed by the act, but she understands that bloodsuckers love a child star, and she keeps the room open.

Who does what in the episode

• Nadja (Natasia Demetriou): sells the opening, fights for her headliner and discovers that Colin is the draw.
• Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Guillermo (Harvey Guillén): run the Djinn wish, with Guillermo as the editor of every clause.
• Laszlo (Matt Berry): tries to turn Colin into a thief of fine art, fails, and ends up on the wrong side of his own childhood.
• Baby Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch): the content creator who saves the night with show tunes.
• Richie Suck (Affion Crockett) and Doctor Tom (Fred Armisen): a star and the manager who is also his familiar.

The Grand Opening review: why the episode works

The strongest scenes are the quiet ones inside Richie's tower. Armisen plays Tom as a blend of jazz snob and corporate handler, and the dynamic between Tom and Richie gives the episode a real subject: what happens to talent when the person managing it has more power than the talent does. The comparison to the Colonel and Elvis holds.

The Djinn plot is the weaker half, if only because its best joke arrives early and the rest is bookkeeping. Even so, it sets up one of the season's better running gags, and Guillermo's lawyerly caution makes every exchange funnier than the premise deserves.

The final minutes are the real payoff. A comedy that spends twenty-five minutes setting up a disaster and then solves it with a child's showmanship is a risky structure. Here it lands because Colin has been the odd child out all episode, and the club gets saved by exactly the quality Laszlo despises. For anyone deciding whether to watch it, the verdict is yes: it is one of the better episodes of the season.

One complaint: the episode runs three plots without letting any of them breathe, and Laszlo's art heist at Snug Harbor Museum is over almost as soon as it starts. That is a fair price for a half hour in which every thread pays off in the same room. Anyone who wants a fuller portrait of Richie Suck in What We Do in the Shadows gets only this one night, and it is enough: a rapper who is lonely, controlled and frightened of his own audience is a complete character in a handful of scenes. Crockett plays the nerves without winking, and that restraint keeps the part from turning into a one-note parody of celebrity.

Sources

• What We Do in the Shadows (TV series), Wikipedia — Checked against: season and episode list, cast and air dates.