While WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS is an ensemble show, the clear heart of it is Guillermo, Nandor's familiar. He's the show's point of view character, both our guide into this world and also the one to which the camera team turns whenever something ridiculous happens.
But in addition to all that what makes him truly central to the show is that he has the biggest, clearest and craziest desire. He wants to be a vampire. As audience we love a character who is taking a big swing at life, who is chasing something difficult (for sure) and/or crazy (even better).
In part maybe we like that because we can relate. We know what it is to dream for things that are hard or seemingly impossible. Someone who chases a dream is by nature someone we identify with.
But I think it's also about clarity. Consider WHAT WE DO without Guillermo--what would it be about, really? You might still have the group being pushed to do certain things like take over Staten Island, but only under pressure. Part of the joke of the series, after all, is that they really don't want to do anything but hang out and eat people.
Desires tell us what journey we're on. And they give us a general sense of the conflicts we're going to get to watch. Knowing Guillermo wants to be a vampire, we know he's going to try things to get the group's approval or attention; and without knowing the show at all we also know they are going to make that difficult in some way, that Guillermo proving himself is going to be very hard to do. (And in a classic WHAT WE DO twist, the challenge for Guillermo is not some set of impossible feats he must accomplish, but the fact that the vampires are so silly and self-centered they don't even notice how much he wants it.)
Guillermo's desire also lead to an unexpectedly rich second goal--to protect his vampires. At this point that quest is even more prominent than his baseline desire to be a vampire, because his people are now under constant threat (which his own acts of protection keeps making worse--a fantastic engine). Intriguingly it's a more emotional goal, too--it has to do with how he feels about them, his affection for them despite everything. The fact that they continue to treat him like garbage even now-- they have him locked in a cage in 301 while they debate whether to kill him--only makes this the more delightful (and also makes him more appealing).
Part of what is making season three look really interesting is the way they're expanding who has desires and for what. Colin Robinson wants to find out where he comes from; Nadja clearly wants to take their new job as Vampire Council seriously and be a real boss. The impact of those choices is pretty immediate. We start to care about those characters in a different way. I honestly can't believe how much I'm suddenly invested in Colin Robinson. He's by far the least likeable of the bunch, but now he's on the most emotional journey and I'm right there with him.
Now You Try!
Strong, clear, bold desires are central to making any story compelling. If we're looking specifically at writing a good WHAT WE DO episode, we might consider brainstorming some specific expressions of Guillermo's desire to be a vampire; what are things that he might do to try and win that promotion? Or we might consider further obstacles that he faces: how does the fact that he's a Van Helsing and has killed a lot of vampires factor in going forward?
But here's a different idea: What would be a really concrete desire we could give Nandor or Laszlo? And rather than having it as something altogether new, the challenge here is to look at the things they've done in the show and the way they are and see whether there isn't something already there waiting for us.
So maybe the way go about brainstorming is to first list some of your favorite moments of either character, the things that really stand out or that you loved. And then, see if there isn't something in there worth exploring as a bigger part of the character. That might seem like a long shot, but I find in writing that so often the things we need are already there. It's like we buried a treasure chest and didn't know it. And it's just there waiting for us to find.
