Let me commence this review by publicly announcing, before man and God, that I am recalibrating my expectations for Talamasca: The Secret Order. The show, having clearly been greenlit due to the critical success of AMC's character-driven masterpiece Interview with the Vampire, was actively attempting to lure Interview fans with cameos from beloved character Daniel Molloy and, in this episode, the slightly less adored Raglan James. Furthermore, it spent its initial episodes diligently but ineptly exploring the motivations and psyches of its principal characters. I had assumed this was a show that aspired to be character-driven and was merely failing at its task. However, after witnessing the delightfully titled “Wet Work,” I've developed a new hypothesis: this is a show that, secretly, craves to be Dumb Fun—the kind of fun that stimulates the hindbrain with violence, gore, and goofy villains.
In the first half of Talamasca's premiere season, Guy Anatole was a big old lump of nothing, angsting over which faction of magic spies to trust. But in this episode, surrounded by tacky yet delightful plot contrivances and latex-heavy setpieces, he may not be more interesting, but he seems to have accepted his fate as a mere vessel through which the 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 Talamasca's aspirations 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 for Guy to make, but I was sick to death of the tortured-sadboy act that preceded it. Thankfully, this time, Guy wakes up 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 over whether he's sincere about defecting from the Talamasca. Guy insists that he is, and 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, his brow furrowed with displeasure, leads Guy down to his secret torture basement, where he unveils the existence of Chester, their newly forged gurgly zombie-vampire creation. (We'll delve into Chester's intricacies later, but for now, let's focus on Jasper's words.) He recounts his own tragic backstory: a human raised within a vampire coven that met its demise due to petty political intrigue among the undead. Jasper blames the Talamasca for the slaughter, as they were the ones who revealed the location of the vampire he held a grudge against to the assassin. "That's their game, Guy," he says. "They tear families apart. Mine, and yours too." While this might seem like a sweeping generalization, let's roll with it for now.
Bonded by their shared sorrow, Jasper lays out his plan for acquiring and utilizing the 752. After watching the episode in its entirety, here's my best understanding of his strategy:
He'll send Guy on a reconnaissance mission to scout out the book's current location: the Westcroft Hotel, a den of mobster vampires. Guy will then inform Chester and his crew of the book's whereabouts, and they'll make a move to retrieve it. (Jasper refers to Chester and his kin as "ancient revenant vampires," which is hilarious because it hints at potential vampire power-scaling issues similar to those that plagued shows like The Vampire Diaries; for fans of Anne Rice's works, brace yourselves for an explanation of Enhanced versus Upgraded Original Vampires!)
From there, Jasper intends to use the 752 as an eldritch version of the White Pages, tracking down and contacting every living vamp (or at least those who still reside at their 1972 addresses). His ultimate goal is to encourage them all – and here my understanding gets a bit hazy – to turn more humans into vampires, thereby weakening the Talamasca and enabling revenge against them.
While there are undoubtedly aspects of this plan that Guy and we, the audience surrogate, do not yet comprehend – such as its mechanics or Jasper's motivations – I find it endearing that he accepts it at face value. And thus begins the absurdly delightful "Wet Work."
Guy is enlisted to engage in his signature brand of rudimentary spycraft – "Guycraft," if you will – at the Westcroft Hotel, where most of our narrative will unfold. The show knows exactly what it has in store for this sequence; it goes out of its way to tie up other plot threads (Helen's search for her long-lost telepathic sister in an apartment owned by a third sister; the police team's discovery of Soleded's envelope in the show's opening scene) before leading us into the Westcroft's lobby, where Guy utilizes his special eavesdropping powers to listen in on the patrons in the hotel bar.
Swiftly, in a signature Guycraft manner, a succession of individuals arrive from nowhere to warn Guy against completing his seemingly doomed mission. The first is Raglan James, a mid-tier Interview sidekick who's here on shady business. Guy dismisses Raglan's numerous entreaties to leave him alone, even as the latter mentions "ticklefeet," a Britishism that had never crossed my ears before. I attempted to Google it, but bailed after realizing the first result was a DeviantArt link. Alas!
Not long after, Doris arrives at the hotel and also warns Guy to leave, which he ignores. This sequence is exhilarating, and I think each episode should ramp up the number of obvious harbingers Guy turns away.
Guy, unfazed by these warnings, 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 that suite, where 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, offering his mind-reading prowess in exchange for the goods. The 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 finds himself in a pickle entirely of his own making.
But unlike many other times in Talamasca, Guy has 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, the 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.
