Two vampires enter, one vampire leaves. Or at least that’s what I said when I saw this episode title. Let’s dive right in!
Vicki and Henry are on an infidelity stakeout – Vicki is still a PI, after all. Henry tells a story about getting caught in flagrante with a Vegas mobster’s moll, and getting dumped in the dump. It’s cute, which is something new for this show.
Meanwhile, at a funeral home, the new guy is getting his embalming skills critiqued by I’m assuming his boss, an older undertaker. Neither of them seems thrilled, but young guy is especially bored-looking, in addition to wearing the world’s worst wig. They leave the dead guy to be filled or drained with red fluid, but the transfer is interrupted by a hooded figure, who brings the corpse back to life.
The body’s name is Diesel Swanson, and Boris, the older undertaker, has called Vicki in to look for the body. He doesn’t want to call the cops, wants “discretion”. The back door was “jimmied” open, and he doesn’t want to call the cops because he has the resurrection on camera – something he says the police wouldn’t understand.
Back at the office, Henry is sniffing the hell out of Vicki, and after an uncomfortable amount of time, he says she smells like death. No duh, she went to a funeral home. Why do you like it so much, Henry? Weirdo.
Vicki shows him the resurrection video. Henry says the necromancy is probably Egyptian, based on the mask of the necromancer. Guy left no prints, never showed his face, knew which door was closest to the body… Vicki thinks it’s an inside job.
So she and Henry head down to ask the ME if she knows Boris, the head undertaker, in a professional capacity. She does, has since she started the job. She doubts very much that he had anything to do with the resurrection: “Nobody likes an Easter weekend.”
Oh! She recommended Vicki to Boris! Thank God for subtitles, they literally have never said the ME’s name before this episode. It’s Dr. Mohadevan.
So it’s a no on Boris, no on another disgruntled employee. It really comes down to motive: maybe Swanson did it for himself? But Henry points out that Swanson has merely been reanimated, not resurrected: he has no free will, retains no personality. His animation serves only the necromancer who raised him, not his own ends, so it’s highly unlikely this was set up by Swanson or his widow.
Vicki goes back to talk to Ivan, Boris’ son, the young undertaker. He talks about growing up at the funeral home, how the other kids thought it was cool. He doesn’t seem entirely genuine, but maybe that’s the wig. Even his goatee looks suspect, though I’m pretty sure that’s real. Vicki asks about unhappy customers; he claims they’ve never had one.
On to the widow; this is, after all, a procedural. Swanson had been a boxer, but got a ban for betting against himself? for himself? doesn’t really matter. He was kind of a drunk, got a job at a local sports bar as a resident celebrity and got free drinks. Widow is packing to move to her sister’s, and seems sad, but not destroyed. Also seems like she didn’t have a reason to resurrect him, and doesn’t know anyone who would.
Vicki heads to the precinct, because of course we need Mike on this. He asks why the police weren’t called, and doesn’t interrupt when Vicki says Swanson is walking around. She asks if he’s heard anything about grave robbery; he says that’s major case squad; she asks him to keep an ear out.
Coreen has been investigating the mask; it represents Anubis, which she says all weird, AN-you-beess, whatever. It’s Canada.
Supposedly Anubis resurrected Osiris, which is not what I remember from Anne Rice, but hey, it’s mythology. So now all Vicki has to do is find an Egyptian necromancer operating in Toronto.
Vicki and Henry are fighting because… Henry didn’t want to work the case? When did that happen? Literally nothing happened at the medical examiner’s office or since then to indicate Henry didn’t want to help on this case. But he’s reacting to Vicki as if this is something they both know happened, that was in the text, that we the audience also know happened. Problem is that we don’t, and that this is how almost every conflict on this show is rendered. Nothing happens, suddenly everyone’s angry and they all know why. And I, like I hope a good chunk of their audience, am sitting here, staring at the TV with furrowed brow, absolutely fucking lost.
Don’t do this. Don’t write like this. I have no idea how so many people working on this show, week in, week out, were all just like, yeah, conflict happens for zero reasons all the time! this is a great script! but, like, just… explain shit! Give these people conversations! Stop cramming in conflict for its own sake!
ANYway… Egyptians believed the soul was split in 7 parts, all of which Henry knows, because when you’re alive for 400 years, you get to learn things, even if Vicki snarks about it. I swear, this show is so relentlessly neurotypical sometimes, why is being smart bad? Why do these people hate facts and think it’s ridiculous anyone would know anything?
OMG, it really is two dead guys enter, one dead guy leaves! Swanson is fighting in the Necrodrome! Announcer guy has a big ol’ mask on, probably the necromancer or knows them. There’s a cage, there’s lighting, there’s an audience. NECRODROME!
Dave lectures Mike about looking at the bright side of an early-morning body dump. He brought French crullers! And obviously the body is from the Necrodrome, a wrestler who died of an aneurysm a few months ago. Mike immediately makes the connection to Vicki’s boxer bodysnatcher, and Dave is confused – there hasn’t been a homicide?
Mike goes to see Dr. Mohadevan, who lets him know that Swanson might have been poisoned by Tylenol. So now he’s on the case, and when Vicki isn’t very helpful – because she doesn’t have anything new – he goes off to interview the widow.
Luckily, we stay in the precinct for Mohadevan’s autopsy of the wrestler guy. He has half a carved stone stuck in his throat, much like Swanson had something shoved in his mouth by the necromancer.
Mike’s interrogation of Mrs Swanson focuses on the Tylenol, whether or not he was poisoned. She maintains booze did him in: why doesn’t Mike go check the bar?
So Mike does, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know why we’re working the case twice? They cut this book down to 40 minutes and can’t give us an explanation for any of the fights, but we can have Vicki and Mike both do the same job twice? The bar bouncer gives Mike his full name, for some reason, probably because he’s the necromancer or some shit. Episode started off so well, and now nothing is funny *or* sensical.
After doing more book research, Vicki posits that the necromancer is the guy who wrote the thesis they’ve been using to research? Is that why we had a very weird conversation about Coreen having a friend at the museum who lets her borrow stuff? When were they going to tell us it was a phD thesis?
Henry and Vicki go to thesis guy’s apartment, I guess? They aren’t telling us, just Vicki says it’s thesis guy and then she and Henry meet Swanson in a stairwell. He can talk, apparently, good for him. He runs past them and jumps off a balcony and is just gone.
Henry and Vicki search the apartment. She finds a printed page of… HTML?!
They take the page to Coreen, who… types it into her computer? and they find the Necrodrome site? that plays video of the Necrodrome? A TYPED SHEET OF HTML?!?!?!?!?!?!
Y’all, I do not understand how computers work. I don’t understand how my phone works. I am a late-adopting, only know how to get on the internet because I got it when I was 18, certified GenX computer illiterate. And even I know that a printout of HTML is not going to get you any of this. WTF.
Vicki needs Necrodrome explained to her, so maybe it’s just that Vicki’s dumb and doesn’t know things, so lashes out at anyone with facts. She calls Mike to tell him about Necrodrome.
Oh, look, the bouncer guy is the thesis guy is the necromancer. At least someone knows some narrative tricks.
And now everything moves very fast: Mike tells Vicki to stay out of it; the computer nerd at the precinct finds the server for Necrodrome in Toronto; Henry hears a train announcement in the Necrodrome video. Everyone converges. Mike gets there first, and no, turns out Ivan is the necromancer. He’s killed thesis guy, but Mike will make a better challenger for the fight.
Vicki and Henry show up just before things get started. Henry hits the sirens in Mike’s car, so the audience scatters. Ivan monologues about the crimes – he doesn’t want to be an undertaker – and then Henry comes in and saves the day. They arrest Ivan, they let Swanson die again, and return him to the funeral home so his widow can see him.
Ok! That certainly was one of the television shows of all time! I hope you’re all backing the writers’ guild, because holy shitballs, is it apparently difficult to write 40 minutes of anything that makes sense. I mean, I only write novels, I get to edit as long as I want, I have to imagine the working conditions on this show were absolute garbage, because so is their output.
Just explain things!
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