Recap / Interview with the Vampire (2022) S2E1 "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned"

The full episode title is "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned", and the URL had to be truncated because it exceeded the 64-character limit for page titles.

Aired May 12, 2024

Louis recounts Claudia's quest to find Old World vampires amidst the backdrop of WWII Europe.

Tropes:

• The '40s: The Flashbacks are set in 1945 during the tail end of World War II in Europe.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Desperate to save his girlfriend Emilia (whom the Romanians believe is now a monster), Morgan begs the Soviet officer not to kill her, but the latter doesn't listen and chops off her head with an axe.
  Morgan: No! No, DON'T, DON'T, DON'T!
• Attack on the Heart: After feeding on the blood of a soldier, Claudia rips out his heart and tosses it to Louis, who then devours it.
• Bat Out of Hell: A screeching bat unexpectedly crawls out of the Slashed Throat of the Lestat hallucination and then flies away. It's a nod to the association between vampires and bats.
• Best Served Cold: The hallucination of Lestat invokes this trope when he informs Louis that he's biding his time before he enacts revenge on his ex-lover for attempting to murder him.
  Lestat: I'm gonna bloody kill you.
  Louis: If you were alive, you'd have done it already.
  Lestat: Hmm. (caresses Louis' face) Oh, love. I'm merely waiting until you're happy. So hurry up, mon cher.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed:
  Louis: You really want to marry [Morgan]?
  Emilia: He's got the big one down the pants.
  Louis: (laughs)
• Cannot Dream: Discussed when Louis contemplates what it's like to be unable to dream.
  Louis: Can you imagine never dreaming? Would you look forward to sleep? Or would it terrify you when the day broke?
  Armand: Or is it the sleep of an infant? Tabula rasa.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: Morgan knows that Louis isn't a husband searching for his wife in war-torn Europe because the photograph is too old.
  Louis: I told you already. I'm looking for my wife.
  Morgan: Oh. It's printed on albumen. I take my own photographs, I make more money that way. And your dutiful wife's photograph was taken by a glass-plate camera, printed on albumen paper. That makes this 30 years old, which would make her 60, 65, and the birth of your daughter a medical miracle.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Inverted Trope because Lestat was a villain in Season 1. Louis (a lapsed Catholic) sees a deceased Lestat lying on the ground with his arms outstretched and his legs extended while close together, which imitates the crucifixion pose. Lestat abruptly comes back to life (which alludes to Christ's Resurrection) and then stands in front of Louis.◊
• Cultural Posturing: Morgan, a Brit, labels Romania as a superstitious, backwards country. He has been stranded there for at least six months, so when he meets the Americans Louis and Claudia, he's grateful to hear the English language again.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Claudia criticizes Louis for only caring about male vampires who are his love interests, the implication being that he prioritizes them over her, his vampire sister.
  Claudia: But if he can't take you ballroom dancing and tell you you're pretty, hell with him, is that it?
• Disapproving Look: Louis frowns at Andrei when he notices the boy rummaging through his backpack for something to steal. Having been caught red-handed, Andrei walks away without taking anything.
• Double Entendre: When Morgan and Louis clink their glasses of vodka, the former says "Up your bum" (which is a variation of "bottoms up"). Louis was usually the bottom when he and Lestat had sex, so Morgan's toast carries an unintended sexual connotation, and Louis responds with an awkward "Okay."
• Driven to Suicide: Daciana lunges towards a fireplace and is burned alive.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Louis is plagued by guilt over the attempted murder of his boyfriend Lestat, and the hallucination of the latter notes that Louis is "sniffing German brandy."
• Eiffel Tower Effect: When the camera faces Louis and Claudia while they're standing in front of the Panthéon in Paris, an illuminated Eiffel Tower is in the background.
• Eye Scream: Claudia gouges out the eyes of a revenant who attacks Louis.
• Fade In: The episode starts with a black screen before dissolving into a bird's eye view of a winding dirt road surrounded by a snowy landscape riddled with the debris of war vehicles/equipment, some of which are on fire.
• Flashback Cut: As Louis tells Daniel that he wants to recall details about his past, a few short flashbacks from Season 1 appear: the rainy version of Louis and Jonah at the bayou (episode 3), Lestat dropping Louis from the sky (episode 5), and Louis shoving Claudia against an armoire (episode 7).
• Fog of Doom: Morgan describes to Louis an ancient, supernatural fog that the Romanians believe is extremely harmful if they're exposed to it. Emilia firmly states that it's not a myth.
  Morgan: The superstitions of a backward country. Mad fog in the dirt, trees and rivers. I keep my trousers pinned at the ankle when I sleep for fear it will get me, too.
  Emilia: This is an old country with old things in it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: For most of Season 1, the top part of the Title Sequence was an upside-down New Orleans cityscape, but for this episode, it's an upside-down Eastern European landscape being bombed by two war planes to reflect that Louis and Claudia are travelling across Eastern Europe during World War II.
• Frequently Full Moon: The full moon is partially obscured by clouds when Louis and Claudia stand in front of an old, abandoned castle in Eastern Europe, which in folklore is the origin of vampires.
• Gasp!: The Romanians collectively gasp in horror when they see the bite marks on Emilia's neck; they assume she was bitten by a vampire or a revenant.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The audience is spared from having to watch Emilia's beheading with a small axe (which likely would take multiple swings before her head is completely separated from her body, so that would be an especially gruesome sight).
• Hallucinations: Louis hallucinates Lestat, and he tells the latter, "You're not here, I'm just fucked in the head."
• Haunting the Guilty: Zigzagged. Lestat is not a literal ghost (he's not even really dead) but psychologically, Louis is haunted by him. This takes the form of Louis imagining Lestat everywhere, appearing to him, talking to him, threatening him, flirting with him.
  Louis: I had taken 7,000 souls by then. But Lestat was the only one that felt like murder. Semantics, surely, but it's how I felt.
• Holding Hands:
  • Louis and Armand's hands are joined when they enter their living room for Daniel's tenth session of the interview. Their silent gesture communicates their wish to be interviewed together from now on instead of just Louis alone.
  • Claudia reaches out for Louis' hand when they stand in front of the Panthéon, a historical mausoleum in Paris. She was depressed after Daciana's suicide, so Claudia is quietly thanking Louis for bringing her to the city that is the mother of New Orleans.
• I'll Kill You!: The hallucination of Lestat warns Louis, "I'm gonna bloody kill you."
• In-Series Nickname: Daniel addresses the real human servant Rashid (whose identity the vampire Armand "borrowed" as his Human Disguise in Season 1) as "Real Rashid".
• Kill the Ones You Love: Daciana is heartbroken and cries in agony after she kills her last remaining fledgling (who in vampire terms is her child). The revenant became blind after Claudia clawed out his eyes, and therefore was unable to hunt.
• Last of His Kind: In 1945 Eastern Europe, Daciana was the last surviving vampire until she committed suicide.
• Magical Negro: Lampshaded by Louis when he jokingly identifies himself as a "magical vodka Negro" when Morgan, a British journalist, tries to determine who he really is after he notices the holes in the American's cover story. Louis doesn't want Morgan to know that he's a vampire and is annoyed by the latter's inquiries, so "magical vodka Negro" can pass as a drunken answer.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unknown if Emilia was bitten by a vampire or a revenant (as the Romanians believe), or if she was bitten by an animal (which Morgan insists is the cause of her injury).
• Offing the Offspring: Daciana kills her fledgling revenant (she refers to herself as his "Mama") after Claudia gouges out his eyes because he can't hunt without his sight.
• Off with His Head!: Emilia is decapitated with an axe because the Romanians believe that she's now a monster after they see bite marks on her neck.
• One True Love: Daniel is convinced that Lestat (whom Louis attempted to murder) is the true love of Louis' life, not Armand (who's the former coven master of the Théâtre des Vampires) as Louis claims.
  Louis: My love ran a theater company for 150 years, Daniel.
  Daniel: Your love was in a box pondering a premeditated neck wound.
• Precious Photo: Louis carries a photograph of Grace from her wedding, which was the last time their family was happy before Paul's suicide. It's used as part of Louis' cover story that he's searching for his wife, who volunteered for the Red Cross when the USA joined World War II, and is now missing.
• The Renfield: The human Real Rashid obediently carries out the orders of both Louis and Armand, his vampire bosses.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Morgan (the British journalist in Romania) correctly deduces that Louis is not who he presents himself to be, but doesn't guess that he's a vampire and instead thinks he's either AWOL or a Bolshevik.
• Robbing the Dead: Claudia habitually robs dead soldiers of any item that might be useful to her.
• Rule of Symbolism: The bars around Louis and Armand's bed resemble a jail cell. This illustrates that their Sleek High Rise Apartment is actually a Gilded Cage for Louis, and Armand's control over his boyfriend is demonstrated by the fact that Louis must ask him for permission to view the missing pages from Claudia's diary, as Armand has arranged it so that Louis cannot access them on his own.
• Running Gag: Daniel is a little miffed that Armand had fooled him with the "Rashid" Human Disguise in the previous season, so the former disregards any comment the latter makes during the interview with Louis. Armand retaliates by disregarding Daniel's journalistic skills.
  Louis: (reading Claudia's journal entry) "We slept in the earth, took circuitous routes around the mad army goose-stepping its way towards Mother Russia."
  Armand: Some would say a poorly timed European holiday.
  Daniel: Disregard.
  [...]
  Daniel: Once again, that's the voice of the vampire Armand, but continue to disregard it as he remains off the record.
  Armand: It's Louis' interview, Mr. Molloy.
  Daniel: You're at the table.
  Armand: I'm in our dining room.
  Daniel: You're not dining.
  Louis: An ancient doesn't need the blood as often as the young do.
  Daniel: Intriguing and disregarding.
  [...]
  Louis: My love [Armand] ran a theater company for 150 years, Daniel.
  Daniel: Your love [Lestat] was in a box pondering a premediated neck wound, according to Claudia. She wrote it, let's choose to believe it.
  Armand: Unworthy in San Francisco, unworthy in Dubai. Disregard.
• Shipper on Deck: A very strange example, but when Louis calls Armand "my love," Daniel basically corrects him and says no, his love is Lestat.
  Louis: My love [Armand] ran a theater company for 150 years, Daniel.
  Daniel: Your love [Lestat] was in a box pondering a premediated neck wound, according to Claudia.
• Shout-Out:
  • Daniel asks Real Rashid if he has ever read Moby-Dick.
  • Daniel calls Armand Shah Rukh Khan (a Bollywood actor), using his name as a sort of byword for a Desi dreamboat.
• Silent Treatment: Claudia refuses to acknowledge Louis' attempts to converse with her while they sit in front of a campfire, so he talks to himself and pretends that she's chatting with him by imitating her voice.
  Louis: And I endured it all for Claudia, whose rage toward me and my refusal to burn Lestat had dulled into a bitter silence.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Possibly in Morgan's case. In the novel, Louis kills him, but on the show, Morgan is still alive in the final shot that we see of him before Louis walks away from the crowd. Morgan is being restrained by Soviet soldiers to prevent him from interfering with Emilia's beheading, so they may have let him go afterwards.
• Stronger with Age: Ancient vampires don't require as much human blood to sustain themselves, as Louis imparts to Daniel.
  Daniel: (to Armand) You're not dining.
  Louis: An ancient doesn't need the blood as often as the young do.
• Talking in Bed: While lying in their bed, Armand expresses his misgivings about the interview and wants Louis to send Daniel home.
  Armand: May I make an observation?
  Louis: I've lost control of the interview.
  Armand: Yes.
  Louis: [Daniel]'s skilled.
  Armand: He wants you in pieces for the privilege of putting them back together as he sees fit.
  Louis: It's his job.
  Armand: It's his drug. He's reveling in it, you should end it.
  Louis: (assumes Armand means that he should kill Daniel) No.
  Armand: Put him back on a plane is what I mean.
  Louis: No. (sighs) What's the observation?
  Armand: The boy we met in San Francisco, the one who fumbled over his tape recording device, who barely understood the meaning of the story he was being told. He's still in there, somewhere. We can find him. We can have him saying what happened next in no time.
  Louis: How?
  Armand: We do it together. Like everything we've done for the past 70 years.
• Title Drop:
  Louis: But even if we could get her to talk to us, what would she say? What, after all, can the damned really say to the damned?
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • Louis stops halfway through while remembering a discussion he had with Emilia, suddenly realizing that he initially recalled her dialogue in the wrong order.
    Louis: Wait, that's wrong. She didn't say that in front of Claudia. [...] Emilia, she would not have said that in front of Claudia. She thought Claudia was a child. Claudia left. And then she said it.
  • Claudia lied in her diary about her inability to dream. "I do not dream" is the introduction to one of her entries, but Louis had witnessed her experiencing a nightmare while they were in Romania.
    Louis: It was just something she wrote. But it wasn't true. She could dream.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: In Romania, some people hang garlic bulbs outside of their homes or wear them like a necklace because they believe garlic wards off vampires. However, this is just superstition, as garlic has absolutely no effect on vampires.
  Claudia: So who ran garlic around these doors? [...] Just like in the books, they think garlic protects them.
• Villainous Face Hold: The hallucination of Lestat tenderly cups Louis' face after threatening him with "I'm gonna bloody kill you," and he adds that he'll wait for a time when Louis is happy before he strikes.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: A Soviet soldier barfs after he opens a coffin, grossed out by the sight and stench of the decomposing corpse.
• War Is Hell: In war-torn Romania, Louis and Claudia stay at a factory that has been repurposed into a shelter for people who have lost their homes, and they've all been reduced to subsistence living. Morgan greets Louis with "Welcome to, no question, hell on Earth!" Louis has observed that the quality of the human blood that he and Claudia have been drinking since they arrived in World War II-ravaged Europe is poor because it's full of misery and hopelessness. The despair of their victims is absorbed into their own vampire bodies, which results in Louis and Claudia never feeling warm.
• What a Drag: Morgan mentions to Louis that the town's priest was tied to a truck by Soviet soldiers and dragged.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The hallucination of Lestat brings up that Louis and Claudia's journey across Eastern Europe is "four years of grim wayfaring," but it actually has been five years because this scene takes place in 1945, and Louis and Claudia left America in 1940.