Season 1, Episode 5
Animal Control
Laszlo is captured as a bat by Animal Control, leaving Nandor and Colin Robinson to rescue him; Nadja seeks out Jeff again.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Actor Allusion: Jeff being flooded by vivid, perfectly accurate memories of all his past lives, making him an Instant Expert in all manner of skills (like archery, horseback riding, and dancing), feels like a reference to Jake McDorman's previous starring role on Limitless.
- Animals Hate Him: Laszlo frees the animals caged at the Animal Shelter, only for them all to cling to him painfully.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Jeff notices the cameras following Nadja around, only for her to hypnotize him so that he can't see them.
- Bungled Hypnotism: Vampiric hypnotism seems to work a lot like actual hypnotism, with the vampire unable to make the human do anything that they wouldn't want to do.
- Though this might be more of a subversion and only applies to Nandor, as when Nadja uses hypnotism, she has no trouble getting in and freeing Laszlo and Nandor.
- Character Development: In Episode 3, Nadja referred to Guillermo as "Gizmo". In Episode 4, Guillermo says his name in front of Nadja. In this episode, Nadja refers to Guillermo by his proper name.
- Did Not Think This Through: Nandor takes on the form of a dog to trick the animal catcher to let him into the room where they're keeping Laszlo. He then announces that he was there to rescue them... after being put in a cage, the same predicament that Laszlo was in, with no means of getting out of it.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Nadja has an iPhone in this episode, which Guillermo calls as a last resort after both Nandor and Laszlo have been trapped in animal form at the shelter. This conflicts with the idea that vampires can't use touchscreens in "Pilot", as well as Nadja being just as hopeless with technology as the other two in "The Curse" (where Guillermo has no way to call the vampires except on the landline in their house).
- Entertainingly Wrong: It turns out that the bat freed from animal control was not Laszlo. Instead they freed a bat meant to be treated for rabies which has now been set back into the wild, Laszlo having since regained consciousness and still in a cage.
- Epic Fail: Nadja tried to encourage Jeff to try an archery game, remembering a previous incarnation of Gregor being a master archer. He could not even get the arrows past the desk of the booth, the arrows falling the moment that he lets go of them.
- Gilligan Cut: Laszlo promises to free the cats. Cut to him screaming "What the Hell?" and covered in angry cats.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Slightly downplayed example. Once Nadja forces Jeff to remember all of his past lives as Gregor he immediately becomes more confident and skilled in just about every way and all around seems like the best version of himself, but when Nadja has to leave to go rescue Laszlo and Nandor he starts losing it, ending up with him being committed to an asylum. Hard to blame him considering he had to relive every single reincarnation of himself in rapid succession, only to be ditched by his supposed soulmate (who was responsible for this situation in the first place) for her husband moments before she vanishes in front of his eyes, leaving only a pile of rats behind.Jeff: A few hours ago my life was normal, and now everything I thought I knew was real has turned out to be an illusion!
- History Repeats: Apparently every reincarnation of Gregor has died by beheading. Nadja is worried that the same will happen to Jeff. Justified, as she sees him sticking his head in the hinge of a parking barrier as it closes and has to intervene.
- Interspecies Romance: Any/every relationship Nadja has had with Gregor is this, but special mention goes to the time that Gregor was reincarnated as a horse.
- Must Be Invited: Nandor nominates Guillermo to retrieve Laszlo from the neighbor's house because he is the only non-vampire and thus he does not need inviting into the house. He would rather be invited in anyway because it's polite. Later, Colin Robinson and Nandor try asking for permission to enter the animal shelter.
- Nadja has to ask to be let into the parking garage that Jeff works in, practically floating in-place as if she was repelled magnetically.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Guillermo can't get into the cage area without a code. Nadja hypnotizes the clerk to relate the code... "1-2-3-4-5."Nadja: Humans...
- Past-Life Memories: Jeff rapidly relives all his past lives in sequence after Nadja mind-whammies him, causing a major shift in his personality.
- Raging Stiffie: Even while knocked unconscious and in the form of a bat, Laszlo is such a Lovable Sex Maniac that he apparently has a permanent boner, which the animal control employees gleefully pass around photos of.
- Reincarnation: The Nadja/Gregor-Jeff subplot revolves around this.
- Shout-Out: Nadja tells Jeff that she has "crossed oceans of time to be with [him]." Later, she turns into a colony of rats similar to when Dracula did so.
- A Storm Is Coming: When Jenna's corpse awakens on the way to the ambulance, it's greeted by a roiling stormy sky with mutters of thunder gathering almost instantly on what had been a clear sunny day (protecting her from the obvious consequences of running around outdoors as a vampire).
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Nadja gets a long one as the result of swallowing a single kernel of popcorn, while Jeff is obliviously looking in the other direction.
- Women Are Wiser: Nadja normally isn't much of an example of this trope, but this episode plays it pretty straight— as soon as she arrives at the animal shelter, she gets Laszlo and Nandor out in seconds. (Of course, this is mostly because her hypnosis seems to work much more consistently than Nandor's, but may also be because she thought to just ask the shelter employee what the passcode on the door was, instead of directly ordering him to open it for her.)
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: It turns out that Nadja could have used her hypnotic abilities to reinvigorate the memories of Jeff's past lives in him at any time. It is not until she finds out just how unsatisfying Jeff himself is after a date with him that she does so.
- Wrongfully Committed: Nadja regressing Jeff through all his past-life memories as Gregor so he will remember that she's his soulmate, only to casually abandon him a few minutes later for Laszlo, doesn't leave him in the best mental health. The episode ends with him institutionalized.
