Three years ago, after a gentile pressure campaign from a close friend I reluctantly sat down to watch Birdbox. It was bad, and I can’t get that two hours of my life back. But mostly I’m angry at myself for letting someone push me into watching something that my gut was telling me would probably be bad. Never again. Why get into all this again? Because of Squid Game.

SG has so much hype that it would be impossible for anyone to say if it’s succeeding because it’s good, or just because it had good timing. Alice in Borderland left a whole lot of people hungry for more, and since these shows take a lot of time to finish a new season they haven’t been getting their fix. Thus, the masses were going to devour it as long as it wasn’t completely bad. I have not seen it, but by all accounts it is a thematic twin to AiB and therein lies the problem.

It might be legitimately good but even if it is, I just don’t want to watch a clone (or close cousin) of AiB. I already have a dealer for that particular flavor and I just don’t need two shows that do almost (or exactly) the same thing. When I got done watching the Korean zombie show Kingdom I didn’t go out looking for another zombie show to fill the void until the next season of my existing zombie show. And I wouldn’t be interested in a second M-rated black comedy vampire show, because I’ve already got one of those too! And fortunately for me they’re neck-deep (ha-ha-ha) in season 3 right now.

WWDITS season 3 continues the top-level quality of writing, character chemistry, pacing, timing, and production value that we’ve come to expect. My worst complaint about it is that there’s a few of the jokes were predictable…literally a few. Three, I think. And the rest of the time they’re just crushing it. All of the characters work perfectly but the standout for me has always been Lazlo Cravensworth played by Matt Berry. Probably because his character has shown the most growth apart from Guillermo, who got a promotion and some much-deserved recognition but is still basically the same person as before. 

But Lazlo is changing. He’s demonstrating a shockingly sincere friendship with / loyalty to the energy vampire character Colin Robinson. It makes him the most interesting character, even when he gets relegated to the B story, or used as the subtle (and profane) comedic undercurrent to what everyone else is doing. Matt Berry has an absolute gift for making casual indifference into a powerful personality trait and he and the writers are both smart enough to make this his defining attribute. 

I don’t know how many more seasons of this priceless gem we can expect. Nothing lasts forever and things that try to inevitably wind up turning into garbage. But I will be fascinated to see how long this show can maintain it’s amazingly high level of artistic and comedic quality. Season 4 has already been confirmed, and I’m going to dare to hope for seven or eight. 

Special recognition needs to be given to a new major character called The Guide or The Floating Woman played by Kristen Schall. She’s mostly there to be the ‘straight man’ to the insanity of the three main vampires, but she’s hilarious herself because even though she’s the straight man she’s still a mass-murdering vampire…and that’s funny.