Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat through episode four as well as what came before in the TV show and the books. Read at your own risk.

Intro

AMC’s The Vampire Lestat has seven episodes and I honestly can’t say episode four, The Devil’s Road, makes an argument that people involved with the show understand how to use that limited time well.

I know there’s already talk of next season happening and how they’re splitting the book up in two which does make sense. One could even make the argument that the original books did that already with the handling of Lestat’s concert being split over The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned.

I also want to acknowledge that I have said in the past that I feel that the show would do better to move Lestat away from his book self in the same way they’ve already done for Louis. The start was understandably rough but AMC’s Louis now stands on his own as a character onto himself with just enough of Louis’ core personality in there to make you feel like this is a recognizable alternative universe version of him instead of a character who only borrows the name for brand recognition.

The problem I have with The Devil’s Road is the same problem I had with episode one, Detroit: Nothing happened! Which is as good a place as any to get into the episode itself I suppose. Or what was of it.

Why The Devil’s Road is An Episode About Nothing

I started watching The Devil’s Road by noticing it had a shorter run time than last week’s episode and wondering how it could fit enough story into it. I ended The Devil’s Road by thinking the episode, far from being too short, was way too damn long.

Look, I’m all for character work. I love a bottle episode. I love the conceit of interviews both as a concept and as a way to save money by letting you spend significant amounts of time filming your lead sitting in a chair with only an outfit change here and there to show passage of time. Genuinely. As a lover of fanfic, I enjoy spending hours upon hours doing nothing but diving into the thoughts of characters and why a single look changed the course of their lives.

In a TV show, though, if I’m sitting with you for over 50 min I need to come out of that with more than “Lestat’s got a fraught relationship with his mother, who he fucks, he plays music, vampires and mortals hate him, and also we included a cop scene for no fucking reason whatsoever.” Because if you get rid of the pointless cop scene you’re left with information we knew already from episode one. Which, as I pointed out back then, also didn’t do much as an episode.

I do want to give some props to the stuff not involving Lestat, though before doing so let’s point out that it’s a problem when the best parts of your show 1) don’t involve the character the show is named after and 2) don’t involve the character who is supposed to be the most charismatic and influential one in the entire damn thing.

Which I’ll get into, believe me. But first: props for the Louis storyline. It is completely fucked up but it’s exactly the kind of fucked up Louis would do. Louis wants a thing and he’s going to ignore all damage he does by even being near the thing, let alone interacting with what he wants.

(And this is not to demean Regina by me calling her a thing, I’m saying Louis is effectively treating her as such while ignoring that that’s what he does to mortals all the time as a vampire.)

I also enjoyed Armand’s scenes. I loved the makeup and costuming that had him looking as close to small and fragile as his trapped in a 14 year old’s body book self would. I loved seeing him and Daniel play off of one another. The back and forth in the bowling alley was painful and funny and crackled with chemistry to the point where I was wanting both more of this in general as well as, I gotta say it again, with the damn lead of the show.

Not to belabor a point I’ve been banging on about since season one but Lestat is charismatic. His charisma is through the roof. And while we can understand now that Lestat in seasons one and two was a damped down version of himself because we were seeing him through Louis’ memories as they were fucked up by Armand, it’s Lestat’s show now. He’s got an ego! He wants us to see how interesting he is. So… where is that?

We’ve seen it in episodes two and three! It’s there! Last week’s flashbacks with Nicky showed us a Lestat who had a spark to him. But by and large AMC’s version of Lestat is flat. Particularly and most egregiously when it comes to narration. Yanno, the thing that literally in the real world made him famous in the first place?

Look, Lestat doesn’t have to sound like his book self. If you can’t manage it I personally can say that’s a skill issue and tell you to get good but whatever. Maybe you feel the purple prose doesn’t translate to television. But then give us another personality and voice in its place! Daniel’s got personality to spare, let Lestat borrow some of his if you’re struggling!

Instead this version of Lestat is a lot of prancing around bare chested in lieu of actually doing stuff. Instead of being the Brat Prince upending the tables of the vampire and mortal world because fuck you, that’s why, he’s a cypher who does nothing but react to things. If his mommy wasn’t around would he have motivations at all?

Now of course I’ve got the books to go on so I can compare the before and after here of his proactive book self to whatever the AMC version is. But if I pretend I’ve never read the books I have to tell you if I was an audience member I’d be wondering why the fuck are we watching this guy’s story? Louis’ and Armand’s ex-boyfriend decided to have the vampire version of a 40 year old’s midlife crisis of starting a garage band and going touring. Why’s that a TV show?

We ended season two with the entire vampire world saying they were coming after Louis and Louis basically replying bring it, bitch. Louis going from passivity (true of his book and TV self) to active badass vampire is a hell of a character arc and would, I’ll also point out, still give you the “protagonist vampire taking on the world of vampires who hate him” story that’s going on here while the audience that only knows the TV show has to be told why Lestat’s now the focus of that attention instead.

I get that Lestat’s our new protagonist because that’s how the books went, but in which case why did you change the part of the books that makes him the protagonist?

And, since we’re going full force on this now at this reveal of the hope for a vampire apocalypse, I’m kind of over giving benefit of the doubt to this reinvented misogynistic portrayal of Gabrielle into a sexually abusive, manipulative Lady MacBeth whispering poison in Lestat’s ear to make him an accomplice to her desires for evil. It’s far more interesting to go with the original version where Lestat did a lot of the shit he did because he simply wanted to for the lols. And if for some reason you needed to write a story where you show a man turned vampire having been morally twisted by the people in his life there is, again, a line out the god damn door of men who you could’ve put in this role instead. (His dad, his brothers, Nicky, Magnus, Armand, as well as numerous other male vampires you haven’t met yet.) If you say he’s evil because his mommy made him be that is a choice and it’s one you should really be unpacking in therapy instead of your scripts.

Now in the interest of fairness I’ll say okay, sure, we’re watching the unreliable narrator show. Maybe it’ll be revealed that Lestat was lying this whole time and painting Gabriella as the bad guy to make himself look like the innocent woobie. But the unfortunate thing is that none of the interviews about the show seem to be indicating that.

Instead, showrunner Rolin Jones has the weirdest sense of what constitutes a significant change from the books - like thinking aging Lestat by 9 years was going to blow the minds of the “Dude we were already on the page of Louis being a Black man” audience - combined with no idea of what actually is an impactful change, such as when Sam Reid had to point out no, it actually had meaning that book Lestat played Lélio and if you change that to him playing Arlecchino you’re telling a different story.

(For those of you not familiar with Commedia dell'arte, think of it this way: it means something when the shrapnel in Tony Stark’s heart comes from a bomb with Tony’s name on it. You can change the name on the bomb to say Hammer Industries, but now you’re telling a different story. You should be aware of that as the person making the change and not do it simply because you liked the Hammer Industries font better.)

Which in a way is oddly comforting for me when I look back on the many, many, MANY problematic handlings of race, women, and even pedophile Nazi sympathizers that this show has had over the yeas and go oh, okay, the people responsible here (or perhaps one singular person) really are just that ignorant of what their stories are saying.

Which drives me nuts! When this show is good it’s so good! I continue to think most of these actors deserve far better material than what they’re being given! Poor Sam Reid in particular as he’s made to say lines like “We ran on bots and abandonment” while mispronouncing fast food product placement in a way I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be in character or not. Jacob Anderson biffed some New Orleans locations in ways a native would never, so that’s why I’m not sure if this is a “Lestat can’t be bothered to give a shit about cheap so called Mexican food” or if it’s Sam Reid not knowing how to say it. Though in fairness him disputing other pronunciations in character does at least hint it might be the former. But if so: Why? Why is this what we’re spending our time on halfway through the season?

I keep coming back to how, even if you ignore the books entirely, why is any of this what we’re spending time on with our title character? The only new thing we learned about Lestat is that it seems Gabriella put him on the idea of vampires taking over the world and she’s pushing him to do this now through his music. Okay, was there a reason we couldn’t carve off the 12 minutes at the start of the ep (yes, I checked the time) before anything actually relevant happened to bulk out that actually important piece of information and character development? Maybe the cop scene that had no point except to remind us that Lestat has vampire powers, which we’ve seen, and that nobody on this show spent two seconds wondering about the racial implications of a cop pulling over a bus full of predominantly white people with only a few BIPOC there, which we already know because we’ve watched the first two seasons of the show?

Look, I can’t help it. I’m in full I’m not mad, I’m disappointed mode. We’ve had the previous two episodes! We know they can do something with Lestat. But in a 7 episode season two of those episodes should not have been taken up with providing information we could’ve gotten in a single paragraph. Even from the point of view of saving on budget it doesn’t make sense. Drop Lestat and Gabriella fucking for the first time and spend the money on those sets and costumes giving Sam Reid another chance to monologue and emote into the camera the way he did last week when talking about Nicky. Better use of your cash and everyone’s efforts.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. What a waste.

Lagniappe

As always, things that don’t fit anywhere else:

• Why was there an Elon Musk bobblehead? It says something about how unclear AMC’s Lestat’s characterization has been that I genuinely can’t tell if it’s meant to be there ironically or not.
• The writer for this ep was Jonathan Ceniceroz, for what that's worth.
• Amaka Umeh once again getting the thankless role of effectively being a Black woman shaped prop while things happen around her. For contrast, in the books Christine was referred to by name but was not a supporting character like we’re seeing her here. It is a choice that her, the members of the band, and the invented for this TV show presence of Daniel and even “Doc Cameraman” are getting more characterization than she is. The only way this becomes excusable is if Ebert’s Law of Conservation of Characters applies. Which hopefully it does.
• Again: I am absolutely fine if you go off book. Go nuts. But I do not understand why, with the vast tapestry of all the books to work with for inspiration, you think the thing the TV audience both needs and wants are repetitive scenes of Lestat and the band sitting around in the bus and partying. I get y’all are trying to save money but, again: slap Sam Reid into a chair and let him talk! Have him quote the books directly, for fuck’s sake!
• “Let’s see what failures we can pin on dear old mom” - oh look, it’s the show’s thesis statement.
• Given that the only Lestat plotline related piece of information we got was that Gabriella wants to bring about the vampire takeover of the world, I’m kinda wondering why we’re not following her as our lead.
• I know, I know, the books. But then we’re back on how it is almost impressive to take someone with as vast a body of work in his own voice as Lestat’s and both struggle to know how to write what he sounds like and come up for things for him to do in 7 hours of running time.
• I honestly couldn’t link them all because it’s been so many at this point. But I am fascinated in the running theme of the actors looking at Rolin Jones’s decisions and going either “Mmm… sure whatever because this is so dumb I can’t be bothered to care” or “Uh, actually if you read the books you’d know this idea was shit.” For another example here’s Sam Reid on the introduction of Lestat having a stutter. I’m interested in this both in terms of how much it shows that the majority of the cast has done the homework and cares about bringing the characters to life. But also in the sense that the cast has zero problems giving official press tour interviews saying their showrunner clearly wasn’t in the AP English class in high school. That says something about what the atmosphere was like on the sets. Not sure what, but something.
• Daniel’s dialogue and snark with Armand was so wonderful I kept gesturing at the screen and wondering why none of this fire appears when Lestat’s the one talking.
• Lack of localization help: as a New Yorker, Daniel would call it the GWB, not the GW. He would absolutely resent that his vampire birth was in New Jersey though, so spot on there.
• As much as Lestat shouldn’t have played a Harlequin character in the past, I did appreciate that his makeup and hair in the concert Armand saw evoked that imagery.
• Serious, serious props to the Louis subplot though. Entirely invented for the show (though arguably inspired by Moon Over Bourbon Street) but spot on for the way Louis causes damage… and just keeps doing that because he thinks he’s being nice even though the longer he stays around the more damage he causes.
• Regina’s in danger but I can’t fault her for wanting to get that bag. Also for calling Louis out on being cheap. You’re a billionaire asking a stranger for daughter play and that’s what you lowball her with? Push for a bonus next time too, Regina. He can spare it.
• Did Daniel call Louis a bucket of fried chicken? Because that’s so fucking racist I have to assume I heard that wrong even though I saw it in the closed captions too.
• I don’t know who insisted on the “cabbages” thing and/or insisted on the show continuing to go to that well but it’s giving Ross Geller makes up his own rude gesture.
• Social media served me up a video of someone forming a grand interpretation of the show so far based on how, as the owner of the hotel Lestat was in, Louis would be watching the security tapes. And I have never been so uniquely positioned to tell you that’s not how hotel ownership works, with or without vampire involvement.

So yeah. Past the halfway point and we’re at 50% success rate on episodes that weren’t a waste of time. Hopefully those numbers get better with three to go.

See you next week!