Isobel Grieve
The following contains spoilers for Reginald the Vampire S1E4: “All the Time in the World” (written by Alejandro Alcoba, based on the books by Johnny B. Truant and directed by David Frazee)
Aptly called “All the Time in the World,” Reginald the Vampire’s fourth instalment felt like one big old filler episode. Last week we saw a lot of action from Reginald (Jacob Batalon) and Sarah (Em Haine) on their first date to Mike (Ryan Jinn) being a spy on Maurice (Mandela Van Peebles) for resident evil vampire Angela (Savannah Basley) to Reginald’s new power of glamouring other vampires. This time we spend an hour walking down memory lane with Maurice as he tackles an emotional side quest.
Oakland, 1972: Maurice and Angela enjoy a vampiric honeymoon working with The Black Panther party. However, when Maurice is caught out at night by a police officer, things turn sour quick. The couple has to flee. Before putting too much space between themselves and the U.S., Maurice wants to visit his mother one last time.
Meanwhile, in present-day, Maurice is sniffing around his mother’s old house, which was recently sold, and the neighbour is sniffing around him. Angela is back at her compound meeting with her minion and another “Regional Director.” Reginald struggles to keep up with his training without Maurice; he asks Mike to help him.
1972: Maurice and Angela arrive at Maurice’s mother’s house for a surprise visit; they’re invited for dinner and to stay the night. She also has another guest for dinner, the poor boy next door with no mother of his own and an alcoholic father. Maurice tries to tell his mother he’s leaving the U.S., but she convinces him to stay with her instead. Angela has many concerns about this (rightly so, if you ask me). Instead of letting Maurice seal his fate or convince him of another path, Angela tricks him; blood is spilt, and Angela turns Maurice’s mother into a vampire.
Present Day: The “Regional Director” of someplace up north, otherwise known as Eve, turns on Angela when she finds out about Reginald the Fat Vampire. It will help her get a promotion, she says. Mike says yes to being Reginald’s tutor in the meantime while Maurice is away.
1972: Maurice’s mother chooses to burn in the sun rather than spend eternity as a vampire. Maurice decides he wants nothing to do with Angela, and she leaves him. The boy next door sees all.
Present Day: Maurice is captured by his mother’s old neighbour boy, now an adult. This man thinks he’s captured Maurice in a special room, but it does nothing against Maurice’s power. Maurice kills this man. Our cliffhanger is Angela calling this Nicki butcher-woman and putting an official hit on Reginald the Vampire.
We haven’t moved forward story-wise in the grand scheme of the season’s arc and plotting. I thought the hit had already been put on Reginald by Angela [???]. I thought she’d done that some time ago. And I had thought that Mike was leaving town, not Maurice. We see no development between Reginald and Sarah in this episode despite Maurice not being there. Ashley’s (Marguerite Hanna) paranormal investigation is not mentioned at all.
I don’t usually take issue with filler episodes. I think they can make for great TV, given the right story and executed well. However, Reginald the Vampire S1E4 wasn’t executed well enough for me. I liked getting the complete picture of Maurice and Angela’s backstory, except it wasn’t the fullest picture, and it was rushed.
I think “All the Time in the World” would have been much more entertaining if the present-day storylines were taken out entirely and the writers focused on giving us the best 70s period flashback episode they could have. We could have seen these characters’ love, happiness and full life. Why only show us their sexy days in the motel when we could have seen Maurice and Angela in action as black community members, as part of The Black Panther Party? There was an opportunity to see the couple at a disco or party and interact with the people in their neighbourhood and community. Then, when Maurice made the mistake of killing a cop, it would have been all the more heartbreaking.
We didn’t see enough of the before to understand why anger, betrayal, misery, and sexual chemistry are still so prevalent and complicated between Maurice and Angela decades later. As much as Angela turning Maurice’s mother into a vampire gives him fuel for centuries of hatred, it doesn’t encapsulate all of the emotion involved in the game these two characters play.
I like the history they’ve given these characters; it’s different from what I’ve seen in other vampire media, but I stand by the fact that had the writers’ room given what plays out on screen more attention, it could have ended up as one of the best episodes they’ve made. Alas, this isn’t what we received.
Again, the humour felt missing from this episode, although perhaps that is because we spent most of the episode with the characters with the least amount of jokes written into their characters. I also believe that this show and concept have a lot of potential, just like this episode, but the writers always fall short of delivering.
