Last week, we compared the differences between the Interview with the Vampire movie and television series. This time, we’ll dive a bit deeper into this week’s episode since we’ve already covered the movie quite a bit. Let’s jump in.
The Journalist and the Vampire
This week’s episode kicks off with journalist Daniel Molloy getting ready for another interview session with vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, who is 100+ years old. As Molloy prepares for the interview, he is told by the staff at Louis’ home that he will be served a 15-course dinner, and Louis will be joining him during the seventh course.
The extravagant dinner features a number of extraordinarily decadent meals — and meats. This is in stark contrast to Louis’ meals. When Louis joins Molloy at the dinner table, he’s served a pouch of AB blood, “fresh from the farm.” Doesn’t get much fresher than that! Louis follows that course up with a live rabbit. As he rips into the rabbit’s neck while it thrashes about, he asks Molloy if he ever thinks about the life of the animal he’s about to devour. It’s in that moment that the viewer realizes that Molloy is being served all those high-end meats for a reason. He manages to make Molloy think about his own morals and ethics as a meat eater.
They wrap up their meal with dessert. Louis feasts on the neck of a live human — while taking great care to make sure the human is safe and comfortable. The human even makes small talk with Molloy as Louis sucks his blood. Molloy is presented with a cake that he wrote about in his memoir. Louis asks Molloy about the dessert, and he reveals that it was the first thing he ate after he proposed to his wife. With that, Louis and Molloy finally start building a personal connection, and you can feel them slowly start to get closer.
Now that we’ve gone over what is shown in the present-day scenes in 2022 Dubai between Molloy and Louis, let’s jump into some of the flashback scenes that serve as the highlights of their interview.
Louis’ First Meal as a Vampire
The interview between picks up shortly after Louis is turned into a vampire by Lestat. This means that Louis needs some fresh meat to satiate his newfound thirst for blood. While the two vampires are walking the street together, Lestat tells Louis, “Vampires are killers. Apex predators, whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.” To Lestat, this thrill of the hunt is awesome, but Louis hates it. To this day, he still remembers his first kill (a tractor salesman).
Louis Can’t Leave His Family
One thing that Lestat keeps telling Louis is that Louis has to move on from his family. According to Lestat, it’s impossible for a vampire to keep in touch with their family. However, Louis refuses to believe Lestat’s claim. In the most anxiety inducing scene of the episode, Louis visits his sister, Grace, to meet his baby nephew for the first time. While holding the baby, Louis gets the seemingly uncontrollable urge to bite his nephew.
Molloy poses the question that everyone watching the show is thinking: “Did you eat the baby?” Luckily, Louis is able to practice self-control. Instead, he leaves the crying baby all alone on the floor while his sister is in another room and jets out of the house. It looks like he finally realizes that he can’t stay close with his family. He loves them so much, but he doesn’t want to hurt them.
Lestat Can’t Stand Bad Singers
Lestat generally despises humans and doesn’t have any issues killing them. However, Louis reveals to Molloy that Lestat does have a soft spot for one type of person in general: musicians. Lestat absolutely loves people who create music. But the music has to be good. If you’re a bad singer or musician, Lestat wants to insult you, torture you and drink your blood. This is shown when Lestat and Louis attend an opera. Back in the 1910s, Louis and Lestat can’t walk around in public as a couple because of the racism they would have faced. As a result, Louis has to go around pretending to be Lestat’s valet. Only when the lights go down at the opera is Louis able to sit next to Lestat and be his equal. In the dark, no one else could see them together.
During the opera, Lestat is overjoyed by the beautiful voice of the soprano. Unfortunately, when the tenor starts singing, Lestat is disgusted by his voice. He immediately makes the decision that he’s going to kill the tenor. Louis is disappointed by Lestat’s ensuing humiliation and murder of the tenor, but he decides to partake in the drinking of the tenor’s blood. Despite Louis’ disappointment in Lestat, he’s also impressed by Lestat. As Louis constantly tells Molly, “[Lestat] had a way about him.”
What’s Next?
It’s clear that Louis is not your typical vampire. It’ll be interesting to watch his growth as he starts to pull away from Lestat in future episodes.
How to Watch ‘Interview with the Vampire’
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