Our Interview with the Vampire Season 2 recaps continue with episode 5, “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start The Tape.” Catch up on our previous recaps for the first three episodes right here. Beware: spoilers below!
On the one hand, on a narrative level, “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape” answers why, if Armand (Assad Zaman) was around for the first interview, he ever allowed it to be published in the first place. On the other hand, on a meta-production level, the episode raises some new questions of its own.
“Don’t Be Afraid” goes back and forth between vampire Louis (Jacob Anderson) and interviewer Daniel (Eric Bogosian) talking in the present, and flashbacks to the fateful interview between Louis and young Daniel (Luke Brandon Field) in 1973 San Francisco.
In the present, Louis and Armand tell Daniel that they thought they’d achieved a balance with the theatre coven, unaware of the plotting around them.
Malik (Elander Moore) is a human visitor, Armand’s prey for the day. Louis explains to Daniel that Armand doesn’t feed often, but when he does, he prefers to hunt. Armand likes to choose victims who do harm in the world. If he can’t find one, then he gets someone who’s already suicidal. If the designated person (who knows what they’re in for) can make it to a specified destination by sundown, they will be spared and made rich. Daniel asks if anyone has ever lived to receive the payment.
Back in San Francisco in 1973, at the end of their last interview session, Louis bit Daniel. Daniel blacked out, Armand pulled Louis off of him, and left Daniel to recover in a drug den.
Daniel says that Armand has made hundreds of thousands of kills. How often has he spared a life? Louis replies, “Armand could see I was partial to you. Armand preserves my happiness … He had a hunch you might prove fruitful in later times.”
Flash back to 1973. Louis takes young Daniel, high on cocaine and Quaaludes, to a shabby apartment in one of the many low-end buildings he owns. There’s a coffin as well as the usual furniture. Daniel offers sex, but Louis declines. He’s had a lot of sex with mortals, but Daniel’s interview is a new kind of offer.
Daniel doesn’t believe Louis is a vampire, so Louis shows him his fangs and supernatural speed. Daniel is terrified, but Louis tells him, “Don’t be afraid; just start the tape.”
In the present, Daniel says that Malik will be dead in two hours; Louis has made Daniel an accomplice to murder. They’ve done thirteen interview sessions. Daniel wants some time to know what happened between them in 1973.
In the initial interview, Louis talks about Lestat as though he were a completely superficial, talentless idiot. Louis then remembers Claudia leaving on the train, as he contemplated suicide after her departure.
Young Daniel can’t believe that Louis would even think of killing himself, since he can avoid the ravages of mortality.
Daniel asks Louis Louis to turn him. Louis is infuriated and almost rips Daniel’s throat out.
In the present, Daniel has a new-to-both-him-and-Louis cleaned-up audio of the end of the interview. Daniel says that his assistant restored the audio, although we know the Talamasca agent really supplied it.
The tape has Armand rushing in, pulling Louis off young Daniel, and the subsequent conversation between the two vampires. Armand is tired of Louis picking up “lowlifes,” then making a mess that Armand has to clean up. Louis says that Armand is boring, that the ten hours he spent with young Daniel were more fascinating than the decades he’s spent with Armand.
Armand confronts Louis about his wallowing in self-pity. Also, they haven’t talked about Lestat in twenty-three years, and now his name is practically all Louis could say to young Daniel. Louis also spoke about Claudia. When he protests that he loved her, Armand points out that she didn’t love Louis as either Lestat or Armand has. Louis says he knows. He remembers Paris.
In the present, Louis doesn’t remember any of this. But there are door slams on the tape, indicating Louis ran out of the building into the daylight, where he began to burn.
In the present, Louis apparently has suppressed the memory from 1973 until now but remembers Armand dragging him back into the building. Much of Louis’ skin had burned away. The pain was “like a siren.”
When Louis regains consciousness, Armand tells him that he drank from “a drug fiend,” then said the worst things he’d ever said to Armand and ran out into the sun. Louis apologizes. While they talk, Armand repeatedly psychokinetically raises young Daniel into the air, then drops him to the floor.
Armand tells Louis that he had to chase down a neighbor who saw what was happening to Louis in the daylight. (Armand, being ancient, can withstand the sun.) Young Daniel sees the plastic-wrapped corpse and is sure he’s next.
Armand plays back Louis’ tape, in which Louis talks about how Lestat’s favorite prey was young men like Daniel because they stood on “the threshold of possibility.” Louis asserts that Lestat did not understand this himself.
Armand is interested in young Daniel because Louis has brought 128 young men home, and young Daniel is the first Louis didn’t “consummate and drain.”
Young Daniel begs Armand not to kill him. Armand tells young Daniel, “You’re going to teach me how to be fascinating.” Armand reaches into young Daniel’s mind and brings up acts of cruelty and chicanery that Daniel committed as a child and as a youth.
In the present, Daniel determines that the vampires kept him in the apartment for about half a week. Armand was in some kind of a trance, murmuring to himself for part of it.
Louis, still badly injured, rouses Armand from his trance by begging to be put in a coffin. Armand obliges and gives his blood to Louis while telling him that he’s listened to the tapes twice. Louis says what he said on the recordings was trash. Armand wonders if Louis was spinning a fantasy for young Daniel so that, if it were published, Lestat would buy a copy and come looking for Louis.
Armand knows where Lestat (Sam Reid, in voiceover) is. He psychically communicated to Lestat to tell him that Louis is thinking of him. Lestat, being Louis’ maker, cannot psychically connect to Louis. Louis insists that he doesn’t want Lestat.
Armand psychically tells Lestat that Louis has injured himself. Armand relays Lestat’s message of concern, but won’t repeat Lestat’s declarations of love for Louis.
Armand lulls young Daniel into a comfortable trance and starts to give him a “peaceful death,” but Louis rises from his sick bed and says he needs “this one” to live.
In the present, Daniel recalls that Louis told young Daniel that he is not inconsequential or a junkie but rather a bright young reporter with stories to tell. If things ever get bad again, Daniel is to remember these words.
Daniel has destroyed two marriages and messed up his two daughters, but he remained a journalist. He was never so lost that he couldn’t hold down a job. He’s in tears.
Daniel points out to Louis that both of their memories were fogged by Armand at exactly the same time. When Armand returns from his hunt, Louis says that he and Daniel discussed San Francisco in 1973, and why Armand spared him. Armand says some of the exact words he’d implanted in Louis’ memory. There is a meaningful silence.
Let’s be clear. This is Interview with the Vampire, not The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The word “interview” is in the title. There will be talking.
But the word “vampire” is also in the title. Despite the outstanding burn makeups (for several different stages) on Anderson and the occasional attacks on young Daniel, there’s a remarkable lack of blood or action overall.
Yes, the information we get in “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape” is useful and intriguing. Our curiosity is piqued.It’s certainly high time we got an explanation of why Louis was so scornful of Lestat in the original interview, and how Daniel survived. But it seems odd that the creative team put it all in one episode instead of interspersing it with more visual sequences.
This leads us to meta questions about whether the rest of the season will be at such breakneck speed that there won’t be time for any more long ruminations, whether budget constraints demanded an episode essentially confined to two sets, or what went into the decision-making here.
Watch new episodes of the Interview with the Vampire TV series every Sunday on AMC & AMC+. For more, catch up on our Interview with the Vampire episode recaps. A recent episode vaguely introduced The Talamasca, and AMC just announced a full-blown expansion of their Anne Rice Immortal Universe with The Talamasca series joining the network.
