Main cast: Wil Wheaton (Kevin), Matt LeBlanc (Tommy), John O’Leary (Mr Innes), Al Mancini (Mr D’Onofrio)
Director: John Strysik

Long before Matt LeBlanc ever appeared in Friends, he was paying his dues by appearing in things such as Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites. Still, he has nothing to be ashamed of, as his career had nowhere to go but up after this stint. This is unlike Wil Wheaton, who only rolled downhill straight into well-deserved irrelevance from this point.

Then again, most people in Hollywood can always cheer themselves up during their darkest hours by reminding themselves that, no matter what happens, they are not Wil Wheaton, and that is a blessing indeed.

This episode opens with Matt LeBlanc sporting the niftiest porn star mustache ever as he plays Tommy. As he gets a shave at a barber, he reminisces about how he once had a childhood friend, Kevin, that suspected the shop to be run by vampires.

Hilariously, we then move back to the past, with the “younger” Tommy being simply the adult one minus the mustache. Kevin reveals that he has been stalking the owners of the barber 24/7 and tells Tommy that their clients were all killed just like vampire victims. Also, Kevin saw old guys going in with big bottles, only to come out with small bottles filled with red liquid, their hair untouched.

Something weird is happening, and Kevin wants them to break into the barbershop and solve the mystery. Hmm, what can go wrong?

You know, this is actually a pretty interesting episode. The dodgy effects during the climactic moment aside, it presents an interesting take on the whole concept of vampirism. Dan Simmons has some good ideas in his script, and had this been a show with a better budget, the grand reveal would have been terrifying instead of unintentionally hilarious.

However, a bigger problem here is that the bulk of the episode is composed of thinly veiled information dump delivered by Mr Wheaton, who can always be relied upon to be super annoying in any role he plays. Here’s a shocker, he plays another know-it-all twat here, and worse, he’s a dumb one because after breaking into the barbershop, he touches everything with his bare hands while lecturing Tommy like he’s a professor in a class. Shouldn’t he be actually looking for evidence that the barbers are vampires?

I love it when the barbers savagely expose what an idiot Kevin actually is, but by then it’s tad too late as that character has annoyed me for long enough already.

So yes, good idea, but a boring, drawn-out execution of said idea leads to a middling one-scene wonder of an episode, one that ends up being not much of a bite.