Vampiros y Arroz
This post contains spoilers for AGENT STOKER Episode 402, “Coffin Nail” — you have been warned!
Many years ago, I had a dream assignment. I was a writer for the Starz series DA VINCI’S DEMONS, which imagined Leonardo Da Vinci as a visionary genius in stories of both action and the supernatural — sort of the Indiana Jones of the Renaissance. When I entered the show, I learned there two episodes which had no writers assigned yet, and four of us who could write them. The showrunner said, “So who wants to write the episode where Da Vinci meets Dracula?” I was a natural since I’d written a classic vampire film, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT — but I didn’t want to look tooooo eager. Still, after a moment I was the first one to raise my hand. It ended up assigned to me and my colleague Marco Ramirez, a brilliant writer who had just come from ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK and would go on to such diverse projects as Netflix’s DAREDEVIL and the Broadway musical adaptation of BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB.
Marco and I dove into Dracula lore and wrote an outline and then an episode which delighted us. It wasn’t exactly a vampire saga because our mandate was to have Da Vinci meet the living Vlad Dracul, warlord of eastern Europe. Vlad’s story already had enough creepiness in it — look him up if you don’t already know — to make the story extra-spooky. But we wanted to foreshadow the monstrous legend that he would become in pop culture. So we sprinkled little tells of what would be awaiting Vlad in the days to come, both because of his ferocious PTSD and because of the vampiric saga that was so affixed to him that even now, “run from the sunlight Dracula” is the hook of a pop song by Tame Impala.
And there was one thing we literally sprinkled on set. We were struck by the piece of vampire trivia that one way to confound a vampire is to throw debris in his path — he’ll need to stop and count each coin, or each piece of straw, or each grain of rice. (How did this idea start? I can’t say, but one must wonder whether a touch of OCD was possibly a quality that made bygone people think there was something sinister about you?)
Since our Vlad wasn’t a vampire, it wouldn’t become a plot point — but we had his chamber strewn with coins. He told Da Vinci that he knew where each coin was, so that if any of his servants ever betrayed him and stole from him, he’d know immediately. It was just a little character flourish that let us show Vlad wasn’t all there!
When Agent Stoker was facing a vampire, this bit of lore came back to me. It wasn’t going to save the day — but slowing down Simon Diaz by throwing some rice in his path would give Agent Stoker the breather he needed to win. Hence, the plate of tacos with rice that Agent Stoker orders.
It is, however, total coincidence that Simon Diaz is Latino — we could have easily used rice from any number of other dishes. Meeting their friends for margaritas on the waterfront just seemed fun. And it offered a chance to finally employ a tasty bit of supernatural trivia. We hope you’ve enjoyed Episode 402 — we’ll have little morsels of backstage trivia for each episode this season, let us know how they taste!