If you thought projectile vomit was the best part of “Pitch Perfect,” Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet” is the show for you.
Drew Barrymore’s new suburban “mombie” show passes up most of what makes zombies interesting in favor of cheap, literal gags.
The beauty of streaming sites is their ability to have shows with limited appeal instead of catering to as wide an audience as possible. It’s unfortunate the creators of this zombie comedy chose to base their audience on people who are willing to accept endless low-level gross-outs as entertainment.
As in grittier zombie fare, like “The Walking Dead” or “28 Days Later,” there’s a lot of oozing and dripping of bodily fluids. Unlike both of those shows, there is no real terror attached to any of it — this show has chosen to swap moral quandaries for a series of contrived situational conflicts.
Part of the problem with “Santa Clarita Diet” is the concept isn’t as original as the show’s creators clearly thought. The premise is good — the show modernizes the monster by forcing its undead protagonist to focus on mundane things like relationships, work and finding ways to mask her supernatural nature and...
Wait. That sounds familiar. “iZombie,” “Being Human,” “Angel” and even “Teen Wolf” have all taken the friendly neighborhood monster trope and told that story better than this.
Because it’s told in half-hour increments, “Santa Clarita Diet” doesn’t waste time setting up characters or plot points. The audience is thrown into a TV-land residential neighborhood, populated with trite characters and their simplistic goals, and those characters respond to their increasingly bizarre circumstances with surprise or confusion depending on whether anyone has actually died.
This is a fine problem to have for the first episode or three. The shock value of watching Barrymore stuff raw meat of various origins into her mouth holds up for a solid 45 minutes, at least.
However, outside some especially creative dismemberments, “Santa Clarita Diet” isn’t all that engaging.
As Sheila, an upper-middle-class realtor with a comfortable marriage and teenage daughter, Barrymore is a disappointment. Part of this isn’t her fault. The writers’ attempts to modernize zombie mythology means that for most of the show, Sheila has the impulse control of a toddler in a Target toy section.
She also displays the emotional range of a toddler. “Santa Clarita Diet” erases almost all of the complicated moral issues its characters might face within one or two episodes of their introduction.
For a show in which one character literally has to kill to survive, there are remarkably few emotional consequences. Sheila’s family never appears to be in real danger from her, which would have been an easy way to introduce tension and give Barrymore an emotion to portray outside of “angry,” “hungry” or “enthusiastic.”
In fact, only one character seems to appreciate all of the problems introduced into the family along with Sheila’s zombie virus, and that person is her long-suffering husband, Joel, played by Timothy Olyphant. If there’s a reason to keep watching beyond episode three or four, it’s his entertaining performance.
Olyphant gives good fluster. He’s a bright point in this moribund show and clings to his marriage and family as the rest of his priorities are forcibly reordered. He carries almost all of the drama, comedy and actual plot in “Santa Clarita Diet.” Every episode sees Joel creeping a little closer to a breaking point as Sheila embraces her zombified lack of impulse control.
“Santa Clarita Diet” will hopefully begin fleshing out its characters more as the series continues. It will certainly have to invest in more complex, emotional plot arcs in order to keep viewers invested.
An audience cannot live on viscera alone. It’s time for Netflix to come up with meatier fare.
Anne Halliwell
ahalliwe@indiana.edu
@Anne_Halliwell
