Netflix’s latest original show, Santa Clarita Diet, is the amalgamation of who I am as a person: drily comedic, possesses a penchant for continually observing how attractive Timothy Olyphant is, integrates a robust amount of F-words into almost every dialogue, and not for everybody’s taste. I am certainly an acquired taste as a human, adult-ish person, with nonsense and expletives tumbling out of my NARS velvet lip glide-covered mouth like the entire cast of Entourage is doing coke while simultaneously pulling the levers in my brain. So yes, much like me, this show is not for everyone.
Helmed by Victor Fresco (of the vastly underrated and underappreciated Better Off Ted), Santa Clarita Diet centers on Sheila (Drew Barrymore) and Joel Hammond (Timothy Olyphant), real estate agents in Santa Clarita, California (hence the name of the show). Their seemingly perfect lives are turned upside down when Sheila becomes a zombie. Drew Barrymore playing a zombie being the premise for this show is just bananas to me. Frankly, the majority of this show requires a lot of suspended disbelief: there are a lot of bonkers plot points that you sort of just have to let wash over you as you’re like, “Okay, this is happening.” If you’ve been following any news of the past couple weeks, it is a sensation we all must grapple with anyway.
Enough snide political remarks. Where to even begin with this delectable show? Well, the casting is A+. Barrymore and Olyphant deliver dark, offbeat hilarity with deft skill. The supporting cast is also brimming with stellar performances. Sheila and Joel’s daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) and the neighbour’s son Skyler (Eric Bemis) pull off the roles of perfect, realistic, non-annoying teenagers. Actually, most teenagers I have ever interacted with are decidedly terrible, and nowhere near as likable as these characters. My disdainful sentiment for teens existed even a year ago, when I was still one of them.
There are also some deliciously wonderful cameos by Nathan Fillion, Andy Richter, Patton Oswalt, and Portia de Rossi.
The show begins with Sheila just discovering her zombie disease, spewing so much chartreuse-coloured vomit out of her mouth that I immediately disposed of the smoothie I had just poured myself. I strongly suggest you don’t bother eating anything while watching this show; the gore and guts certainly deliver.
So, she spends the rest of the episode chomping down on packets of raw meat, before finally getting her taste for human flesh. Once that happens, things get interesting.
After dumping the body – well… what was left of it – of the guy Sheila ate in the middle of the desert, Sheila and Joel set off on an ambitious mission murdering people for her to eat. Try as he does to satisfy Sheila’s hunger with fresher meat from the grocery store, Joel begins to realize that Sheila needs to eat actual people. If not, she gets as testy as I get when people in front of me on the sidewalk move at a startlingly glacial pace. You know how that thrills me (Devil Wears Prada ref because I am so excited they are turning it into a musical. There is still some goodness in the world).
For a show about zombies, it is surprisingly human. Sheila and Joel have been married for over 20 years, and Sheila, you know, becoming a zombie and all, causes both of them to reevaluate things.
Joel goes from sneakily smoking pot in his car to slaughtering people for his wife. Sheila, too, undergoes some changes other than the whole thirst for human flesh thing. Previously a type-A, overbearing kind of person, she has loosened up and has an entire new outlook on life. The disease has caused her to be almost dangerously compulsive. For example, buying a Range Rover just because she saw a picture of one and wanted it. This is me when a beauty You Tuber talks positively about a new eye-shadow palette. Maybe I, too, have this zombie disease.
This attitude spreads over to her friends, as she encourages them to live life to the fullest. This causes one of them to abandon her husband and baby and follow John Legend’s tour around the country (#goals) and the other to have an affair with a pediatrician, you know, as one does.
As the 10-episode season plods along, Sheila’s disease and the overall situation of our protagonists begins to spin wildly out of control. Sheila ends up infecting another individual with her disease. Abby has to come to terms with the fact that her parents are secretly murdering people for her mother to eat and stuffing the body parts in a large freezer in a storage facility. (I promise this show is a comedy.) Joel desperately tries to learn how to cure Sheila, while all the while trying to grapple with the fact that the woman he knew is never going to fully return.
In examining the way Sheila and Joel’s relationship, as well as the characters as their own entities, deal with their situation, Santa Clarita Diet takes a creative route in unpacking the themes of mid-life crises. Most people’s mid-life crises don’t involve becoming a zombie, but the concept of reexamining one’s life at a point of change is a theme that countless television shows seek to unpack. Prestige dramas like Breaking Bad and Mad Men (starring the wickedly talented Jon Hamm. Obligatory Jon Hamm reference. © 2017 Gabrielle Lee Gabauer) dealt with them, minus the whole undead person eating a foot bought from a mortuary thing. Zombification is certainly one of the sexier, more original ways to tackle that inevitable struggle people face in life.
Give or take some minor pacing problems (I honestly have pacing problems with maybe every single show or movie I have ever watched, so ignore me), I think this show captures something really charming and weird. It is deeply unapologetic in its tone and pushes its characters to the brink by the very end. The bloodiness and overall grotesqueness of cannibalism may turn tons of people off, but Timothy Olyphant is there to turn them back on. (Ugh. I am so sorry for being like this, but he is maddeningly handsome.)
With killer performances, sharp dialogue, and a thirst for some good, old-fashioned flesh eating, Santa Clarita Diet hits all the notes it attempts to with pitch perfect accuracy. It’s original, knows what it is, and just runs with it and at the very least, any television viewer should appreciate that.
Happy watching! xx