Once again, Santa Clarita Diet has subverted expectations in the most delightful and unexpected of ways. I have really come to love this show.
In “How Much Vomit,” the focus shifts back to Loki, because in comforting Lisa over the disappearance of Dan, Sheila and Joel find out that Loki isn’t dead (as the police thought) and that when found, he had expelled copious amounts of vomit all over a hotel room.
The Hammonds know what this means, so it’s time to track Loki down because if mild-mannered, suburban Sheila is an id-controlled killer, imagine what an actual murderer is going to be like?
It’s a perfectly sound line of thinking, one I had already started going down when we saw Loki passed out in that hotel room. But I should have known the Santa Clarita Diet writers would have something even better in store. It turns out Loki becoming a zombie has unleashed his inner artist, so he’s not killing people—except with his music.
But in a good way. He’s killing it down at a local coffee house, performing with his guitar and selling CDs titled “Loki: So Alive.”
In an even better turn of events, Loki and Sheila bond over their shared zombie experience and now he has decided she’s his undead soulmate. He comes to kill Joel so he and Sheila can be together and gets hair accessories in his ears for his trouble.
Is that really all it takes to kill a zombie? It seems like poking a hairbrush into a zombie’s ear would not cause enough damage to get the job done, but maybe it’s any sort of brain injury, no matter how minor. I’m not sure, so I would not be at all surprised to see Loki pop back up in the last two episodes.
Additionally, Sheila comes clean to Loki about her toe falling off, something she couldn’t bring herself to tell Joel, because she’s terrified he can’t handle her deteriorating. She’s not wrong to be worried. Joel is great, but that would be hard for anyone to deal with. It’s one thing to stand by your zombie wife who more or less is still your regular wife, but… if body parts start falling off left and right? Yuck.
Which is why Joel rightly freaks out when Sheila’s eyeball falls right out of her head at episode’s end. Time to find that cure, Hammonds!
Meanwhile, Abby and Eric are busy trying to get Joel’s motorcycle running and the short version of this storyline is they end up stealing a dead chop shop heroin addict guy’s bike and zooming off into the midday sun together.
Look, Abby and Eric is always a thumbs up in my book, but this storyline just didn’t sing the way some of their other escapades have. It was fine—not bad, not great. At least Abby told Eric he’s cute, so hopefully we’re getting closer to their first (real) kiss.
This episode was a lot of fun. It definitely brought the humor with the Loki storyline. But what I really liked about it is the real marital problems Joel and Sheila are experiencing, with their own supernatural twist. Sheila is not the first, and won’t be the last, wife to feel insecure about something regarding her appearance and stop having sex with her husband because of it. It reminds me of after having given birth, when I could not possibly feel less confident or sexy. My husband still loved me and was attracted to me, but it was still hard to convince myself that could be true.
Point is, the show has very sneakily explored some real marriage issues in an organic yet hilarious way. Bravo.
Stray observations
- The montage of Sheila trying to re-attach her toe was terrific. But you gotta know hot glue isn’t going to cut it, Sheila. Gorilla glue should have been your first line of defense.
- Shout out to Carla Jimenez as the hotel housekeeper. She’s great on The Mick, another new comedy I’m really enjoying so far.
- “Just once I’d like to come home from a store with only the stuff on our list!”
- “I will never give up, my evening rose.”