As a repressed soon-to-be housewife once sang, “I’ve tasted blood and I want more (more, more, more),” and now the same thing is happening to suburban mom-turned-zombie Sheila Hammond (Drew Barrymore). After feasting on colleague Gary (Nathan Fillion) in Santa Clarita Diet’s premiere episode—it’s okay, he was awful—Sheila has partaken of the human flesh, and now nothing can satiate her zombie hunger but some newly-dead human meat.
Of course, Sheila and Joel aren’t wild about the idea of having to continue killing people, so they make a valiant effort to figure out other solutions—raw meat from the grocery store, freshly-killed animals, and even body parts purchased from a super creepy morgue attendant (Adam Rose). And while we could watch Barrymore chase a live chicken while wearing a plastic tarp all day long…
Alas, nothing works; nothing is as delicious as that sweet, sweet human meat. Which means the show is about to go all in with its Dexter similarity, in that Joel and Sheila are going to have to kill people to feed her zombie appetite, but they’re far too good to kill random folks.
“Episode 2” doesn’t get into the details, but presumably this suburban Bonnie and Clyde are going to figure out a way to target bad guys. Their consciences would never let them kill good people. Even killing bad guys, however, is fraught with danger, as nosy neighbor Sheriff Dan (Ricardo Chavira) is already suspicious of their late-night grass spraying (read: cleaning up Gary’s blood) activities.
What was slightly disappointing in “Episode 2” is that the other cop neighbor, Rick (Richard T. Jones), doesn’t make an appearance. He and Dan are already at odds because they’re different kinds of cops—”protect and serve” versus “frame and maim,” as Rick so eloquently puts it—so perhaps the Hammonds will find an ally in Rick, someone who can help them both find bad guys and cover up all the murder.
But murder isn’t the only problem the Hammonds are about to tackle. Unbeknownst to Joel and Sheila, their daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) is handling the whole “my mother is a zombie” thing by acting out. Her feelings are that once you’ve helped your parents dispose of a body (that your mom partially ate), mundane things like school just don’t seem important anymore.
She’s not wrong, but the Hammonds aren’t in a position to have more issues compounding their current problems. Dealing with their daughter’s delinquency isn’t really a problem they can afford to have right now, especially since her partner in crime is none other than Sheriff Dan’s son, Eric (Skyler Gisondo). So that should be fun to watch play out—how distracted will the Hammonds get with their murder/zombie problem before they notice their daughter is possibly going off the rails?
Stray observations
- Did they really park Gary’s car at the Burbank airport? Because airports have security cameras. Rookie mistake, Hammonds.
- “Why didn’t you tell me that Gary stole the Peterson listing from us?”
“Well, there was a lot going on, what with you killing him.” - “King Robot Baratheon” is an excellent name for a science project.