Z Nation: Season 2 (All Episodes)
March 12, 2016 8:33 PM - Season 2 (Full Season) - Subscribe
[splorch]
(For those of you not watching this show with the captions on, "splorch" is the designated caption description for the noise made by piking a zombie in the head.)
(For those of you not watching this show with the captions on, "splorch" is the designated caption description for the noise made by piking a zombie in the head.)
Well I never heard of this before, but I'm sold. Let me catch up and I will be back.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:58 PM on March 12, 2016
posted by Literaryhero at 11:58 PM on March 12, 2016
I was really disappointed by what happened to Cassandra and to Murphy's "baby mama". (Did she even get a name?)
I also didn't like the way the Zeros plot resolved. Mainly because I really, really liked the La Reina character. (Although, apparently it was a brownface role? I like that a lot less.)
posted by tobascodagama at 7:13 AM on March 13, 2016
I also didn't like the way the Zeros plot resolved. Mainly because I really, really liked the La Reina character. (Although, apparently it was a brownface role? I like that a lot less.)
posted by tobascodagama at 7:13 AM on March 13, 2016
Part of what makes great writing/acting is if you can empathize with people doing terrible things. Murphy is so terrible, but I get it! I can relate! I love this show and this season started out great. It got a little mediocre as it went on but it's a B-grade Zombie show, that's ok! That's exactly what we expect!
That's the thing about it, it doesn't try to be anything that it's not. Walking Dead tries to be serious, dramatic, emotionally wrenching, suspenseful but it fails so bad. The only thing that makes it worth watching are the production values and the habit.
Z Nation on the other hand is always creative, always ridiculous, always funny,quite often sometimes horrifying (as it should be) and occasionally touching and effective. I felt so much more dismay about Garnett than when a particular core character from TWD fell to certain death in a horde of zombies earlier this season.
Also Citizen Z looks super freaky with long hair.
posted by natteringnabob at 8:27 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's the thing about it, it doesn't try to be anything that it's not. Walking Dead tries to be serious, dramatic, emotionally wrenching, suspenseful but it fails so bad. The only thing that makes it worth watching are the production values and the habit.
Z Nation on the other hand is always creative, always ridiculous, always funny,
Also Citizen Z looks super freaky with long hair.
posted by natteringnabob at 8:27 AM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Z Nation Season One post convinced me to give this show (which Netflix has practically been shoving onto my screen) a shot, and so I've been binge-watching and I'm about halfway through season Two and . . . . . . I dunno.
Season One was pretty darn good overall, clever and dramatic without taking itself too seriously. In Season Two they clearly decided to take things over the top, which has been fun in some ways, but it's too often been done at the expense of character and plausibility (and I mean plausibility even within the relatively-implausible world they've created.)
Like, I just finished "Down the Mississippi" (the one where 10K winds up on the other side of the river from the main group and gets picked up by Sketchy and Skeezy). It's a great concept, to watch the two of them con their way into and out of trouble with the naive 10K in tow, but having the town they wound up in be a totally hackneyed "Southern" town full of blatantly dumb hicks who just see zombies as a chance to play out their "The South will rise again" fantasy of owning slaves like their ancestors did was just bad-Saturday-morning-cartoon-simple territory. And 10K only lost the rest of the group because "zombie jam" on the river. Which, again, fine, fun concept - but as it played out . . . 1) Come on, they totally would have seen that ahead in the river; at least figure out some borderline-plausible way (zombie jammed on the motor again) where they couldn't stop, rather than just *Bump* "HUNH??? WHA??? WHO??? OHNOES ZOMBIEJAM!!" and 2) they've fought their way out of WAY worse situations - but no, plot sez they have to freeze for a ridiculous amount of time and then just abandon ship without trying to fight at all.
Compare the ham-handedness of the "zombie jam" with the more complex way it used the "zombie migration" in the first season. And speaking of "zombie migration" and ignoring in-universe plausibility, it's been established that Z's don't do well in the cold and degrade over time (the phrase "lively because freshly dead" has been used more than once.) But boy, the Z's threatening Citizen Z sure are lively, despite being in freezing temps and having sat in a crashed airplane under the snow for three years. And I get that Citizen Z is a skinny nerd and not exactly an experienced Z-killer, but you seriously want me to believe that in that entire HUGE complex there's not ONE set of doors that could be barricaded; that his only defense would be a tottering pile of junk that a zombie could knock over just by bumping into it? C'mon, give the character and me as the viewer more credit than that.
Doc especially has spent way too much of the first half of season two carrying the idiot ball - he's degraded from "old stoner at least honestly trying to live up to his nick-name" to "brain-fried hippie man-baby." And they totally dropped the ball on the idea of Cassandra moving between lucid human and zombie; she just degraded to feral (for no real reason) until they killed her off. Or how about Murphy being completely unable to add one plus one and grasp the completely obvious fact that Lucy Zombaby is interfering with his mental control over zombies and attracts Z's whether she cries or not - and he seems to have completely forgotten his ability to control humans, until it's time to move on from the cheesy Zombaby prop.
I could go on, and I might once I finish the season, but for now count me disappointed - a zombie show that was inventive and often funny while still operating with some subtlety and had tension and drama and characters worth caring about has moved to cartoonish, and not in a good way. If season one was Zombieland, this season is more "Scooby- and Scrappy-Doo."
posted by soundguy99 at 4:25 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Season One was pretty darn good overall, clever and dramatic without taking itself too seriously. In Season Two they clearly decided to take things over the top, which has been fun in some ways, but it's too often been done at the expense of character and plausibility (and I mean plausibility even within the relatively-implausible world they've created.)
Like, I just finished "Down the Mississippi" (the one where 10K winds up on the other side of the river from the main group and gets picked up by Sketchy and Skeezy). It's a great concept, to watch the two of them con their way into and out of trouble with the naive 10K in tow, but having the town they wound up in be a totally hackneyed "Southern" town full of blatantly dumb hicks who just see zombies as a chance to play out their "The South will rise again" fantasy of owning slaves like their ancestors did was just bad-Saturday-morning-cartoon-simple territory. And 10K only lost the rest of the group because "zombie jam" on the river. Which, again, fine, fun concept - but as it played out . . . 1) Come on, they totally would have seen that ahead in the river; at least figure out some borderline-plausible way (zombie jammed on the motor again) where they couldn't stop, rather than just *Bump* "HUNH??? WHA??? WHO??? OHNOES ZOMBIEJAM!!" and 2) they've fought their way out of WAY worse situations - but no, plot sez they have to freeze for a ridiculous amount of time and then just abandon ship without trying to fight at all.
Compare the ham-handedness of the "zombie jam" with the more complex way it used the "zombie migration" in the first season. And speaking of "zombie migration" and ignoring in-universe plausibility, it's been established that Z's don't do well in the cold and degrade over time (the phrase "lively because freshly dead" has been used more than once.) But boy, the Z's threatening Citizen Z sure are lively, despite being in freezing temps and having sat in a crashed airplane under the snow for three years. And I get that Citizen Z is a skinny nerd and not exactly an experienced Z-killer, but you seriously want me to believe that in that entire HUGE complex there's not ONE set of doors that could be barricaded; that his only defense would be a tottering pile of junk that a zombie could knock over just by bumping into it? C'mon, give the character and me as the viewer more credit than that.
Doc especially has spent way too much of the first half of season two carrying the idiot ball - he's degraded from "old stoner at least honestly trying to live up to his nick-name" to "brain-fried hippie man-baby." And they totally dropped the ball on the idea of Cassandra moving between lucid human and zombie; she just degraded to feral (for no real reason) until they killed her off. Or how about Murphy being completely unable to add one plus one and grasp the completely obvious fact that Lucy Zombaby is interfering with his mental control over zombies and attracts Z's whether she cries or not - and he seems to have completely forgotten his ability to control humans, until it's time to move on from the cheesy Zombaby prop.
I could go on, and I might once I finish the season, but for now count me disappointed - a zombie show that was inventive and often funny while still operating with some subtlety and had tension and drama and characters worth caring about has moved to cartoonish, and not in a good way. If season one was Zombieland, this season is more "Scooby- and Scrappy-Doo."
posted by soundguy99 at 4:25 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Or how about Murphy being completely unable to add one plus one and grasp the completely obvious fact that Lucy Zombaby is interfering with his mental control over zombies and attracts Z's whether she cries or not - and he seems to have completely forgotten his ability to control humans, until it's time to move on from the cheesy Zombaby prop.
This stuff, at least, does get addressed later in the season.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:48 AM on March 14, 2016
This stuff, at least, does get addressed later in the season.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:48 AM on March 14, 2016
Not a fan of the flashbacks in episode 2. Though Vazquez joining the group and Mack dying seems like a net gain.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:32 AM on March 14, 2016
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:32 AM on March 14, 2016
The flashbacks were basically exactly what you expected they'd be, but I didn't mind them much. And I feel similarly about swapping out Mack (who was always the least interesting member of the cast) for Vasquez.
No clue where all the weird Zona stuff is going for S3.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:47 AM on March 14, 2016
No clue where all the weird Zona stuff is going for S3.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:47 AM on March 14, 2016
I too was really sad about Cassandra's resolution, because she was probably my second-favorite character and I had high hopes for her living and being a sort of she-Murphy in the group. In fact I got so angry after what happened to her that I nearly gave up on the show, but it's foolish to think we wouldn't lose at least 1-2 core characters per season, especially the ones we love.
Now that we're all agreed that was fucked-up and wrong of them to do (don't even get me STARTED on that bullshit outfit they made Pisay Pao wear for the entirety of S2 -- uh, net hose and booty shorts are so freaking uncomfortable, y'all!!!!), let me just say that the Season 2 premiere was practically shot-for-shot my ideal Z Nation episode. If they went into my brain and gave me the perfect fanfic episode designed to cater to my love of the great action/kill scenes, heroic motivation (Warren about to give up until she hears a little girl screaming for help), seeing what happened to TransforMurphy, the nukes... it was PERFECT.
It's really the little things that make me overlook how completely uneven season 2 was:
- Little girl dying in the Z weed batch 47 episode. She knows what's happening, doesn't want to die and is mature beyond her years about the issue. Nobody in Z Nation is trying to lie to or protect children this far into the apocalypse; kids know death = zombiehood and they're the opposite of PTSD Sam in TWD. More interesting, though, is... Will we see this girl again? Doc gave her some Batch 47 leaves to chew on, and it's implied that she will live because of that. Is she going to become yet another variant of half-Z, like Cassandra, Lucy and Murphy or will she be the first 100% human, 100% cured survivor???
- Literally everyone on the show that's still alive has been shot by or before the end of S2. LITERALLY EVERYONE, except Lucy. Mack didn't get shot, but he's dead. Doc was shot in the shoulder, Addy had a bullet graze her face, Vasquez and Warren remove each other's bullets, Murphy got shot in the side in the S1 opener, Garnett got Mercied in S1 along with Harold Perrineau, and 10K... well. I think he's still alive, but we'll see. Nobody in this show has 100% perfect plot armor, despite Doc coming pretty f-ing close.
- When Addie grabs a pen in the Amish anthrax ep, she says "I lost my last pen, like... 4 years ago. Good in case of emergency trachs!" and Vasquez says something like, does that happen a lot? And Addie's like, uh, more than once... for all the idiot sequences/jokes, it's these little touches that show they're thinking in Survivor Mode that makes me squee when I watch it.
- I really REALLY hated the gross, possessive way Mack acted in S1 when Addie decided to join the Braided Sister Wives. So, in S2E2 when he got separated from Addie in a dark building and eventually killed, it was horrific and great: she was 100% free, and characters in the Zombpocalypse who repeatedly get separated from the group, their weapons, etc. don't always live or beat their way out of a zombie horde with a single handheld weapon.
- Dr. Kurian, the Big Bad of last season, manages to live on and antagonize the group, especially Murphy. Is it ridiculous? Hell yes it is! He got half-melted during a nuclear blast and somehow survived. Why? How? Does it really even matter? Scientists in many ways are also the Big Bad. I am glad that the show doesn't fall back on the lazy trope of the military/government being the Big Bad, because about half our heroes were technically in the National Guard (Garnett, Warren), NSA (Citizen Z), or a cop (Vasquez) before Z Day went down. They've been given shelter by fellow military officers and shot at by soldiers, but for the most part, there's no "gang members are like THIS, soldiers are like THIS" blanket characterizations. People gonna people, in every different way they can -- nobody is 100% predictable.
- The giant cheese wheel, Lucy(fer?) and the three wise zombies. Next episode, Doc (who managed to get into an amazing hand-to-hand fight, astrally project while dying and find a weapon, then ultimately kill his attacker and that's AFTER he got shot!) walks onto a bus of zombie Abraham Lincoln re-enacters. I mean, you wanna see silly? You wanna see weird? Z Nation has that covered in spades.
- The introduction of a rogue government agent at the end of the season. I mean, HELL yes let's look at the rest of the global impact of Z Day! Amen to this, especially letting us see the inside of a military submarine (though it may not be currently under government control).
- Using A Tribe Called Red's music in the casino ep made me a little less twitchy about the cultural depictions on screen. I certainly don't know how anyone in the native community viewed that episode, but I was happy about the music selection.
- My least favorite ep was the Roswell-centric one. It dropped a ton of mysterious plot holes and doesn't seem to do shit to advance the plot, character development, or anything else. Total filler, IMO (though I do love Missi Pyle).
- Great guest stars, like Gina Gershon, Missi Pyle, GRRM and Anthony Michael Hall. That corporate retreat episode was probably the best bottle episde this season -- probably on par with the "What is wrong with dog?" Russian cosmonaut one from S1.
- Princess Lucy in the last scene of the season. I mean, I won't spoil it because some of y'all aren't caught up all the way yet, but JESUS. I'm super-interested in how that continues in S3.
I think they ramped up the comic quality to 1000 this season, and overshot the best qualities of the show in the process. Walking a fine line between showing the mission, developing the characters, giving us thrilling action sequences and introducing ridiculous plot points is what makes Z Nation great; once you get too serious ("Philly Feast" from S1), focus too much on character development (Addie's dream sequence ep from S1), or gives us too much "weird"/comic relief ("Adios, Muchachos" in S2, "Down the Mississippi" as soundguy99 mentioned), it pulls me out of the show and makes me want to yell at Craig Engler on Twitter.
And, I don't even HAVE a Twitter account. ;)
I really think the best ep of S2 besides the premiere was "The Collector," with honorable mention going to "Day One" because we got to see exactly what everyone was doing when The Shit Went Down. I was really happy with everyone's backstory reveals, tbh.
Only thing I'm really unhappy about now is where they left off with Citizen Z. I mean, good for him, grabbing a dog sled and getting the hell out of dodge after all the Z's frozen solid in the last Air Force evacuation plane got melted from the nuke blast. He was just one guy with really poor fighting/shooting skills, and we saw exactly why he didn't have any proper military training in "Day One." The compound was overrun, and pup arrived by sled in S1 -- therefore, other habitable areas in Antartica must still exist within dog-sledding distance (because pup survived the trip). But he looked... uh, less than ideal from a survival standpoint when we last saw him, and I couldn't quite make out whether he ran into a living person or another zombie/corpse.
Still, it's nice to see him out of the Exposition & Plot-Pushing Broadcast Tower and getting a chance to flex his "I'm smart, therefore I will survive" skills.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:16 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Now that we're all agreed that was fucked-up and wrong of them to do (don't even get me STARTED on that bullshit outfit they made Pisay Pao wear for the entirety of S2 -- uh, net hose and booty shorts are so freaking uncomfortable, y'all!!!!), let me just say that the Season 2 premiere was practically shot-for-shot my ideal Z Nation episode. If they went into my brain and gave me the perfect fanfic episode designed to cater to my love of the great action/kill scenes, heroic motivation (Warren about to give up until she hears a little girl screaming for help), seeing what happened to TransforMurphy, the nukes... it was PERFECT.
It's really the little things that make me overlook how completely uneven season 2 was:
- Little girl dying in the Z weed batch 47 episode. She knows what's happening, doesn't want to die and is mature beyond her years about the issue. Nobody in Z Nation is trying to lie to or protect children this far into the apocalypse; kids know death = zombiehood and they're the opposite of PTSD Sam in TWD. More interesting, though, is... Will we see this girl again? Doc gave her some Batch 47 leaves to chew on, and it's implied that she will live because of that. Is she going to become yet another variant of half-Z, like Cassandra, Lucy and Murphy or will she be the first 100% human, 100% cured survivor???
- Literally everyone on the show that's still alive has been shot by or before the end of S2. LITERALLY EVERYONE, except Lucy. Mack didn't get shot, but he's dead. Doc was shot in the shoulder, Addy had a bullet graze her face, Vasquez and Warren remove each other's bullets, Murphy got shot in the side in the S1 opener, Garnett got Mercied in S1 along with Harold Perrineau, and 10K... well. I think he's still alive, but we'll see. Nobody in this show has 100% perfect plot armor, despite Doc coming pretty f-ing close.
- When Addie grabs a pen in the Amish anthrax ep, she says "I lost my last pen, like... 4 years ago. Good in case of emergency trachs!" and Vasquez says something like, does that happen a lot? And Addie's like, uh, more than once... for all the idiot sequences/jokes, it's these little touches that show they're thinking in Survivor Mode that makes me squee when I watch it.
- I really REALLY hated the gross, possessive way Mack acted in S1 when Addie decided to join the Braided Sister Wives. So, in S2E2 when he got separated from Addie in a dark building and eventually killed, it was horrific and great: she was 100% free, and characters in the Zombpocalypse who repeatedly get separated from the group, their weapons, etc. don't always live or beat their way out of a zombie horde with a single handheld weapon.
- Dr. Kurian, the Big Bad of last season, manages to live on and antagonize the group, especially Murphy. Is it ridiculous? Hell yes it is! He got half-melted during a nuclear blast and somehow survived. Why? How? Does it really even matter? Scientists in many ways are also the Big Bad. I am glad that the show doesn't fall back on the lazy trope of the military/government being the Big Bad, because about half our heroes were technically in the National Guard (Garnett, Warren), NSA (Citizen Z), or a cop (Vasquez) before Z Day went down. They've been given shelter by fellow military officers and shot at by soldiers, but for the most part, there's no "gang members are like THIS, soldiers are like THIS" blanket characterizations. People gonna people, in every different way they can -- nobody is 100% predictable.
- The giant cheese wheel, Lucy(fer?) and the three wise zombies. Next episode, Doc (who managed to get into an amazing hand-to-hand fight, astrally project while dying and find a weapon, then ultimately kill his attacker and that's AFTER he got shot!) walks onto a bus of zombie Abraham Lincoln re-enacters. I mean, you wanna see silly? You wanna see weird? Z Nation has that covered in spades.
- The introduction of a rogue government agent at the end of the season. I mean, HELL yes let's look at the rest of the global impact of Z Day! Amen to this, especially letting us see the inside of a military submarine (though it may not be currently under government control).
- Using A Tribe Called Red's music in the casino ep made me a little less twitchy about the cultural depictions on screen. I certainly don't know how anyone in the native community viewed that episode, but I was happy about the music selection.
- My least favorite ep was the Roswell-centric one. It dropped a ton of mysterious plot holes and doesn't seem to do shit to advance the plot, character development, or anything else. Total filler, IMO (though I do love Missi Pyle).
- Great guest stars, like Gina Gershon, Missi Pyle, GRRM and Anthony Michael Hall. That corporate retreat episode was probably the best bottle episde this season -- probably on par with the "What is wrong with dog?" Russian cosmonaut one from S1.
- Princess Lucy in the last scene of the season. I mean, I won't spoil it because some of y'all aren't caught up all the way yet, but JESUS. I'm super-interested in how that continues in S3.
I think they ramped up the comic quality to 1000 this season, and overshot the best qualities of the show in the process. Walking a fine line between showing the mission, developing the characters, giving us thrilling action sequences and introducing ridiculous plot points is what makes Z Nation great; once you get too serious ("Philly Feast" from S1), focus too much on character development (Addie's dream sequence ep from S1), or gives us too much "weird"/comic relief ("Adios, Muchachos" in S2, "Down the Mississippi" as soundguy99 mentioned), it pulls me out of the show and makes me want to yell at Craig Engler on Twitter.
And, I don't even HAVE a Twitter account. ;)
I really think the best ep of S2 besides the premiere was "The Collector," with honorable mention going to "Day One" because we got to see exactly what everyone was doing when The Shit Went Down. I was really happy with everyone's backstory reveals, tbh.
Only thing I'm really unhappy about now is where they left off with Citizen Z. I mean, good for him, grabbing a dog sled and getting the hell out of dodge after all the Z's frozen solid in the last Air Force evacuation plane got melted from the nuke blast. He was just one guy with really poor fighting/shooting skills, and we saw exactly why he didn't have any proper military training in "Day One." The compound was overrun, and pup arrived by sled in S1 -- therefore, other habitable areas in Antartica must still exist within dog-sledding distance (because pup survived the trip). But he looked... uh, less than ideal from a survival standpoint when we last saw him, and I couldn't quite make out whether he ran into a living person or another zombie/corpse.
Still, it's nice to see him out of the Exposition & Plot-Pushing Broadcast Tower and getting a chance to flex his "I'm smart, therefore I will survive" skills.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:16 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
tobascodagama, Murphy's baby mama was named Serena. I just rewatched the ep where they find her on the road and Addie says "hey, there's Serena!" and Doc says, "the pie girl??".
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:19 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:19 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Speaking of Day One, it amused me that his backstory here is pretty much exactly DJ Qualls' backstory from The Core.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:49 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by tobascodagama at 6:49 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm ashamed to say I caught that too! What a shit film, but I watched all of it.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 10:42 PM on March 14, 2016
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 10:42 PM on March 14, 2016
I kind of love The Core. Perfect example of a good-bad movie.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:58 AM on March 15, 2016
posted by tobascodagama at 8:58 AM on March 15, 2016
tobascodagama: it amused me that his backstory here is pretty much exactly DJ Qualls' backstory from The Core
To be fair, that's a pretty common Origin Story for The Hacker character in many shows and movies, and Qualls fits the awkward, scrawny nerd appearance pretty well.
I've missed most of the first season and chunks of the second, but what I've seen is lots of fun, in a b-grade zombie flick way, without falling into so many dumb horror tropes.
My biggest complaint is that it seems like the core group travels through disjointed Character Towns - The South Rises Again (with the fake dentists), the two faces of the modern Native (casino owners vs people of the land), Successful Narcos - who don't seem to blend into other communities. I'll give that this is a wild land where people still must band together to survive, but this is one way the show feels so much more like a Genre Show than The Walking Dead, which has more generic communities (Givers vs Takers) with a mix of people. The core group on ZN don't stick around long enough for more than a select few people in the new Character Town to develop beyond being flat characters.
BUT - I also like it, because we can see what a zombie apocalypse might look like for a range of characters, even if they are flat tropes for the most part. And the actors make it work - I loved the Mark Twain-esq huckster duo, La Reina and the visual aesthetic of her underlings, and the fact there was a group of native people who actually included some native actors!
In short: more marks for than against, in my book. And compared to the bad writing and annoyingly inconsistent characters in TWD, I'm happy this is available as a currently airing counter-point.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:28 AM on March 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
To be fair, that's a pretty common Origin Story for The Hacker character in many shows and movies, and Qualls fits the awkward, scrawny nerd appearance pretty well.
I've missed most of the first season and chunks of the second, but what I've seen is lots of fun, in a b-grade zombie flick way, without falling into so many dumb horror tropes.
My biggest complaint is that it seems like the core group travels through disjointed Character Towns - The South Rises Again (with the fake dentists), the two faces of the modern Native (casino owners vs people of the land), Successful Narcos - who don't seem to blend into other communities. I'll give that this is a wild land where people still must band together to survive, but this is one way the show feels so much more like a Genre Show than The Walking Dead, which has more generic communities (Givers vs Takers) with a mix of people. The core group on ZN don't stick around long enough for more than a select few people in the new Character Town to develop beyond being flat characters.
BUT - I also like it, because we can see what a zombie apocalypse might look like for a range of characters, even if they are flat tropes for the most part. And the actors make it work - I loved the Mark Twain-esq huckster duo, La Reina and the visual aesthetic of her underlings, and the fact there was a group of native people who actually included some native actors!
In short: more marks for than against, in my book. And compared to the bad writing and annoyingly inconsistent characters in TWD, I'm happy this is available as a currently airing counter-point.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:28 AM on March 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Seconding all the love, but had one thought: when Warren gets separated from everyone else up until the moment she's re-united with everyone else, she takes out a whole bunch of zombies, rescues a girl in a massive movie fight, gets adopted by the cutest family ever with the very bestest house, and finally heads back to find her friends...
...and I'm not 100% sure any of that happened.
I think there's a chance that this was all in Warren's head, just her wish-fulfillment fantasy covering up whatever she *really* did to stay alive.
posted by Mogur at 12:29 PM on March 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
...and I'm not 100% sure any of that happened.
I think there's a chance that this was all in Warren's head, just her wish-fulfillment fantasy covering up whatever she *really* did to stay alive.
posted by Mogur at 12:29 PM on March 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's weird that the soundtrack to episode 3 ("Zombie Road") repeatedly leans on a ripoff of the famous bass line from "Mountain Song" by Jane's Addiction.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:26 AM on March 18, 2016
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:26 AM on March 18, 2016
Which reminds me, I need to rewatch that episode now that I've finally seen Fury Road.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:05 AM on March 18, 2016
posted by tobascodagama at 11:05 AM on March 18, 2016
Did you ever hear of the aborted Smokey and the Bandit sequel, Smokey IS the Bandit, in which Jackie Gleason would play both roles? That popped into my head watching Batch 47. It's like a Plants Vs. Zombies riff, only this time, the plants are the zombies? Freaking delightful. I want to make out with this show under the bleachers during gym.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:53 AM on March 22, 2016
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:53 AM on March 22, 2016
Zombie-killing cheese wheel! Zombaby!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:40 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:40 AM on March 28, 2016
GODDAMMIT: Is the part of Murphy being recast for Season 3?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:03 AM on May 16, 2016
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:03 AM on May 16, 2016
Like, I just finished "Down the Mississippi" (the one where 10K winds up on the other side of the river from the main group and gets picked up by Sketchy and Skeezy). It's a great concept, to watch the two of them con their way into and out of trouble with the naive 10K in tow, but having the town they wound up in be a totally hackneyed "Southern" town full of blatantly dumb hicks who just see zombies as a chance to play out their "The South will rise again" fantasy of owning slaves like their ancestors did was just bad-Saturday-morning-cartoon-simple territory. And 10K only lost the rest of the group because "zombie jam" on the river. Which, again, fine, fun concept - but as it played out . . . 1) Come on, they totally would have seen that ahead in the river; at least figure out some borderline-plausible way (zombie jammed on the motor again) where they couldn't stop, rather than just *Bump* "HUNH??? WHA??? WHO??? OHNOES ZOMBIEJAM!!" and 2) they've fought their way out of WAY worse situations - but no, plot sez they have to freeze for a ridiculous amount of time and then just abandon ship without trying to fight at all.
It was a mishmash of homages to classic westerns. The hanging scene, the courtroom scene and of course Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid re the river, disappointment in Bolivia and the Australia discussion. That was actually when I decided I loved this show.
posted by fshgrl at 1:17 AM on November 28, 2016
It was a mishmash of homages to classic westerns. The hanging scene, the courtroom scene and of course Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid re the river, disappointment in Bolivia and the Australia discussion. That was actually when I decided I loved this show.
posted by fshgrl at 1:17 AM on November 28, 2016
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posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:04 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]