Santa Clarita Diet Season 2: How The Addams Family and Bewitched Paved the Way for Netflix's Horror

May. 12th, 2018 11:48 pm
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[personal profile] froodle
It must have been alarming to turn on the TV in the 1960s and see a sitcom that centered on a family who was otherwise normal, except for the fact that they looked like they had just risen from the dead with sunken eyes, pale skin, and expressionless faces. But they would take out the trash, mow their lawn, and do "regular" things around the neighborhood like everyone else. To say that the side-by-side 1964 debuts of The Munsters and The Addams Family shook up primetime television would be an understatement. At the time, the small screen had been saturated with safe, wholesome narratives such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Donna Reed Show. This new wave of macabre family TV was radical.

But the progressive nature of these series might have also contributed to their short lifespans (they were both canceled two years later and one month apart from each other in 1966). As much as they offered a bold, yet stark diversion from typical family depictions on TV, they also mirrored what was likely perceived by certain families as an unsettling turning point reminiscent of the real-life political landscape of the time, which was punctuated by the just implemented Civil Rights Act and two consecutive Democratic presidents.

For some families who were white, middle to upper class, and lived in the suburbs, The Munsters and The Addams Family perhaps further threatened a standard that many were fighting to preserve. They underscored the point that it was perfectly acceptable that these characters co-existed among the otherwise traditional, homogenous families in the same white-picket community.

That might explain why Bewitched, which premiered the same year as The Munsters and The Addams Family, went on to last until 1972 and became the longest-running supernatural series of its time. The show’s lead character, a female witch played by Elizabeth Montgomery, was much more concerned with suppressing her abilities in order to assimilate with the culture around her. That wasn’t the case with the other two series, whose characters never changed a thing about their lifestyle and whose mere appearance would put their neighbors on edge.

Despite a very lackluster response in their original runs, The Munsters and The Addams Family both gained massive audiences in syndication years later, which proved that people had finally begun to embrace atypical, bizarre family television that challenged their expectations. By then, people welcomed — and even demanded — a new kind of normal; a small screen landscape that soon became defined by how it interrogated the prototypical family structure with shows including Alf and Small Wonder.

Still, these shows weren’t nearly as dark and seemingly foreboding as their ghoulish predecessors. They didn’t present characters who were considered scary. When it came down to it, Vicki (Wonder) was a cute yet strange little girl and Alf was a teddy-bear-like, smart-alecky creature who people hated to love. By then, original gothic family programming had virtually vanished from primetime television. We didn’t really see it again until the '90s, when Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Charmed debuted in the middle of the decade. Both shows had a considerable run (Sabrina lasted seven seasons while Charmed lasted eight) and centered on families whose members were witches. Like Bewitched, however, these characters hid the fact that they had these powers and therefore were never really considered nightmarish.

Present-day television has mostly maintained this relatively harmless approach to macabre families with the debut of Santa Clarita Diet in 2017. Netflix’s first dip into the genre presents a suburban family where Sheila (Drew Barrymore), the matriarch, turns into a zombie after eating bad clams. Here, we see a family member begin normally then become undead; it’s not inherently who she is, as is the case for the preceding entries in this genre. That said, the fact that she’s a zombie is something that needs to be immediately cured, and has an instant impact on her life. Much of the plot surrounds her husband (Timothy Olyphant) and their daughter (Liv Hewson) running around trying to find a remedy.

Still, Sheila is not walking around with a wan face and her arms outstretched. Rather, she looks “normal,” and despite her condition (which can really be set off at any given moment), she goes about her regular routine by day as a realtor. However, at night she is a ravenous, homicidal creature, feasting off brains and other body parts. But here’s what sets this series apart: all her victims are inherently bad people. And not just bad people; bad men. Men who identify as Nazis. Men who don’t respect women. Men who will not be missed, which allows Sheila’s appetite for human flesh to remain discreet. So, in today’s political climate in which women are not only demanding visibility but reparations in male-dominated spaces, Santa Clarita Diet offers particularly relevant commentary amid its morbid shenanigans, exploring the ways in which women can utilize their power, albeit through a fantastical horror lens.

The only departure from this benign gothic family standard currently seems to be The Originals, about a family of vampires who are explicitly brutal forces to be reckoned with. However, this approach to a familiar premise is aligned with the modern audience’s appetite for shock value and special effects found in other macabre shows that don’t specifically center on families — including The Walking Dead and Z-Nation. The popularity of gore on the small screen has certainly influenced those series, which raises the question: can an explicitly benign gothic family TV persist in today’s Golden Age of Television, where viewers crave bloodier, more malicious content?

Interestingly, shows like Santa Clarita Diet prove that the benevolent gothic family genre has been able to revive itself (and maintain syndication appeal) despite the dominance of its more violent competition. Whether it’s escapism, curiosity, or pure entertainment, viewers today still seem inclined to tune in to a peculiar family who — like many others — are just trying to live their lives. And if they must feast on human flesh in the process? So be it.
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Why Zombie Shows Are Better Than Zombie Movies

May. 10th, 2018 08:47 pm
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I have been watching zombie movies nearly all of my life, but only recently have I picked up on some of the popular zombie TV shows around. From my personal experience, I prefer TV shows centred around zombies as opposed to movies. Here’s a few reasons why.

1. More detail can be included

When we consider a TV show based on zombies, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comes to mind. The Walking Dead is a TV series that follows a group of individuals trying to make life work after a zombie apocalypse.

It differs from classic zombie movies by adding more depth to the characters and plotlines. The show is presented in 60-minute segments which are aired every week. This format allows the show to explore far more depth and substance behind a real-life zombie scenario.

In the time that it has been on air, The Walking Dead has detailed and explored cult phenomena, sexism, racism and sexual infidelity. It is able to do this as each plot point can be introduced, explored and resolved over the course of a number of episodes, which gives The Walking Dead the ability to stay relevant long after the credits have rolled, and spark debates revolving around the main talking points until the next episode either confirms, or denies audience beliefs and conclusions, this happened most notably with both the Negan introduction and the Did Glenn Die episode.

2. Characters can be more than a name

We all know the feeling. We sit through the runtime of a movie, develop a pseudo-bond with a character and the movie ends before we can explore the depth of that particular person. This restriction in character exploration occurs due to limited run-time. TV shows do not suffer the same fate.

Using their extended screen-time, TV shows are able to display, explore and resolve situations and ideas more thoroughly. This is something the CW series iZombie, does very well.

iZombie follows a medical examiner by the name of Olivia ‘Liv’ Moore as she contracts a zombie virus and is forced to live her life as a zombie. iZombie presents the main character as a member of the undead, rather than the seen/unseen hostile presence. It also explores the idea of the personality surviving after the body has stopped functioning, as when Liv eats the brain of a deceased person she displays the most prominent part of their personality, which allows her to aid in the solving of murders.

The show runs for 45 minutes a time and allows Liv, who is played by Australian actress Rose McIver, to showcase different personalities and flesh out multiple characters in a given series. The show may follow Liv and her crime-fighting Breakfast Club team for the most part, however each series also has a central theme which tells a larger story.

The narrative throughout changes and evolves from a terrible dime-store comic book tale to one of a blockbuster series or best-selling graphic novel. I believe that if iZombie was limited to a 120-minute runtime, it would not be as appealing to its audience.

3. You can flip stereotypes and challenge preconceptions

The image of zombies is that of a decomposing shambling corpse, dragging itself around on broken limbs and crying out for that tasty, squishy grey matter. This idea is largely based on the work of godfathers of the genre, Lucio Fulci and George A. Romero.

While also being a purveyor of such stereotypes, George A. Romero also showed his ability to develop and change the zombie image with ‘Bub’ from Day of The Dead (the original one) and with Big Daddy from Land of The Dead.

He did this by showing that both had the capacity for empathy and ability to relearn how to function in society. This was parodied in Shaun Of the Dead with the now classic scene of zombies being trolley-takers in supermarkets.

Imagine a movie which centred around Bub exclusively and detailed his long journey from military personnel, to mindless zombie, to rehabilitated corpse. There is a great deal not known about Bub and a TV show would be the perfect place to explore his personal life before, during and after the events of Day of The Dead (not the Mena Suvari one, sorry Mena). I wager it would be quite fantastic.

4. Zombies don’t have to mean end of the world

When we envisage a zombie scenario, it is usually litter with burning cars, screaming people and dead bodies but what about if a zombie story wasn’t the end-of-the-world scenario that we know it to be. How could we explore that idea? Perhaps with a show like Santa Clarita Diet.

Santa Clarita Diet is a Netflix original series starring Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore as a married couple whose lives are turned upside down when one of them becomes a walking, talking and functioning zombie whose only hope of not going ‘full Romero’ is to eat the brains of the living, it explores the personality quandary and posits the idea that once we die and come back, our personality is changed drastically.

This idea is an interesting one, not only because of the potential for comedy and entertainment – and it is funny – but also that many studies and real-world observations have shown drastic personality changes in those who have survived a near-death experience or have actually ‘died’ and returned to life.

Whether this is due to the innate idea of an epiphany or actual brain chemistry changes is open entirely to your interpretation. But one thing is for sure it makes for a fantastic show which is allowed to be kooky and odd in a way that movies just aren’t. Allowing it the freedom of a TV series enables it to be a self-referential presentation and comedic social commentary and gives it the ability to be enjoyed without any real commitment to viewing.

5. Zombies also don’t have to mean serious

Stories don’t need to be serious or mature in their themes in order to convey a message or moral: we need only take a look at Dr Seuss to be assured of that. This is something which is often lost on movies as any zombie movie which attempts to be humorous and juvenile while also projecting a mature cautionary tale is usually relegated to the bargain bin of your local supermarket. We generally only see this happen to movies as there is far more commitment to plot and experience when watching a movie as opposed to casually watching a show like Z Nation.

Z Nation is a SyFy original series following a group of survivors of a zombie outbreak. They travel around, kill, steal and help wherever they can, so far so Walking Dead right? However, Z Nation pulls away from The Walking Dead formula by relying heavily on the more camp weirder elements of zombie movies – think Return of The Living Dead.

The characters in Z Nation are a role-reversal of standard zombie movie tropes with females actually being the centre of the majority of the action. The show offers a number of different zombie types, survivors and various wacky situations – Citizen Z may be one of my favourite all-time characters.

If a movie had the same outlook on zombies as Z Nation it would undoubtedly be a flop at the box office, but in a world that brought us Starz horror series Ash VS Evil Dead and British TV presenter Keith Lemon recreating classic movies on a shoestring budget, really anything can happen.
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5 reasons you should definitely be watching Santa Clarita Diet

Apr. 20th, 2018 09:42 pm
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Netflix's recent original productions have been nothing short of amazing - but none more than Santa Clarita Diet.

The horror-comedy series tells the story of the Hammond family: real estate brokers Joel, Sheila and their teenage daughter, Abby.

But things go wrong when, while they're showing a house one day, something makes Sheila so seriously unwell that she dies...and then comes back to life, undead.

The couple soon end up spending their days trying to satisfy Sheila's taste for human flesh, while making sure to cover up the trail of occasional (and unintentional) murders behind them.

Here's five reasons you should check out Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix.

It's a totally different take on zombies

Zombies are a pretty popular feature on our television screens at the moment.

There's The Walking Dead (and it's prequel, Fear the Walking Dead); Syfy's Z Nation; and even iZombie, just to name a few.

And while the Netflix Original is probably most comparable to iZombie (both examine the newly undead fitting into a human's world), Santa Clarita Diet takes on new territory with the family dynamic between the Hammonds - as well as their neighbours in the suburbs.

The acting

Timothy Olyphant is equal parts hilarious and likeable as Joel, the suburban dad and real estate agent who is (occasionally struggling with) coming to terms with the fact that his wife is undead.

And while he gets most of the one-liner quips, that leaves Drew Barrymore handling the bulk of the physical comedy - while still making Sheila someone that you want to root for (even though, okay, she eats people).

The pair manage to strike the right tone through Santa Clarita's 20 episodes to date - and somehow, they never break character. Even in the most ridiculous situations.

It's so easy to binge-watch

An episode of Santa Clarita Diet is just 30 minutes long, which makes it a perfectly easy show to stream.

The fact that it's shorter than some of the other Netflix originals manages to make it not feel like a massive time commitment - and super, super addictive.

With all the ongoing mysteries and the somewhat-cliffhangers, it's easy enough to end up watching the entire first season in an afternoon.

It's pretty gross - but in an awesome way

Yes, it's a light comedy - but that doesn't mean it's not seriously gory, too.

The Walking Dead has got people being killed with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, but Santa Clarita Diet goes for a different kind of gore.

Since she has to eat people, Shiela's seen chowing down on red smoothies (made of human flesh), organs and (at one point) snacking on fingers like they're a pile of carrots.

It's all about family

The (undead) heart of the show is, really, the family dynamic between the Hammonds.

Sheila and Joel are blindly trying to navigate her zombification, while still making sure they're in constant communication and providing each other with unconditional support.

And despite the change in the family dynamic, they're eager to be the best parents possible to their daughter, Abby - even when things get a bit messy.
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