http://cimg.tvgcdn.net/i/2016/11/28/...rita-hp-lg.jpg
Printable View
I am really torn on this. This cast! Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Liv Hewson is pretty great. It wants to be both a comedy and dark drama which is why I'm torn. On episode 4 at the moment. It's also very hard for me to buy into the whole Zombie thing when Drew Barrymore looks and acts human other than craving human flesh. So when she's eating someone, it doesn't look like a monster attacking someone, it looks like cannibalism. There's something off pudding when someone makes a protein shake made up of body parts and drinks it like they just bought it at Whole Foods. I also am having trouble buying the idea that her husband, Timothy Olyphant, is very accepting of this new characteristic of his wife, and even comes up with the ideas of killing people to feed her wife.
Otherwise the premise is decent. They live sandwiched in between two cops so everything they do outside of their home is closely monitored. I found myself laughing out loud a couple of times with Olyphant's delivery. Just not sure where it's going exactly.
Anyone else watching?
I still haven't finished it, but I've been loving it. Timothy Olyphant needs to get the comedy Emmy nomination for this. He sells like 90% of the jokes.
Oh also. Appearance by Nathan Fillion which makes everyone obligated to watch at least the first episode.
I watched the first episode. It's alright. Kinda a let down from the guy who did "Better Off Ted," which was a lot sharper and more focused right from the start.
I like the cast. I don't think Drew Barrymore is quite right to play a frumpy, suburban, prim, soccer mom type. Her personal and professional disposition was always too sunny to play down. Olyphant is alright, he's always watchable and he was funny enough on "The Grinder" a year or so ago. I was a little surprised they're playing everything so straight when the comedy is so broad and out there. Like, the show is going for a gross-out thing but the energy level from the actors is low. I think tone is tough to balance and the showrunners didn't nail it. (Weeds and Ash vs Evil Dead are probably the best recent example that mixed high and low tones really well, at least in its first few seasons).
Watching this it struck me that sometimes horror trends will continue, furiously and unabated, until they arrive in suburbia and involve middle age moms -- cf, "Serial Mom" in 1994 with Kathleen Turner, and now this. (Maybe we're done with zombies, once and for all?)
(Also, is there some real life, ongoing beef between the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department? This is the second show I've seen this month, on two different networks, to reference such a nasty rivalry.)
Up to episode 6 and it's just getting more and more ridiculous with the neighbor stuff.
This is wonderful stuff.
Love all the characters, and the humour is just perfect.
My favorite moment so far occurred in episode 7. Barrymore is showing a house, Olyphant has just gotten bad news and storms into the house not realizing that Barrymore is wth a couple, and just yells out "WE'RE FUCKED!!" Then when he sees that there's a couple there, he follows it up with "we're just getting so many bids!"
I just finished both seasons. After a shaky first episode, the show's humor couldn't be more right in my wheelhouse, especially the way those earnest (and rather sweet) marriage/family/parent platitudes are extremely couched and allergorized in such deliciously absurdist zombie situations. I liked how the show is so upbeat, and subverts many of the cliches too (especially in its teenage characters). Olyphant and Barrymore is such a great TV couple. I agree that early on Barrymore is somewhat shaky, but she improves as the season goes along, and is totally in synch with the show and Olyphant by the time (the superior) season 2 starts. Speaking of, Olyphant is so note-perfect, especially in direct contrast with Justified's Rayland Givens, that his Joel Hammonds role here is fast becoming one of my favorite TV performances ever.