When I started the Santa Clarita Diet-

Scratch that.

When I first heard the Santa Clarita Diet was on the Philip DeFranco Show, a YouTube celebrity that delivers the "deets" on internet drama, news, and other things he finds interesting. The plot he mentioned sounded kind of, for lack of a better word, awful, but slightly interesting. "A boring suburban mother turns into a zombie and eats bad guys to fill her hunger. It kind of sounds like Dexter with a twist." But it wasn't Dexter with a twist....more like a desperate attempt at a sitcom that NBC pumped out to boost their ratings. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. Ya see, just because it seems like a desperate attempt, doesn't mean that the show is bad.

The main characters of the show are Sheila Hammond (played by Drew Barrymore) and Joel Hammond (played by Timothy Olyphant) two realtors who live a mundane life and are basically getting tired of it. The audience can gain a sense of that from the first few minutes of the show. They had a conversation about bland, pointless things such as knobs on toaster ovens and it even gets so obvious that the director wants us to know that they're so bland that they even converse about being not being brave enough to try anything new in their lives. It took me three episodes to realize the blatant plot build that came from that conversation....but anywho.

The couple's lives turn upside down when Barrymore's transformation begins when they try to sell a house, which starts with the most unfunny, disgusting vomit scene of all time. It's 2017 and apparently, these type of things are still supposed to land laughs. Apparently, her transformation included vomiting pints and pints of bile, ultimately killing her and spewing a red ball. Once she dies she comes back as a zombie, but ya know, still beautiful and life like but with newer qualities. She's no longer bland and fearful but is now more jubilant, courageous, and has a higher libido. A much higher libido. This is the show's way of showing what a zombie with the mindset of a human would be like; being that they have no soul they have nothing to drain their energy and being that zombies are over-ecstatic about eating brains they're much more jubilant to things....This is honestly a theory and isn't truly explained to us. Still waiting for the fandom to confirm on that one. The whole energy and exuberance Barrymore's character has and barely showing us how a "human but sort of zombie" would act is only the top of things that don't make sense.

There were way too many moments in the show that made me go "but why?" or "That doesn't make sense". One of the things that irritated me, and my brother who also participated in my binge watching, was the fact that a lot of the cast just entered in each other's homes and properties out of the middle of nowhere. You'd think they all lived in the same house because of how many times someone entered into someone else's home. There were just too many things where the writer's ignored some simple details because they were just trying to push the story along.

The other characters in the show are Joel and Sheila's daughter Abby (played by Liv Hewson), who is by God the most annoying character in the show. At first, she was very likable for me; this generation's Juno and her acting didn't come off awkward like Barrymore's and Olyphant's. So immediately I thought she would be my favorite, but of course, as every teenager in a show, she becomes selfish. She finds out her mother is part zombie and the only thing she thinks about is herself and how school life is less important because her mother's a monster. She shows off her teenage angst and rebels against her parents because they're keeping things away from her. So ya know, that gives her a right to not follow store policy, tear gas a drug dealer's house, and continuously skip school. Because ya know, her parents don't want her participating in a murder. The other character is their neighbor's son Eric (played by Skyler Gisgondo, playing in his second Netflix show). He's the teenage nerd that helps them understand some zombie things and surprisingly enough he isn't a cardboard cut-out of a stereotypical nerd. I mean, he still has some stereotypes of a nerd like nervousness, awkward with socializing, and spews whatever nerd fact that he can. The thing with Eric is that he's more of a modern day, teenage, nerd. He has a mouth and a personality that's not too much of a "loser", but he can still come off as a person that isn't use to dealing with people. One thing I do hate is how he always shows his bottom teeth and always looks worried, it's flippin' annoying. There's also two sheriffs, a sex obsessed mother, and an Asian mother who loves John Legend...all you need to know about them.

After this whole amazing, and I say that in the least way possible, experience I was expecting something to hook me, something to interest me and keep my train going and say "Hey this isn't so bad. Ah ha" But it's crazy because I was hooked. After the first episode I sat down and told my brother that I'll watch another just to see if it gets better. Before I knew it, I was slowly crawling through episode after episode after episode, chuckles turn to full blown laughter and I stopped caring about the acting, actually I started believing that that was the point. Santa Clarita's Diet, like I said earlier, is a show that feels like a sitcom about a family that lived a bland life, but instead of actually having the family go through a series cliche, wonky, experiences/adventures, the director just thought "what if we just add zombies?" I couldn't quite understand why I kept watching until my girlfriend said it best: "The ridiculousness of the whole show kind of keeps you going." And she's right! It feels like a sitcom was just attacked with a horrible zombie virus, you come to love the random spouts of swear words, the awkward acting, the weird jokes, not Abby's teenage angst (honestly, every time they showed her plot line I just took a quick nap), and honestly everything that's just odd about it all.

So is this show any good? I say give it a watch. With everything I explained I feel as if this show isn't for everyone, but I say don't just blow it off. Give the first few episodes a try and see how it feels. It just might be a guilty pleasure or a show you'd love to just rag on. For me, it's both and I'm looking forward to season 2.