Santa Clarita Diet – Review
The Ambush!
Well, this looks like a load of rubbish!
That was my initial thought when my wife brought up a TV show on Netflix and asked, “want to watch this with me?”
The title? ‘Santa Clarita Diet’ Season One. I read the opening sentence of the blurb: “They’re ordinary husband and wife realtors…” and couldn’t finish reading.
Just another bloody drama/romance.
But I maintained an impassive face, well, with some effort truth be known. I wanted to say it looked like a load of crap, but that wouldn’t have gone down too well.
“What do you think?”
I looked at Simone. “Huh?” is all that came out of my mouth (I still hadn’t read beyond half way through the first sentence).
“Do you want to watch it?”
Every husband knows this feeling. It’s an ambush, you know it is, she knows it is, and you’ve walked clean into it. “Do you want to watch it?” may sound like a question to the uninitiated, but it isn’t. It’s a suggestion, a rather strong suggestion.
It only goes for forty minutes I guess. What the hell.
“Yeah alright.”
“Yay!”
Ambush averted.
Man, I was hooked on this show inside the first half of the first episode. What a brilliant, hilarious TV series. The humor is dark, witty and sarcastic, which is exactly the concoction of comedy I love.
What’s It About?
Drew Barrymore (Sheila) and Timothy Olyphant (Joel) play the lead husband and wife characters in the show. They are real estate agents who live in Santa Clarita (what you already knew that? Okay, okay, chill out man, gees) with their teenage daughter.
Normal kind of family right? On the outside, yup, that’s exactly the case. Well, until Sheila eats a meal at a local restaurant. After they arrive home she feels sick. Was it bad clams? Is it food poisoning? Then Sheila begins vomiting. It’s not your average, ‘eating that raw chicken that’s been left out in the sun for five days was not a good idea,’ kind of vomit. Think more like, “The Exorcist” kind of vomit. And it’s friggin’ hilarious.
Then she feels fine and all is well in the world. Crisis averted, it’s time to grab the mop and clean up…well until they realise that although Sheila is walking and talking, her heart has stopped beating. Yup, she’s freakin’ dead.
But unlike all the other zombie movies, Sheila remains the same loving mother and wife, there’re just other certain needs that she requires to function properly. One of them being the necessity to eat raw meat in order to stay ‘alive’.
The dark humour remains consistent through the first series and if you like that style of comedy, you’ll be chuckling every few minutes. Problem is, towards the end of the first season, Sheila kills and eats a human; a particularly annoying, nasty human, but a person nonetheless. After this incident, she develops an insatiable taste for human flesh and no other type of raw meat will sustain her.
It Just Keeps Getting Better!
At this point, the struggle of Sheila and Joel to maintain the outward look to their neighbors and friends of just another normal, middle-aged couple in suburbia becomes part of the hilarious adventure.
So expect to see lots of blood, gore, guts and at the same time, threaded through the entire plot, that witty, dark sense of humor that brings it all together to make this one amazing zombie comedy that never takes itself seriously. One of the many reasons I like it.
Hi! Nothing to see here!
Will There Be More Seasons?
The second season of Santa Clarita Diet dropped in March this year and follows on with even greater effect. In my opinion, the second season was as good as, if not better than the first. My wife and I binge-watched it and whilst we enjoyed it while it lasted, were disappointed when it ended. We’re eagerly awaiting season three.
Where Can I Watch It?
Santa Clarita Diet is exclusive to Netflix. If you have Netflix or are even considering investing in Netflix, then Santa Clarita Diet is definitely worth considering. If you like dark, witty, sarcastic humor, then trust me, you won’t be disappointed! The show had me chuckling and sometimes belly laughing all the way through.
