Santa Clarita Diet - Man Eat Man

If life couldn’t get more complicated for Joel, Dan finds a finger from Gary in his yard and blackmails him to murder a drug dealing killer who keeps getting out of prison time! Oh, Sheila is all gung ho to take matters into her own hands, while Joel is trying to locate an Anton, a Serbian who might know a cure for what currently ails his wife. Abby is frustrated with her parents for the body in the freezer, found by her when copping an eyeful of Joel’s old motorcycle, mentioned in a conversation between the two in the previous episode. Abby talks with Eric about her parents’ secrecy with him revealing to her his knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, masqueraded as spin class. Everyone has secrets, as this episode points out. Dan is going on a trip so he has an alibi, leaving Joel to figure out how to murder the drug dealer who is a thorn in his side. Dan’s that intrusive nuisance who never minds his own business…if he wasn’t snooping around in Joel’s yard, he never would have found that finger. And with blackmail, this could be an ongoing problem, Joel forced to be Dan’s “friend” or else. The fight itself at the end has the enormous (very tall, muscled, intimidating, and strong) would-be victim withstanding Sheila’s assault (she bites him, a mistake that will produce a fresh, new zombie!) and getting away because Joel, who had a problem getting all the plastic over his body to protect from blood spatter, just couldn’t commit to using a knife in his possession or attack. This is another briskly paced episode that is over before you know it. Abby’s knowing what her parents are doing in regards to killing people and her mom eating off the victims, annoyed that they even speak about it under disguise (“going to the grocery store”), sending her out of the vehicle to get “open house” signs so they could better talk in private. Again, anyone who watches this series even briefly realizes that the cheeky tone and playful nature in the performances—bordering on the absurd, especially Barrymore who has magnificent comic timing, helped by her marvelous chemistry with Olyphant, neither ever too seriously provoking horror as much as head-shaking, eye-rolling shock and awe—takes the sting and appall off the material which deals with some rather sick and twisted subject matter. The zombie genre as a whole always (well, most of the time) deals with humans dying and being eaten. Gore is often a particularly expected part of the genre, even when handled with zest and wink-wink/nudge-nudge, tongue-in-cheek approach. And this series doesn’t refrain from seeing Barrymore often very bloody and involved in extreme violence. To offset that, the tone and characterizations are performed outrageously, often with vigor and high energy. And this show, at least up to this point, hasn’t fallen into total darkness or let itself tonally break away from embracing the zany in the zom com as a whole. “iZombie” is a favorite of mine, so that tone can be found in “Santa Clarita Diet”. Whereas, though, “iZombie” does get serious, even as it features human beings portrayed in best and worst possible ways, “Santa Clarita Diet” has yet to follow such a personality shift. So it has remains “easy to digest”. Both shows, also, seem to love to bookend each episode with a fresh and “uh oh” development that might urge you to continue to watch…or maybe not, depending on the twist. 3/5