Santa Clarita Diet - Strange or Just Inconsiderate?

A show like “Santa Clarita Diet” I recommend just because each episode produces a dilemma for married couple, Joel and Sheila, to overcome, leaving us wondering how on earth they will be able to do so. I mean in “Strange or Just Inconsiderate?” Joel has hit incorrigible asshole neighbor, Dan, in the head with a shovel, and must come up with some miracle to get rid of him as the police, headed by partner (and sheriff), Anne Garcia (Natalie Morales) are next door, preparing to bring in the K-9 unit the next morning. Sheila and Joel had considered taking Dan to their storage unit freezer but their chest’s bottom breaks, dumping the corpse to the floor! And then neighbor, Rick, another sheriff who was on a job, comes by at the worst time to mention how Dan is missing, so Joel and Sheila are tasked with getting him out of the house (Rick and Dan) before the police eventually catch the right wind towards them.

This is a grisly episode. Well, you could day that about the series as a whole, but the camera doesn’t shy away from Dan’s mulched-up body in the master bath while Sheila attempts to munch him to nothing by the next morning, a job that is absolutely ridiculous. It was important for this series to be as absurd and toned comically outrageous so that we never took it too seriously or dwell on just how twisted and warped the whole story arc is. Sheila doesn’t spend too much in moral quandary while Joel has awakened to the appreciation of life, thinking about a rainbow-colored light reflected on the wall of their master bathroom by the sun, a trip to Hawaii mentioned by Anne when speaking about Dan bringing tears to the eyes, and a hummingbird feeder now hanging outside the home providing this uplifting smile to the face and heart. Sheila just can’t finish Dan while Joel tells her they are going to the beach, using a cooler to carry the remaining body not eaten in order to sneak it past Anne and the police!

Meanwhile, Abby finds Dan in the bathtub (she never goes in there since finding her parents in sexual hanky-panky), questioning her parents about what happened. She’s tired of her parents lying to her, not exactly shocked into abject horror as much as frustrated at Joel and Sheila for keeping secrets from her! That is what this show does and asks its audience to accept: when there is graphic violence to people in order for Sheila to eat and keep her secret as a zombie, those in her family who know about her don’t react as you might expect. Sheila’s secret must be protected so Joel and Abby have to help her creatively and innovatively avoid possible detection and potential arrest. In this episode, Joel and Sheila debate the garage being used as a home office since it would have benefited them in terms of hiding and transporting Dan’s body, while who killed more people also is a topic of conversation when they back-and-forth work out an escape of their unfortunate current situation. It does seem that each episode pits Joel and Sheila against odds not in their favor.

Abby, through her cunning, figures out how to “set Dan up” by leaving a finger (of someone Dan was criminally involved with) and flashlight, with Anne and her deputies locating the crawlspace holding the “criminal cache”. And Eric was given a chance to see Dan one more time, grateful he no longer has to deal with his bullying. I think one of the major shining points in the series is Abby and Eric’s chemistry. Eric just adores her and Abby clearly considers his company quite pleasant and welcome. Considering what they know about Sheila and Joel, their bond has only tightened. Not sure if romance will ever be in the cards, not as much because of Eric as Abby just seems find with where they are platonically. Considering they are so young, both handle the situation with Sheila and Joel reasonably well! And that is what you have to tolerate in order for Santa Clarita Diet to work. You have to indulge the grotesque comic theater of this Netflix series. The way it is handled, despite being gruesome—Sheila finds a pinky toe that has fallen off during a soothing bubble bath, with an “Oh, fuck!” of annoyance that it seems when one problem is taken care of, another seems to replace it—is to get you to laugh at how exchanges are done in a quirky manner by Olyphant and Barrymore, the camera going back and forth to each of their faces as they snap off each line with a wink and a nod. I figure if the material was ever played any other way but how it is, then the series would unsettle (and maybe it still does?) instead of provoke a giggle or grin.

And what is with the lesbian energy between Anne and Dan’s wife, Lisa? Anne’s prayer at the table with a nervous Sheila and Joel, as they try to keep on big smiles and answer every question with a heightened and faux pleasantry hiding and masking building panic and terror being caught, is hilarious. Anne hasn’t been a major character up to this point, so her flirting with Lisa, and vice versa, while Joel and Sheila are confused, with little comments and behavioral obviousness indicating something of the feels, adds a fun touch of introduced subplot not yet mentioned.4/5