Santa Clarita Diet is a wacky dark comedy, occasionally achieving moments of brilliance. At worst, you get to see Timothy Olyphant be generally hilarious and Drew Barrymore isn't far behind him. The premise of this show is somewhat insane. Sheila becomes undead - the how is never explained and that's probably for the better honestly - and quickly comes to rely on eating people for her main source of food.
Before she became a zombie, she lived a fairly boring life with her husband Joel. They love her each other and sell houses. Given their personalities, they didn't seem unhappy with their life, but there was certainly not a lot going on with their life. When she becomes undead, she reverts to her id. She gets what she wants when she wants it without much regard for the consequences. She's happier the way she is a zombie than she was as a suburban mom.
If there's one thing I wish this show did, it was to show us more of what Sheila was like when she was alive. She gets sick fairly early on and we don't see much sense of her personality beforehand. It would have been interesting to see the contrast. While Barrymore is charming and it's not that difficult to empathize with her, I feel I as an audience member would feel more of connection with her if I got a better sense of who she was before. As it stands, she has little self-regard for others in getting what she wants and I can certainly see how that may be an issue for some.
Of course, the standout is Olyphant. He's the reason I watched the show in the first place. He plays Joel quite a bit different than any of his other characters than I've seen. I feel like masters the intended tone of the series better than any of the other cast members. If you go into this series because of Olyphant, I don't think you'll be disappointed with the results.
I think the weak link of the cast member is Liv Hewson, the teenager daughter. She's fine as an actress, but something just feels slightly off about her character. She grows into the role as the season goes on. I do think her rebellious nature is a bit at odds with how the family appeared to be before this whole zombie thing started. I mean it didn't seem like they had any issues with her before - and I realize this a point of the show - but she very quickly embraces the rebellious nature in a way that should have indicated that the parents had problems with her about this before. So I guess I don't have a problem with Hewson, just how her character is generally written. That said, this wouldn't be the first TV show to have a comedy character in the pilot be different than how they end up writing her.
Skyler Gisondo, who fills out the remainder of the main cast, is very good as the geeky, awkward teenager boy who has a crush on Abby (the daughter). He plays it well, but he's also a hugely cliche character. I mean read that first sentence. Also he seems way smart in a way that only teenagers in movies and TV shows are: impossibly smart. I have never met anybody even remotely in the same league as this guy apparently is.
For It's Always Sunny fans, Mary Elizabeth Ellis has a fairly prominent recurring role as a neighbor and she's predictably hilarious. Her husband is a cop and the show gains some comedy out of both of their neighbors being cops. Portia de Rossi is also excellent later in the series that kind of shocked me. I only know her from Arrested Development - and while she's obviously good in that - I hadn't realized how good of a comedic actress she is until this role.
Well it's been 17 minutes and that means it's time to write my concluding paragraph. I enjoyed Santa Clarita Diet. I don't think it's a must-see comedy, but I found it really easy to binge so it seems well-suited to being on Netflix. It's well-acted and in a few episodes - specifically the seventh episode - it is almost perfect black comedy. (I was laughing at the seventh episode for nearly 30 straight minutes. It was that good.) I'd recommend this if you have nothing else to watch.
Grade - B+
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