Article first published as Z NATION Review on Seat42F.
With
The Walking Dead being the most popular show on television, it’s
surprising that it’s taken this long for another network to try to bank
on the success. This week, SyFy becomes the second channel to tackle
zombies in their new hour-long series Z NATION. The world has been
overrun with the undead and a small group of survivors come together to
try to find and distribute a cure.
As
a TV reviewer, I watch a TON of television. It’s always been hard to
pick one favorite show with all of the great content currently running,
but for the past year or two, I’ve been able to say that The Walking
Dead is first in my book. The reason I, and I believe so many other
people, like it is not for the zombies themselves; I myself cannot stand
zombie films unless they are comedies like Shaun of the Dead and
Zombieland. No, it’s the complexity of the characters and the deep
questions of ethics and morality that make the show so enticing.
Unfortunately,
Z NATION doesn’t even attempt to maintain that aspect of The Walking
Dead, to the point of having one character say out loud that he hates
moral dilemmas in the pilot episode. Instead, the new drama follows the
path of most zombie movies. There’s really bad destruction and
fast-moving, murderous monsters everywhere. Strangers form in a tribe
purely by coincidence, and their purpose is large-scale, possibly
world-saving. This makes it even more unrealistic than just have zombies
in the program does, and far less enjoyable.
Z
NATION is entertaining, I will give it that. Many a scene will keep
viewers on the edge of their seats, biting their nails. Lots happens in a
short span of time, and a number of individuals die, including one I
really did not expect yet, based on the press for the show and the story
structure. It’s definitely going to be a gory series with shock-factor
scenes, including one involving an infant, and one primarily concerned
with pumping the adrenaline of both the characters and the audience.
Z
NATION just doesn’t have depth. The plot is extremely simple to
understand and so are the characters. Motivations are stated out-right,
and there really isn’t anything that sets it apart from films in the
genre. Being on a television budget, it can’t reach the special effects
levels of a theatrical release, so it’ll always be destined to be
inferior, making one think twice before sitting down to watch it.
There
is also a lot of cheese. One of the main players, Citizen Z (DJ Qualls,
Legit), is in a government base somewhere with access to radio and
computer equipment. For much of the pilot, he’s concerned with making
contact with Lieutenant Mark Hammond (Harold Perrineau, Lost), who is
charged with the important task of protecting the one man who seems
immune to zombie bites, Murphy (Keith Allan, Rise of the Zombies). This
makes sense, giving Citizen Z an important purpose. But suddenly, at the
end of the hour, he slips on some sunglasses and goes into radio disc
jockey-mode. Isn’t that taking things a little too lightly? And doesn’t
he have any co-workers left to put a stop to the nonsense?
Other
than these three, the rest of the players seem like zombie chow.
Charles Garnett (Tom Everett Scott, Southland) is a typical leading man,
so maybe he’ll stick around for a bit. But there is little to
distinguish the other supporting players, and given the structure of Z
NATION, it seems likely a number of them will be killed off in the
coming weeks. One or two may become fan favorites, but most will
probably wind up dead.
Thus, Z NATION
is not a great show. In a crowded television landscape, and with a much
better product on AMC, I don’t know why this series would gain a big
following, but I guess we’ll see when Z NATION premieres this Friday at
10 p.m. ET on SyFy.
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