202DEMO

In all honesty? The first episode was a doozy. What was meant to be an introduction turned into an awkward mental exercise, as it wasn’t fast-paced enough to be thrilling, but neither was it slow enough to feel intentional. Additionally, this episode’s editing was all over the place. The jumps within the timeline, even with just different characters, made it harder to understand what was going on. I understand that the cast is large and that there were a lot of relationships that needed to be established quickly, but I think that’s where they fumbled the bag. Usually, the main group is small, which grows and shrinks over the storyline - this one dropped 3 of those from the get-go. There were too many segments in the first episode that had motion to really world-build properly, which pulled away from the opening. For a cast this big, too, I think a lot of people assumed there’d be some major deaths at some point; however, there wasn’t enough content for them to have significance (apart from Pao). After watching the last episode and seeing the setup for season 2, I can understand why, but before that? Confusing.

Once it found its groove, it actually worked pretty well. The pacing was enjoyable, the direction had been honed, and the acting actually surprised me. It may be backhanded to say that I expected the acting not to be up to par with my expectations, especially after that first episode, but I ate my doubts. There were a lot of scenes that had me glued to their expressions. Jimmy especially stood out to me with his acting quality, so I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten that many lead roles recently.

One thing I’d like to comment on was the discussions about character archetypes within the story and how I both agree and disagree with them. This show has a lot of different archetypes within the characters, but if we’re focusing on the small female cast, I agree there could be more done. A lot of the female characters seemed to be making the ‘stupid’ decisions, but I think there were also a lot of types within those characters that outweighed that. I’m not going to list them out, but it’s clear which female characters had a developed archetype compared to those that were just there to die. With a male-dominant cast, I do wish they could have given more respect to the female characters!

Listen. I’ve never considered myself a Tutor fan. I’ve seen him in ONE main role. I was here to be serious, focus on the zombies, but how could I concentrate WHEN TUTOR IS LOOKING TOO FUCKING GOOD? OH MY GOD! OH, they did his hair so well I couldn’t handle it. EVERY EPISODE, MY OBSCENE MOUTH HAD SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT HIM. When he took off his shirt and he was in just a tank top? I just want you to know I appreciated that...deeply. I had to pause and calm myself over what? A MAN? The lion doesn’t concern herself with men- WHO AM I KIDDING? He was rocking my shit the whole time. Whenever he was on my screen, my eyes were PEELED like bananas. I missed him when he wasn’t around. HE LOOKED SO FINE. Something awoke inside of me today.

I also wanted to note the SFX/ prosthesis makeup was rather impressive. There was this one zombie they did a really good job on that I wanted to compliment. Like, yeah, it was 100% gross, but also the craftsmanship was so beautiful. Like this one scene where she's just on the screen and the blood is dripping off of her. Applause. I felt like I was watching a gory shampoo advert.

Honourable mention to the zombie mopping the floor because THAT TOOK ME OUT. Again, I wanted to take this seriously, but if you hit me with a zombie nonchalantly mopping, it’s going to tickle me.