Santa Clarita Diet Season One Review

Santa Clarita Diet Season One Review 

Santa Clarita Diet is a new Netflix series that premiered last week, starring Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant as the Hammonds, a successful real estate couple with a normal Santa Clarita life, until one day, Drew Barrymore’s character Sheila gets sick and, well, kind of dies. But, she’s not dead, she’s undead, and now she needs to eat human flesh, which her husband Joel (Olyphant) so graciously helps her obtain. Okay, yes, they become murderers, but they only kill bad people! They are still good people! At least, that’s the façade they try to maintain (to varying levels of success).

Let me start by talking about the actors. Timothy Olyphant practically steals the show. I’ve always enjoyed his work, but I didn’t expect him to give such an awesome performance here. He delivers his lines with such sincerity (even his most-absurd lines, and there are a number of them) and is genuinely hilarious. I haven’t seen Drew Barrymore in anything for quite a while, so it was nice to see her in something current (I’ve been a fan for some time now), but to be honest, she isn’t terrific. Her joke delivery is hit-and-miss—in the pilot episode especially, she has more misses than hits. But, her comedic timing becomes better toward the end of the season. And she looks great, even as she consumes raw, bleeding flesh. 

The two leads are pretty consistent and have good chemistry, but the supporting cast is a bit of a different story. In the trailer I saw for the series, Nathan Fillion makes an appearance, and his presence is one of the things that drew me to watch it, which I’m sure is true for many other people. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say he’s great in the pilot, but his role is far too short-lived, which I found pretty disappointing.

The unsung hero of the show, someone I didn’t expect to like at first, was the Hammond’s teen neighbour Eric (Skyler Gisondo). He might not end up being everyone’s fave, but he made me laugh out loud at least once in every episode. Sheila and Joel’s daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson), seemed like she might be annoying at first, but she ended up being another one of the funniest supporting characters, despite frequently having little to do except be shocked by her parents antics and hang out with Eric just to make for comedic moments. There are some entertaining side characters, like Eric’s mom (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and Dr. Wolf (Portia de Rossi) who comes in at the end, and some annoying side characters, but no one particularly annoying sticks around for too long.

I didn’t know what to make of this show when I began watching it. The first episode gets things off to a rocky start. A lot of “shock” jokes are thrown in seemingly at random—by “shock” jokes, I don’t even mean jokes, necessarily, just random shocking comments meant to come off as funny because “OMG can’t believe he/she just said that!” but it doesn’t work. One example is when Eric and his mom are introduced. She tells Abby that Eric really likes her, and mentions she’s at the top of his spank bank. Of course Eric is embarrassed. That’s it. That’s the “joke”. It’s not that funny, and there are a lot of moments like that in episode one and two, which made it hard to determine what tone the show was going for. There are parts that are weird, and parts that are just plain dumb. 

Then there are the parts with shocking violence and gore, as well. This didn’t bother me, but it will definitely be a point of contention for some viewers. Horror-comedy is difficult to do well, but I wouldn’t call this horror-comedy, per se. It’s not trying to be scary, it’s more about, once again, the shock factor. Sheila and Joel kill people, and it’s bloody, and brutal, but played up in a light-hearted way. And it works pretty well most of the time. The effects look good and are mostly practical. There are moments where Drew Barrymore bites into body parts that look totally real. 

Santa Clarita starts out as a sort-of-realistic world, with some obvious wackiness to the characters, and the mysterious illness that befalls Sheila is recognized as being akin to a zombie, but as its further explored, it becomes clear that this is a slightly more original take on the undead. As the series progresses, it starts to find its footing, and goes less for shock humour and more for just genuine jokes and laughs. However, part of the initial appeal of the show, for me, was how unpredictable it was in the first few episodes. I’m not saying it was like early Game of Thrones level of unpredictability, it was just enough to keep me wanting to see more. By around episode five, it started to feel like they were running out of ideas, and things started becoming more predictable, but also funnier, so it was a bit of a trade-off.  

Ultimately, this show is, on multiple levels, difficult to recommend. I don’t think it has any kind of mass appeal, it’s going to cater to a niche audience. If you like gory, bloody TV shows/movies, stick with me. If you like gory, bloody shows that are serious, then this isn’t for you. If you like horror-comedy, such as Ash vs. Evil Dead (which this series seriously pales in comparison to), this won’t satisfy in those regards, because it lacks the horror aspect. If you like irreverent humour AND gory stuff, then you might like it.

Santa Clarita Diet season one consists of ten, half-hour episodes, so it’s very easy to watch the whole series really quickly. I’d give it a soft recommendation, if you like intermittent scenes of gore, zany characters, and general weirdness. I didn’t love this first season. It’s not really a spoiler to say things end unresolved and it feels like there should be another episode to watch next. But, I didn’t really feel like I needed to see more right away. In fact, I’m not sure I need to watch more at all, or even go back and re-watch season one anytime soon. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, I laughed quite a lot at many points. It just didn’t hook me.