Chum
Day of the Dead's second episode is more of the same as storylines fracture across the episode's runtime, no one ever really doing anything special or mind-blowing. It's a very easy show to watch if you want to be doing something else at the same time because even if you miss stuff, you don't mind that much and it's very easy to pick up the rudimentary threads again.
The show certainly needs better focus and a clearer purpose for what it's trying to be at its heart. Mayor Bowman continues to run around being generally annoying and Trey's accidental shooting of the protestor, while vaguely amusing just because of how idiotic it is, strikes me as a little tone deaf due to current social issues in the world. And also, you know, it's just idiotic. It's very apparent they needed a way to introduce zombies to the individual storylines so they could eventually be brought together but the whole thing seems rather contrived.
I do like the way Jai was alerted to the zombie threat though, it seemed a lot more natural. He also gets some lovely character work with an old lady at a retirement home which gives him some depth and he's really the only character who seems to be working in an easy and natural way in the show so far. Lauren's good too but she spends most of the episode escaping from the funeral home which is fine by me because it was the only storyline with a major zombie presence.
Luke continues to do the equivalent of nothing so I mostly spend his scenes waiting for him to encounter the undead. There's not enough quality or magnetism in his character yet to make the character moments land. He does tell a ghost story though to pass the time. It was pretty cool.
The Cleargenix arc is moving too slowly to be interesting right now as well. There's a lot of shifty dialogue and characters (Dr. Logan is a new character for the hitlist). McDermott and Sarah are mostly unscathed - apart from the fact McDermott got bitten by the ancient corpse in the hole - but it can only get worse for them as they are currently involved with a whole swarm of enemies who are just the absolute worse. Seriously. I prefer the zombies.
I'm not a fan of Amy's dad either who is pretty insulting to Jai and wants him to sign a pre-nup. I swear, this town is brimming with assholes. It's like they want us to root for them to die. Good to meet Amy too even if it was only briefly to convince Jai not to postpone the wedding to wait for his parents. Man, that guy needs to learn how to stand up for himself.
The Grey Mile
The third episode puts most of the focus on the fall of the retirement home. I'm not hugely interested in Paula's aspect of that storyline. There's no reason so far to feel any emotional connection because she's just kind of a terrible person to everyone she interacts with. It's also revealed that Trey isn't Luke's dad but of course, Nicole, who just discovered this information, dies. It's kind of convenient. I'm pretty sure Trey's the only person who's going to miss her.
Jai however, is starting to become a real standout on the show and is definitely the only reason I keep watching. His interactions with that old lady in both these episodes were very well done and it was super devastating - and also kind of badass - when she sacrificed herself to save the day. Now all this show needs to do is make everyone else interesting because Jai cannot carry this on his own. Lauren at least has some great potential. No word yet on the consequences of that bite mark though Jai does inspect it for her. I like the reveal that they know each other as it helps the characters to start to become more connected in both a physical and emotional sense. Also, they're the two best characters so scenes with them should be pretty good.
Over in the Cleargenix storyline, Dr. Logan pokes around with McDermott's finger and the number one sleaze on this show is hunting down Sarah who gets to crack out her military training to run circles around him. She's another character who could have some potential but she hasn't been afforded the necessary depth of development yet and that's mostly because there are so many storylines in each episode that she's kind of falling by the wayside a little with her storyline in this episode best summed up as mildly action-coded.
Talking about being left by the wayside... Luke continues to do absolutely nothing. He's just wandering around the forest with his friend and he doesn't even get to start talking about why he and Cam fell out because his friend runs off to the party. We do see a zombie lunge at him at the end of the episode though so hopefully things are going to start picking up in the next episode!
As for Amy, who is also supposed to be a main character, she is once again absent from the episode. She's kind of there in spirit, I guess? Because of the impending wedding? But I guess she ended up being the character who had to sacrifice screentime or else the already thin storylines on this show would have just caved in completely.
So what do you think of the past couple of episodes? Are you still watching the show? Sound off in the comments below!
