Forest of the Damned
The fourth episode of Day of the Dead is much the same as the rest of the show so far, in as much as it's largely underwhelming. The brightest spots of the episode are that Luke is finally in on all the zombie action though his friend ditches him and leaves him to fend off the zombies alone. We do at least find out what happened to this party they were searching for. Surprise, surprise, they've all been mauled by zombies. I will give the show this, they're not afraid of death and destruction.
The other highlight of the episode is Jai. It's especially easy to root for him as a character because most of the other characters around him like Shaun and Amy's dad are assholes. Jai could be a literal devil and these two chuckleheads would make him seem like an angel. And Jai certainly qualifies, still persisting in his quest to save the wedding party even when all he's met with is ridicule and disdain. Amy largely still doesn't have much of a presence in this show, seeming to let Sean and her dad decide things for her. In her defence, when your fiance is raving about zombies, it would probably be a little hard to take him seriously, but if they're about to get married? Zombie attacks aren't the kind of thing someone would just make up because they have cold feet. They must think Jai is plagued with a particularly vivid imagination.
Anyway, it's soon all going to be a moot point as a horde of zombies have descended on the marquee outside and the wedding is turning into a no-holds-barred massacre. This show is quite good at just generating large crowds of people for the zombies to chow through to keep them busy while the main cast run around.
Til the Dead Do Us Part
Now, this episode marks a very significant leap forward in quality. It by no means makes this show suddenly amazing but at least it's better than what we've been given so far and some interesting strides are made in certain storylines.
We finally saw the death of Cam's dad, which will inevitably lead to that scene in the pilot where Cam encounters him but it does mark the beginning of the Cleargenix plot becoming interesting. Before this, it was just a bland cookie cutter conspiracy but the experimentation with the original zombie - who is killed in a pretty badass way by McDermott - promises that this storyline will be getting a lot more meat on its bones in future episodes.
Cam gets some much needed development in this episode and it was kind of heartbreaking to hear his message to his dad over the police radio, especially as we already know the fate of his dad from the beginning of the show. Paula shows some unexpected softness with Cam and actually demonstrates that she does care about Trey and Luke which is honestly a massive surprise to me, considering her less than stellar behaviour up until this point.
But of course the highlight of the episode is the incomparable Jai as the wedding falls into utter chaos. he does his best to save as many people as possible but Amy is probably going to be traumatised for life by the fact her mother was quite literally torn away from her. This episode finally marks Amy getting into the thick of it, setting up a good arc and giving her character some much-needed depth. Points off the episode for the absolute cringe of Shaun proposing to her on her wedding day to another man while that wedding is being completely and utterly destroyed by zombies.
This episode is definitely a step in the right direction. I'm actually growing fond of Trey and his idiocy, he's the most hilarious character in the show and I am interested in learning more about the rift between Cam and Luke. Luckily it looks like all the characters will be converging on the Paymart which hopefully means the show will start to establish a lot more focus.
The Hit List - Shaun gets his eyes ripped out by zombies, which is immensely satisfying as I probably wouldn't have been able to handle his grating presence for much longer. Unfortunately it happens in the same episode as McDermott's death so we know for every asshole who gets mauled by zombies, we're going to lose someone we don't really want to see die.
