I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that one of the things I’ve done during the current period of gentle house arrest is watch films and TV. Well, streamed online, except when I’m at my Mum’s I’ve not watched broadcast MSM TV for over 3 years. I’ve watched old favourites as well as taking the opportunity to watch things I’d not quite worked up the enthusiasm for when time was less plentiful.
I do like me a zombie…
One of these is the series Z Nation. I do have a soft spot for the zombie genre and watching a dystopian world violently wrecked by a virus on the screen while my own world was merely mildly upset by one was appealing, even comforting. And so, I delved into Z Nation. This isn’t going to be a review, it’s hardly new and I’m guessing if it’s your sort of thing you’ll have already seen it, but I’d like to share my thoughts on the politics of the show, at least how I perceived them. That said, I’ll try to avoid spoilers but forgive me if some creep in, it’s hard to write about a show without giving at least some of the game away. If you did watch it I’d be interested to know what you thought of the series.
I was swiftly hooked by the first season. The show starts three years into a virus born zombie apocalypse and centres on a small group trying to get a man, Murphy, across the US from New York to California, to the last laboratory capable of using his blood to create a vaccine. It has been described as craptastic and I wouldn’t disagree with that, it’s not high art, but it doesn’t need to be. The creators said they “wanted to put the fun back into zombies” and I think they did, the show doesn’t take itself seriously. In fact, the show has moments of laugh out loud surreal comedy as well as the expected shocks, gore and splatstick. There are some great one liners and plenty of clever film and TV references that make you smile when you get them, some are subtle and I’m sure I missed as many as I got.
The characters themselves were also something that drew me in. As you might expect some characters you think are going to be central end up as zombie fodder pretty swiftly, as do many, many people, but there are characters who I really grew to like and care about. Russell Hodgkinson as “Doc” is outstanding. A genuinely sympathetic character with some great lines. Keith Allen as Murphy does a fine job as an unlikeable guy that you can’t help but sympathise with. Nat Zang as 10K (so named for the number of zombies he intends to kill) is a wonderful example of less is more. He has precious few lines to work with and often his eyebrows work harder than his mouth, but he conveys al lot with a little. Lastly there is Kellita Smith as Lt Roberta Warren. A strong black woman who leads the small group of unlikely action heroes. I must admit, when she first made her entrance my political mind sighed and readied itself for the stunning and brave speeches about being strong and black. They never came. In fact, Warren feels entirely believable. For me at least, Smith does a fine job of portraying someone in exceptional circumstances who has just enough experience and authority to be followed by others and having to find the strength to lead, which she certainly does.
Flyover This…
This brings me to the politics. As I said, my political mind was watching from behind the couch, not in fear of zombies, but of SJWs. I was delighted when they failed to appear. After a while I even started to wonder if Z Nation didn’t have a right winger or two among the writers. The Stars and Stripes was everywhere, and not in “ironic” settings. The central fact of the group’s mission, traveling from New York to California across “flyover country” without being able to actually fly over it can be read as a love letter to the real America.
Their mission takes them from place to place, meeting a varied cast of survivors, some good, some mad, some bad, often just folk dealing with a hard situation. They repeatedly interact with tough, independent but ultimately ordinary Americans in extraordinary times who are doing what they can to survive. One memorable example is a community of women who exile their boys when they reach 13, sending them out to die. There are backstories of course, but if that’s not a comment on toxic radical feminism I don’t know what is. There’s humour, eccentricity, courage, human weakness and human ingenuity. “The Authorities” are almost entirely absent and folk have to do things for themselves. For a good part of the show Warren uses an iconic Route 66 road sign as shield, it doesn’t get much more American than that.
And then there are, of course, the guns. Hollywood’s hypocrisy on guns stands comparison with Hollywood’s hypocrisy on money, sex, power and pretty much anything the luxury Leninists pontificate about. Guns feature hugely in many films and shows, but any zombie themed piece is going to need them by the bucket load. People surviving a zombocalypse in the US is halfway believable because there are guns in the hands of the people and millions across the country would be able to defend themselves. You can’t make an American zombie movie or show without knowingly or unknowingly making a defence of the 2nd Amendment.
There are some quite good British Zombie movies, Shaun of the Dead is funny, The Rezort is an interesting take on a post zombocalypse world and 28 Days Later is truly chilling, at least the first half is, the second half is pure lefty drivel. Ultimately though you really can’t have a British Z Nation or Walking Dead as the almost entirely unarmed population really wouldn’t stand a chance. It simply wouldn’t have the minimal level of believability needed.
There are some direct references to politics in Z Nation, and even an episode where two grifters are trying to convince the gullible that they are running for the Presidency. These are generally of the “a plague on both their houses” type and the obvious and clumsy Trump references (the 3rd series was being made in 2016) are so clumsy and OTT that they almost seem more a critique of his critics than him, although I’m sure the writers thought they were pithy, witty barbs.
Three’s a Charm
And that brings me to the title of this piece. The first 3 series are good, and I honestly think that if they’d written the last episode of the 3rd series as the actual ending it would have been better. The 4th series gets bogged down, loses a lot of the humour and starts to flag. There are flashes of the old show, but not enough. Then came the 5th series. *sighs*
I’ll be honest, I can’t comment on the whole series as I’ve yet to watch it all. I probably will, in time, but more out a sense of completeness and obligation than anything. After sessioning the earlier series, I reached a point (only 4 episodes in) where I’m not sure I want to see any more. It was too good to last and boy, when it finally went SJW it made up for lost time. The zombies now hardly get a look in and the situation is all about relations between fully alive humans and humans who are technically dead but still alive but have to eat biscuits to keep from turning zombie or some such convoluted crap. The painfully constructed theme clearly meant as a way of “examining how we treat the excluded in Trump’s America “, or put another way, telling us what to think. The not dead, not alive humans are so clearly meant as a metaphor for immigrants and especially Moslems that they may as well have put them in niqaabs. There are many speeches of the “what sort of America do we want to be?” variety. The “good guys” are even based in an old University Campus FFS and are lead by an androgynous young woman called George who is apparently wonderfull and a great leader, why? Because everyone says she is. A stark contrast to Warren whose authority we’ve seen grow over time, proved time after time. The walls are covered with posters extoling the position of the right on wannabe establishment types. The scared alive folk are given lines straight from current rightwing political discourse. As you might expect the humour is not just in the back seat, the back seat has been taken out and left on the forecourt. It’s preachy, pious and dull.
You won’t be surprised to learn the viewing figures for the original US TV broadcast were as follows, 1st series 1.42 million average per episode, 2nd series, 0.88 million, 3rd, 0.87 million, 4th 0.59 million and 5th, 0.46 million. Nearly a million tail off from first to last. Tellingly, whoever wrote the Wikipedia page listing Z Nation episodes where I got those figures hasn’t even bothered to write a synopsis of the 5th season episodes for the list, unlike the other 4 seasons. It was cancelled after the 5th season.
As the man said…get woke, go broke.