Each week, I tune in faithfully to my favourite zombie program, settle in with some snacks and wait patiently to see who they bump off next.
When a zombie chases you in “Z Nation,” he or she is going flat-out, an unnerving departure from the slow-moving shufflers introduced to the film world by George Romero in the “The Night of the Living Dead” and more recently brought to television by Brian K. Vaughan in “The Walking Dead.”
Wh-a-a-t? Rick Grimes is no more?!?
Relax, we’re talking about the SyFy Channel’s “Z Nation,” a slightly cheesy but hugely entertaining new zombie series that airs Friday nights here in Canada on the Space Channel. AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is still the thinking zombie’s undead television drama of choice, but the breakneck pace and insane plot twists of this new show with a B-movie ethos has earned it a coveted place on Proper Channels’ exclusive list of TV that must be seen as soon as it’s available, and not saved for leisurely viewing later in the week.
OK, then just why must “Z Nation” be watched ASAP, while “The Walking Dead” — admittedly a better television show in pretty near all respects — often gets shelved for a day or two? Fair question, and here are my answers, such as they are:
For starters, I like the simplicity of the the show’s premise: Three years after the zombie virus has destroyed civilization completely (I love how everyone gets nervous and looks away whenever someone asks them what they did to survive ‘Black Winter’) our rag-tag group of survivors is tasked with taking the only known survivor of a zombie attack from New York to California, where they believe a lab is waiting to process his blood into an effective cure for the zombie plague. A pure and simple road show, travelling from the East Coast to the West Coast, with face-chewing zombies dogging our intrepid heroes every step of the way.
Another fun part of the show is it’s sense of humour which, depending on the situation, can be subtle or obvious. You want subtle? In an early episode, one of the characters talks about being helped by this guy and his group of survivors holed up in a prison (Hi Rick!). Not so subtle? The people behind “Z Nation” are the good folks who brought you “Sharknado,” so it was only a matter of time before zombies got caught up in a tornado, too. And just this week we saw a million zombies on the move across the flat plains of Kansas, which was immediately tagged by one quick-witted character as a “zunami.”
Add to that a penchant for killing off leading characters just when you are starting to think they might hang around for a while, and fast, running zombies rather than the traditional, slow-moving lurchers favoured by “The Walking Dead,” and a typical episode of “Z Nation” is just different enough to draw this viewer in, week after week.
It also helps that, unlike “The Walking Dead,” the gore quotient is pretty high, week in and week out. No man-vs.-man angst-y shtick at play here, just hot and cold running zombies, 24-7.
With five more episodes to go on its 13-episode first season and a renewal for a second season already guaranteed, “Z Nation,” much like the Little Engine That Could, might even someday become the water cooler talking point that “The Walking Dead” has gradually grown to become.
