It’s almost Halloween, and SYFY just brought us another reason to enjoy the spookiest of seasons by airing another episode of the world’s newest zombie show ZNation.
Geek Lyfe Review of SYFY’s ZNation Episode 5
It’s right before the season 5 premiere of Walking Dead, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s Friday night: two more days until it aired. Flipping through the channels I saw the 15 year anniversary episode of WWE’s Smackdown. You remember, back when it was WWF Smackdown.
…Geek tangent…
I was watching The Rock face to face with Triple H for five seconds before it cut to a 15 man tagteam-match of wrestlers only their mothers care about when it cut to a commercial for ZNation: a new zombie-centric television series. DVR instantly set!
He escaped Oz. He survived the island. Now he’s running from the undead. UNLUCKIEST DUDE EVER!
The knee jerk reaction to another zombie show is to instantly compare it to The Walking Dead. How do you not? It’s as sure as a double negative: you can’t not. The first scene sets the tone for the series by showing the survivors joking, making out, playing cards, and laughing at zombies wriggling on an electrified picket fence. This is moments before a tornado hits and starts hurling zombies down from the sky. ZNation is unbelievably SYFY-ish, and if it was any more over the top they would’ve named the pilot episode Zombnado.
I’d pretend to be a dead fireman to get away from this.
Episode 5 quickly points out a few paper thin character back stories wedged between cheesy banter and silly zombie moments. Roberta (Kellita Smith, The Bernie Mac Show), the main female character, just happens to be right in her original hometown when the tornado hits. And she’s looking for her man love who was previously presumed dead. Some red head chick has violent flashbacks or something seemingly important but equally irrelevant. Also, the red head (Anastasia Baranova, The Darkness II) is knocking boots with that little kid from Star Trek: Insurrection (Michael Welch). Remember the one who had that pet CG creature thing? He’s old now, which means you’re old now, too. Another character is nicknamed Doc (Russell Hodgkinson, a lot of little things… check IMDB. JEEZ!); despite his complete absence of medical knowledge, he’s called upon to alleviate the cranial pressure of a fellow survivor. While he’s drilling through skull with a rusty power drill, one of the other survivors asks if it’s going to work. Doc replied, “I don’t know! I didn’t see the end of the episode!”
Great Scott!
The whole crew runs around in the episode surviving zombies, tornado weather, and a lack of purpose. Meanwhile, DJ Qualls uses his radio equipment to talk to everyone. Unfortunately, no one has a radio to hear him.
It’s a bit of a scattered plot, but ZNation has a lot of things working for it. It has zombies. It has DJ Qualls who needs to be incorporated into the group STAT. It also has a familiar quirky comedy that made Zombieland so enjoyable. I’m sure SYFY will be replaying the heck out of it so you can probably catch it again this weekend. There are also a bunch of ZNation related stuff on SYFY’s website.
I’m new to ZNation, and it feels like something I wouldn’t mind holding onto for another few episodes.
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