Syfy Archives - Dom the Artist

I never really got into The Walking Dead (TWD). Which is odd, because I’m into most things zombie-ish. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the comic book, TWD, written by Robert Kirkman, but the television show was never that interesting to me. The bleak flavor of storytelling that made the comic so compelling, just came off as grim and joyless on the screen. And while this production of TWD was completely devoid of fun, how the heck else would a show about a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled wasteland be? Then, back in 2014, the Syfy network aired a little show called Z Nation. I don’t expect there are many fellow fans of this show. It was NOT the most watched show, on a niche network and most fans of the zombie genre prefer their shows with a bit more horror. A good chunk of Z Nation was pure silliness.

If you’ve ever watched any zombie show, you know the basics. The dead now walk the Earth, hungry for human flesh, an apocalypse of the undead, destroying civilization and reducing nations to bands of tribal humans fighting over the scraps that are left. In the specific instance of Z Nation, the show starts 3 years into the zombie apocalypse, and scientists are trying to find a cure. They do so by injecting prison inmates with a cocktail of experimental drugs, often causing a painful death, but what are ya gonna do? On one such occasion, while the experiments are taking place, a horde of zombies break in and devour everyone in the room. Well, everyone except one of the inmates, an insufferable example of humanity named Murphy (Keith Allen of Stumptown and The Good Doctor) . In some bizarre twist of fate, the experimental drug he received, along with the zombie bites he suffered, turn him into the only person on Earth to be immune to whatever it is turning people into the undead. This suddenly makes him the most important person in the world and Sgt. Charles Garnett (Tom Everett Scott of La La Land and 13 Reasons Why) is charged with the task of transporting Murphy to the last remaining lab of the. He is assisted in this journey by Lt. Roberta Warren (Kellita Smith of The Bernie Mack Show and The First Family), who really becomes the star of the show.

Along the way, they are joined by other survivors. Doc (Russell Hodgkinson of Leverage and Grimm) was a wellness counselor and recovering drug addict before the apocalypse, but now serves as the group’s healer. His character is mostly stoner, burn-out comic relief, with the occasional flashes of hippie wisdom. Then there’s 10K (Nat Zang of, of … nothing else, really), the youngest member of the group, whose oddly numerical name is based on his goal of killing 10,000 zombies. Addy Carver (Anastasia Baranova of Scout’s Safari and Veronica Mars) is described by the Z Nation Wikipedia page as the group’s communication specialist, but I’ve completely forgotten about exactly what she did. It’s been years since I’ve seen an episode of Z Nation and she didn’t really stand out among the cast when I was watching it. I’m leaving out quite a number of cast members. One reason for this is that I don’t want to write any spoilers, so I’m sticking strictly to characters in the first season. The second is that the cast is huge; across all 5 seasons of the show, I don’t have the room to include every single cast member. The cast member I can’t leave out is Citizen Z (DJ Qualls of My Name is Earl and Supernatural). I’m a big fan of Qualls and feel that his awkward goofiness adds some fun to any show he’s a part of. On Z Nation, he plays an ex-hacker, NSA agent that was at a listening post in the Arctic circle when the apocalypse occurred. Relatively safe in his frozen bunker, he monitors the group as they make their journey, warning them of dangers and pointing out areas of interest.

The show works for a number of reasons. I found the characters likable and unique. Allen plays Murphy amazingly well, alternately making fans want to punch him in his stupid face and root for him to succeed. Doc is the lovable Cheech and Chong extra and 10K the brooding assassin with goth appeal. I kind of liked Addy, but I thought her character was much less fleshed out than the rest of the cast. Then there were the writers. I found the story lines fresh and inventive, adding quirkiness and humor into a genre I didn’t know needed it. The show had several different types of zombies, including exploding ones, and they were usually dispatched in ultra-violent and amusing ways. If those two descriptors don’t seem to go together, you need to watch the show. It didn’t always work. When the show first started, whenever they would “kill” a zombie, they would say the phrase, “I give you mercy.” That phrase was even a part of their intro theme song, but, holy shit, did that get old fast. I get it; they saw the undeath of being a zombie as a fate worse than death, but it really lost its impact over time.

A few years ago, after Z Nation had ended, the Asylum (the fine folks who brought the Sharknado series), the production company that created Z Nation, put out a prequel called Black Summer. I was so excited for it to come out. Z Nation had been off the air for about a year or so and I was missing some of that zombie action. It had been said that this wouldn’t be done in the same tongue in cheek style as Z Nation, but nothing could prepare me for the soul crushing desolation of this show. It was neither bad nor exceptionally good, but it offered no respite from the violence and tension in each episode. There was no binging this one; after a single episode, my mood was so depressed that I couldn’t even dream of watching a second episode.

While I write these little pieces to show my love for these shows, it’s hard for me to recommend Z Nation to anyone else. It does have a 6.7 rating on IMDB, so I can’t be alone in my fandom, but I, personally, have never met anyone who spoke fondly of the show. Plus, my tastes tend to be somewhat unique. I’ve given many a recommendation which resulted in those who listened looking at me a little differently, and not in a good way. But if you’re looking for a show that balances the Yin of violence and death with the Yang of humor, then Z Nation might be the one for you. You could certainly do worse (I’m looking at you, Fear the Walking Dead).

I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to try and make this post short and sweet. I’ve just started a huge project that I’m going to be devoting a huge chunk of time to. So much so that it may spill over into my blog here and change the focus of the entire thing. But now is not the time for that, so, with the possibility of me no longer writing about TV or movies, I want to make sure that I talk about a few of the shows I consider “must see”. Particularly the ones I feel just don’t get enough love. Which brings me to Channel Zero.

Channel Zero was a horror anthology that ran for 4 seasons on Syfy. It was written by Nick Antosca, who has, in addition to writing Teen Wolf and Hannibal, has also written several novels, like Fires and The Quiet Boy, and even a few films, like The Forest and Antlers. It’s an impressive resume, which explains some of my praise. And while my praise is effusive, it’s a little hard to explain. It’s like those jokes that you sort of just have to be there for. I’m normally a “story guy”, all about the plot, the character development, but, admittedly, Channel Zero is a bit weak in that department. Not that the plots or the characters are bad, it’s just that they aren’t the strengths of the show. The characters are thin, the plots slightly confused, but the feel of the show itself is CREEPY! It’s one of the eeriest shows I’ve seen, giving the viewer that otherworldly feeling that is so elusive. I’ve talked about this rare quality before, in films like The Endless and A Cure for Wellness.

Each of the four seasons tells a story involving different bits of creepypasta. If you don’t know what creepypasta is, welcome to the club, even now I have only a cursory understanding of the term. The best description I can think of is urban legends for the internet. The Slender Man and The Russian Sleep Experiment are examples of creepypasta, spooky stories, once told round the campfire, now skulking around the information superhighway. Season 1 tells the story of Candle Cove, a mysterious children’s show from a studio that shouldn’t be transmitting. The theme of Season 2 is The No End House, which, as the name implies, consists of a series of impossible rooms. Season 3 is called Butcher’s Block, about a highly carnivorous family of exceptional longevity. Lastly, season 4 is a story that is equal parts disturbing and depressing, called The Dream Door. Each one is very different, except for the ability to make one’s hairs stand on end.

I consider Season 1 to be the best, but I’m not sure if that’s because it’s true or if I wasn’t prepared the impact it would make. The first few minutes of the first episode stay with me to this day. There’s so many things to creep one out in this season. The children’s show, Candle Cove, is a puppet show and puppets are almost as creepy as clowns and dolls. Murderous children are involved and children are kind of sinister even when they’re normal. And, then, then there’s the tooth monster. The main character is guilt ridden and possibly insane. Almost every scene exudes menace and danger lurks just out of sight.

Before I had seen season 2, I had never heard of the No End House. There are several iterations of this particular creepypasta, but it essentially is about a house that people are called to go into, sometimes because there’s prize money if they go through all the rooms in the house, sometimes because they are dared to. Each room is sequentially numbered, this number appearing on the door to the next room, usually starting with 1 and going up to 9. The first room is deceptively cheesy, but each of the others get progressively more horrifying, the last one nearly driving people to madness. Those who get through all of them to finally escape the house initially feel relief and return home, only to find the next number on their front door. This is basically the story in Season 2 of Channel Zero, except that a group of friends enter the house, each experiencing different things, based on their individual fears and, as you might guess, they don’t all get to leave. There’s a heck of a lot more to it, themes involving grief and loss and how much of one’s self is in their memories, but I don’t want to ruin any of this by saying too much. I also wanted to say that one of the cast members in this season is the phenomenal John Carroll Lynch of The Drew Carey Show and Fargo. He’s an amazing actor who absolutely nails his roles in everything I’ve seen him in and this is no different.

According to Wikipedia, season 3, Butcher’s Block, is based on Kerry Hammond’s “Search and Rescue Woods” , but if that’s true, it’s very loosely based. If you’re unfamiliar with “Search and Rescue Woods” (I was), it was originally a series of stories first featured on the subreddit, No Sleep, and later collected into novel form. The stories are told by one of the search and rescue rangers who work a particular set of woods where all sorts of mysterious and spooky happenings occur. Butcher’s Block involves a pair of sisters, one with severe, almost incapacitating, depression, who move to a new town and find a strange flight of stairs, in the middle of the woods, seemingly leading to nowhere. Eventually, they meet Joseph Peach (played by the incomparable Rutger Hauer, RIP, of Blade Runner and Hitcher), the elderly patriarch of the Peach family, the head of a butchering and meat packing empire. This season is a bit more meandering than most, but no less eerie, culminating in the sisters having to make a devastating choice.

The fourth and final season is Dream Door, based on Charlotte Bywater’s story, Hidden Door. I’m guessing Antosca is a Reddit fan, because Hidden Door also is a find from r/Nosleep. In Dream Door, a married couple find an odd door in their basement, that they hadn’t noticed before. They explore it and initially found nothing, but before long, the door, or the room behind it, manifests their dreams. And, true to the nature of the show, these things are perverted manifestations of these dreams.

My love of television is well known. I mean, I’m writing a frickin’ blog about it, for goodness sakes. Most of the shows I talk about here are shows that I feel are high quality entertainment, shows I want to tell people about, because I think that they’ll enjoy them as much as I do. That being said, I wouldn’t really call them art. Entertainment? Yes, but art? There are the few rare shows that attain that vaunted title that few television shows even consider. I feel that Legion did it, Antosca’s other show, Hannibal did it and Channel Zero does it. By this, I’m not saying that these are the best shows in the world, but that they “subvert the paradigm”. They don’t care what a show should be, they have an artistic vision, one that is different than what the very concept of a television show should be. Often, certain things, like plot, are sacrificed in pursuit of this vision, but what emerges is a thing of beauty. Well, maybe not beauty, per se, in the case of Channel Zero, but something pure nonetheless. It’s not so much entertainment as a work of art that evokes a feeling. It bypasses the brain and triggers fear and dread directly to the brain stem. If you, dear reader, ever decide to watch Channel Zero, remember this. Don’t dwell on plot points or if things make sense or any of the things that one normally focuses on a show, just feel it.