Day of the Dead – Episode 6 – The Lady Birders of Nepa
After a few episodes that have been a little hit and miss, Episode 6 unfortunately sees the series slow to almost a crawl. I can appreciate what the episode is attempting to do, particularly its obvious homage to Dawn of the Dead, with the survivors barricading themselves inside a convenience store. The problem is that instead of using the location for some clever social satire or dark comedy, the episode largely uses it as a convenient place to gather the characters together and allow their various personal dramas to play out.
There is a certain logic to bringing everyone into one location. Perhaps the writers are attempting to get some of the character conflicts out of the way now so that the series can return to the zombie action and build towards the finale. I would like to think that’s the plan, although at this point I’m not particularly convinced.
The most welcome development is that one of the more irritating characters is finally dispatched. It’s a small mercy, but one that certainly improved my opinion of the episode. There is also a fairly clunky act of aggression during the final ten minutes that appears to be setting up something considerably more serious. It feels as though the series wants this moment to carry a lot of emotional and dramatic weight, perhaps more than it has really earned, but I’m nevertheless interested to see where it goes.
The biggest missed opportunity is the convenience store itself. Given the Dawn of the Dead inspiration, I was hoping for some of the sharp consumerism satire that George A. Romero brought to his shopping-mall setting. Instead, the shop serves little purpose beyond being somewhere for the characters to hide. There are a couple of moments where the survivors reinforce the building, which at least acknowledges the practical realities of their situation, but there isn’t much more done with the location at this stage.
There is even a brief suggestion that the younger characters aren’t particularly capable when it comes to basic DIY. It’s a potentially funny observation, but the show moves past it so quickly that it feels more like a throwaway joke than any meaningful satire. Perhaps that’s for the best, because I’m not sure this particular series has the subtlety to pull off a full Romero-style commentary on consumer culture.
A couple of characters are essentially reduced to playing with a piece of baseball practice equipment while the focus shifts elsewhere. There’s clearly some interpersonal drama brewing between them, but the episode doesn’t do enough with it to make it particularly compelling. I’m left wondering whether this conflict will eventually be addressed or whether, like several other elements of the series, it will simply disappear once the zombie action resumes.
The cast continue to do what they can with the material, and there are certainly moments where the performances keep the episode moving. However, the problem is that there simply isn’t enough happening around them. The show has built up several interesting threads over the previous five episodes, and Episode 6 feels as though it has temporarily put most of them into storage.
The Dawn of the Dead comparison is therefore difficult to avoid, particularly because the episode deliberately places the characters in a location that immediately evokes Romero’s film. But the similarities stop at the basic premise. There’s none of the clever commentary that made Romero’s shopping-mall sequence so memorable, and without that layer of meaning, the convenience store becomes little more than a backdrop.
This is easily my least favourite episode so far. It’s not terrible, and there are a few developments that could prove important later, but the pacing is painfully slow compared with the energetic fourth episode. The series has spent several episodes establishing an increasingly chaotic zombie outbreak, only to suddenly slam on the brakes and spend most the last two episodes watching people argue in a shop.
Still, I’m not ready to give up on it. There are enough unanswered questions and enough characters I’m invested in to keep me watching. Hopefully Episode 7 can get things moving again, because after six episodes, Day of the Dead is starting to feel like a show that works considerably better when the zombies are eating the main cast.
