Day of the Dead – Episode 8 – To Anyone Who Can Hear My Voice
Episode 8 is easily the best episode since the fourth. After a couple of instalments where the series seemed to be getting bogged down in character drama and mythology, the pacing has suddenly picked up again. The various storylines have converged, and our main group of survivors are finally banding together and heading out into the wider world.
This is exactly the direction I was hoping the series would take. The show is considerably more entertaining when the characters are moving, encountering new situations and dealing with the zombie outbreak rather than spending most of the runtime arguing amongst themselves. The interpersonal dramas haven’t completely disappeared, but they’re no longer overwhelming the story, and the balance feels much healthier.
Having the main characters together also gives the episode a stronger sense of purpose. Instead of constantly jumping between disconnected groups, we can now see the consequences of the outbreak through a more unified group of survivors. It feels like the series is finally moving towards something rather than simply maintaining the status quo.
There is, however, another problem with the show’s already questionable sense of time. In Episode 7, Sarah spends the night at her grandmother’s house before setting off in her car the following morning. That establishes a fairly clear progression of time. The problem is that this doesn’t seem to have happened in the timelines of the other characters. Luke and Cam discuss their earlier confrontation and refer to it as having happened “this morning”, before reinforcing the point with the comment that they “can’t believe that was only this morning.” That creates a rather obvious continuity problem with the show’s internal clock.
This is becoming difficult to ignore because the series has repeatedly established that the entire outbreak is taking place within an extremely compressed period. If the writers are deliberately jumping between slightly different points in the same day, then some clearer indication of the timeline would certainly help. At the moment, it feels less like a deliberate storytelling technique and more like the writers aren’t keeping particularly close track of the clock.
That aside, Episode 8 is a welcome return to form. The increased pace makes a huge difference, and finally bringing the main characters together gives the series some much-needed momentum. There’s even time for a bit of posing with some groovy weaponry, the sort of thing that makes you think the kids watching will be thinking, “Now that’s cool!” There’s a real sense that we’re entering the final stretch, with the survivors no longer simply reacting to isolated incidents but beginning to take control of their situation.
It’s also nice to see the show rediscover some of the energy that made the early episodes enjoyable. There is still plenty of character drama to work through, but it’s now being carried along by the larger zombie story rather than replacing it.
With the main group finally on the move, I’m hoping the final episodes continue this momentum. Day of the Dead works best when it remembers that it’s a zombie show first and a character drama second, and Episode 8 is a good example of what happens when it gets that balance right.
