The gang has decided
it’s a priority to get more Brain Biscuits before the whole Talker population
becomes zombies and this whole conflict between humans and talkers becomes moot
and everyone is dead anyway
This leaves Doc and
George to head to Altura to rescue Dante or assure he has a fair trial.
Warren, 10k, Addie
and Murphy head towards the bakery which makes the biscuits, right on the edge
of the no-go zone (which Murphy is not a fan of). There they find a bakery with
lots and lots and lots of cracked open skulls which is super indicative that
yes there are brains in those biscuits
The bakery looks
abandoned and is utterly utterly creepy. Super creepy. More horror films need
to be filmed in abandoned bakeries.
The creepiness
quickly falls apart when we meet the bakers - a pair of Canadian brothers.
And, thank you Z
Nation. My co-blogger Renee is, as everyone knows due to my many references
to igloos, polar bear and moose, Canadian. This will give me YEARS of
ammunitions, YEARS.
So the two Canadian
brothers are… not exactly competent or sensible and are walking comic relief.
Addie and 10k easily take down one and then Warren and Murphy take down the far
far more competent of the brothers. Duly subdued, the Canadians reveal that
their mother came up with the recipe after their little brother was bitten and
they became so popular they went into mass production. The problem is that
their mother, and another brother, were all bitten and she’s the one with the
recipe. In her pocket. They’re all now locked in the office.
Time for some half
baked schemes involving a boom box, rock-paper-scissors, the less competent
brother and trying to pick pocket mother zombie. It goes as badly as expected
and we have the incompetent brother being bitten as well
And a quick wave of zombies that everyone takes down - and 10k seems to be finding his mojo, with some really excellent tag teaming with Addie (they work exceptionally well together). In the aftermath Warren decides it’s time to stop playing, cracks open a zombie skull for the brains which they feed to the zombie family (wait, zombies can eat zombie brains?) restoring them to Talker-dom. To which mother baker can now whip up a batch of original recipe biscuits using the zombie brains they have
But she reveals that
she hasn’t been making this recipe for a while and they get “enhanced flour”
from the Hartland - and that lack of supply is what lead to the biscuits
shortage and the whole family turning to Talkers with the shortage. So this has
Warren & co heading to Hartland with Murphy taking the vulnerable Canadian
family to Limbo to look after them.
As they say goodbye
Murphy and Warren have more chemistry than, well, every other show on
television ever. The intensity is massive and it’s not exactly sexual but it’s
deeply deeply emotional. As Murphy leaves with his vague wish Warren look after
herself, Warren responds “I love you too”. And I believe it
Another really
meaningful scene is Addie and 10k talking about his missing hand - and with
lots of prodding and poking Addie manages to make 10k talk about it, how it
feels and how devastated he is by it. And how he is mourning his missing hand -
Addie, a woman with one eye, can sympathathise and relate. It’s powerful, I
applaud.
And now for the weird
part of the episode
George and Doc are
driving to Altura and we have a nice moment - when Doc tells George not to put
her feet on the dashboard because she could be hurt in an accident by the
airbag and George is kind of bemused at this being something people worried
about. Doc still has fears from before the apocalypse which seem cute now.
And then they have an
accident, George sprains her ankle and there is a lot of cannabis consumption
and talk of politics. Which involves Doc, while stoned, explaining the founding
fathers and the bill of rights to George. It’s vaguely amusing but bizarre. Who
is Doc talking to here? Their presumably American audience who should know this
stuff? (I mean, I’m European and I know this stuff). George? Who, as was
explained this season, was in college when the zombie apocalypse. Presumably
she already knows this stuff? She shouldn’t be shocked at the fact women didn’t
get the vote from Founding Fathers or the gross injustice of slavery continuing
long after the Constitution and Bill of Rights was signed. Who needs to know
this? Why? Why is this being explained?
And I can only assume that the writers of Z Nation assume their readers truly don’t know this?
Problematically they
also draw many comparisons between slavery and the current treatment of the
Talkers - and they’re trying to make a point that dehumanising anyone, seeing
them as less, is bad. Which is a good point. But comparators like this constantly
belittle real world prejudice and suffering and we can’t ignore that Talkers,
without their Biscuits do try to eat people’s brains. This is a legitimate
worry. Black people, no matter how much I believe Renee can get hangry, do not
start eating brains if they get hungry. The comparison falls and is dubious
It goes on to be
problematic by having George come to the revelation that people should care
about Talkers because everyone will be Talkers some day - everyone dies. So by
reducing rights for Talkers you’re inevitably going to hurt yourself. Which,
yes, true - but at the same time if you’re going to make comparisons with real
world prejudices try to not then work towards a solution which just doesn’t
apply and shows how dubious the comparison is.
They then find
Dante’s dismembered body and George gives him mercy.
The episode was a bit
disjointed - we had the whacky canadians but then intense emotions from
Warren, 10k, Addie and Murphy then we had George and Doc’s weird weird weird
history lesson all just felt like it didn’t work well together
