Most zombie-themed shows, films, and graphic novels feature a strong, tortured male lead who saves the day, experiences heartache, and has a female sidekick who just also happens to be an insanely hot zombie-killing machine (or, at the very least, a perfectly coiffed tomboy). (One outlier: Sarah Polley in Zack Snyder's tolerable Dawn of the Dead remake, but that was really an ensemble effort.) Seldom, if ever, does one find a zombie film featuring a lady who is the leader of the plotline. But that's not the case in Netflix's new horror comedy Santa Clarita Diet, starring Drew Barrymore.

Created by Victor Fresco (the same dude that created the oft-forgotten Better Off Ted), Barrymore plays Sheila, a successful realtor whose idyllic life with her husband Joel (Timothy Olyphant) and daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) in Santa Clarita, California is torn apart when she wakes up one day to discover that she cannot feel her heartbeat and vomits copious amounts . We quickly learn that Sheila has died—but she is also living, and is now a zombie who must eat people to satiate her hunger. Eerie hilarity obviously ensues.

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If you've been a human on the planet over the past year, you've probably noticed that feminist ideology and the role women play in society have been hot topics, what with the government legislating our bodies and the President boasting about grabbing us when and wherever he pleases. You can stop with the eye rolls; I know I turned an article about zombies into a political thing, but I'm just following the time-honored tradition of the genre, which uses the undead as a framework for examining a variety of social issues. So hear me out: Santa Clarita Diet is a big deal for the zombie genre. It completely changes the perspective of how zombie stories can be told.

Specific instances within the series blatantly separate it from the typical tropes of the zombie genre. For starters, it has a diverse cast and rarely relies on racial or gender stereotypes to bring jokes or plot twists. Sheila and Joe's neighbors, for example, are an interracial couple and multidimensional characters that aren't reduced to their race. Santa Clarita Diet is a series cares less about identity politics and more about letting its characters exist as real people in an albeit absurd, zombie-loaded scenario.

Netflix

Sheila is not a barely dressed young woman fighting alongside a heroic man, but rather a nuanced middle-aged mom with a relatable job who likes to walk with her friends and hang with her family. When has there been a better time in America, when women are fighting for their rights in a variety of ways, for a show like this to glorify a pretty average woman while working within a genre that seldom does so?

If you look at any major zombie franchise that has hit the western markets over the years, there has yet to be one that truly revolves around a female protagonist; usually, she's a badass sidekick, or a love interest. Think about it: Shaun of the Dead, 28 Months Later, The Walking Dead, and Zombieland all follow that setup. This makes for recycled storylines turning a fun yet terrifying genre into an ultimately boring one. This makes the storyline of Santa Clarita Diet and the character of Sheila—who, by being a zombie protagonist, is already a subversion of the genre—such a breath of fresh air.

Santa Clarita Diet also openly embraces feminist themes by empowering its protagonist, allowing her to stand up against predators as well as depict her as sexually assertive. There are no images of a naked Sheila aggressively tackling any man of her choosing. The moment Sheila gains her zombie powers, however, she instructs her husband to go down on her—yet it's not in-your-face or graphic, but rather sweet. It cleverly shows the intimacy between a middle aged married couple without shaming or glorifying a woman for getting the sex she wants.

Netflix

Perhaps one of the greatest differences between Santa Clarita Diet and all zombie genre is that there is no idea of "the other". Usually, zombies are a threat to everyone, and have names like walkers, biters—you get the point. Yet in Santa Clarita Diet, Sheila is not treated as an outsider. Sheila's head will not be stomped in; rather, her family treats her zombie diagnosis like a serious ailment. It's almost as if Sheila has a rare case of cancer, and her family lovingly rallies around her, instead of fearing her mere existence.

Despite the fact that this show is marketed as a quirky comedy, the gruesome gore of Barrymore murdering and then consuming people definitely puts this into the horror genre. The absurdity of this show is a welcome—albeit kitschy—take on what is woefully played for serious shock and disgust. When the fabric of our nation is seemingly pulling apart at the seams and it feels like we're about to enter a zombie apocalypse ourselves, it is nice to see a TV show come out that shows a woman leading and living her best life, having friends of all backgrounds, and having a family that loves her—even though she is a zombie.

Can it be possible for a modern woman to have it all—the loving husband, the adorable family, the career, the all-consuming desire for human flesh? Santa Clarita Diet suggests it is, and it's about time.

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