Post-Apocalypse TV

[RottingCorpse]

12 Monkeys on Friday!

Tiffany Shepis!

[nacho]

Man... I guess I better watch this in HD.

[RottingCorpse]

So, after an IMDb check, Shepis may no be in it. Though for some reason, every other Twitter post of her's for the past ten weeks  has been about 12 Monkeys. Maybe she's just really excited about it.

[nacho]

The Last Man on Earth had some high comedy moments that I enjoyed, but it's still pretty lame. I wonder how much it suffers from Walking Dead backlash -- don't get too serious!

One problem I have is that, okay, billions of people are dead...so where are the bodies? Or any evidence of death or anarchy? The PA world is completely and totally sterilized, which makes it pretty much impossible to get into the show.

[nacho]

Giving up on Last Man on Earth. Not only is it stupid and not at all satisfying from either a comic or a post-apocalypse angle, but I just can't get over the Clean Apocalypse. This was the same problem the Survivors reboot had -- billions are dead, and yet there are no bodies, or mention of bodies. There are no wild animals, or even household pets wandering around. And everything works. Last Man is set two years after the apocalypse... Every car starts, every window is clean, every street is clear, every lawn is mown, every tree is trimmed.

I know it's a sit-com but, hey, if you're going to make a sit-com set after the apocalypse, is it so much to at least make a nod at creating an atmosphere? Maybe, like, scatter leaves on the road? Or break a window?

[Sirharles]

I couldn't get past the first episode.  For some of the same reasons...also because it was stupid.

[nacho]

Season two of The Strain. I'm cautiously hopeful mainly because it looks like they've thrown the books out the window... Which is good because, wow, the books are bad.

[nacho]

Oh, dear, George. Be careful...

George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) is gearing up to adapt his comic-book series Empire of the Dead as a new television series. The project is still in the early phases, but Romero has teamed up with Demarest Films (Tusk) to write the pilot script, in conjunction with producers Sam Englebardt and William D. Johnson.

Romero practically invented the modern-day zombie movie, but he doesn’t have much experience with television. Empire found Romero expanding on his zombie canon by introducing vampires into the mix, with a story set in New York City years after the undead plague has erupted. Not only do the survivors have to deal with zombies, but a new (old) threat arises to “take a bite out of the Big Apple.” Basically, we’re talking about a big ol’ Romero zombie movie strung out for the small screen. That’s definitely not a bad thing.

With The Walking Dead dominating the conversation these days, pulling Romero back into the fold is an excellent way for a zombie project to gain some instant credibility. But it’s worth noting Romero’s past few zombie films have been a bit lackluster (to say the least), so here’s hoping a change of medium might be just the catalyst he needs to recapture the magic.

[nacho]

The Last Ship returns Friday with a two hour premiere.

Of course, they're no longer on the ship. Now they're in Norfolk trying to rebuild America or some shit which means the show has become season two of Jericho.

I'm starting to think all these FX shows are really just vehicles for increasingly disgusting trailers for season two of The Strain. 

[nacho]

The Last Ship returns Friday with a two hour premiere.

Of course, they're no longer on the ship. Now they're in Norfolk trying to rebuild America or some shit which means the show has become season two of Jericho.

I'm starting to think all these FX shows are really just vehicles for increasingly disgusting trailers for season two of The Strain. 

Oh, right, they were in Baltimore battling Alfre Woodward and the Maryland State Police who had formed a fascist body-burning freakout Green Zone.

So the two hour premiere was actually quite passable... It's almost like they learned all their lessons last season (shockingly). We had action, nobody pulling their punches, and not too much fucking whining (the kids and the grandfather were fast-forward worthy during their long scenes in abandoned Baltimore).

Mainly, we spent the entire premiere watching the MD troopers be horrible and then stalking them down one by one and brutally killing them with machine guns and hatchets.

So now our heroes are in charge of America, I guess. They're going to "fix the problem" in Baltimore (isn't "the problem" actually the fact that 80% of the world is dead and there's no government or infrastructure left?), and then they're going to go home to Norfolk so the crew can go and find their families even though 80% OF THE WORLD IS DEAD!!

Previews for this season show lunatics forming a "master race" of immune people with numbers large enough to effectively take on a highly trained naval crew who just ruthlessly exterminated 100 MD state troopers. Oh well.

[nacho]

Last Ship update. The mast race of immune people are a culty religion. With them is Patient Zero, still bent on the destruction of the entire human race and seemingly not satisfied with being directly responsible for the death of 4 billion people. He's like Baltar from the original BSG. What's the end game? Exterminate the entire human race and...what then?

The crew is shocked that most of their families are among the, um, 4 billion and counting who died.

Nine months without supplies or government and the not only is Norfolk full of SEAL teams, but they also have pilots and a functioning administration. They've chosen not to help anyone in Norfolk, apparently, but this isn't quetsioned. They just magically appear and start taking orders from the captain. He gives them the cure and sends them to the far corners of the globe because they find a secret White House hard drive that contains a video message that says there's a massive infrastructure of secret labs waiting for them and all the secret labs are still functioning and still waiting for them even though no one has contacted them in almost a year and...

Oh, fuck it. Nevermind.

[Reginald McGraw]

No, no...you must continue.

If I'm going to provide Under the Dumb updates, you must do this!

[nacho]

Speaking of which... Where is our update?!

[Reginald McGraw]

Mrs. McGraw and I have been sucked into the Netflix series Sense8 and haven't gotten to that yet.

[nacho]

I think The Last Ship just found its groove. The "we're the chosen ones" immune cult is actually just a front for the real bad guys -- a duo of survivors from a British sub who have gone rogue and now want to...something something. Not sure what the goal is, unless the goal is just to fuck with the Last Ship. I think the goal is the same as the immune cult -- kill everyone. And stop the cure, because only the immune will inherit the Earth.

Meanwhile, we've added the badass IDF hottie to the crew and an Aussie MMA or something. Always good to get away from the cast of cowardly technicians and radar operators.