We’re simultaneously living in the Golden Age of Zombie Stories and the Golden Age of Streaming Service Choice Paralysis1. You could teach an entire writing course using nothing but zombie stories as your material, but in order for your students to watch all the zombie movies and TV shows out there they’d need to spend approximately $500 a month on streaming services.
As a result, talking about a current TV show that hasn’t garnered a lot of mainstream media attention is a risk, because there’s a very good chance no one will have heard of it. Such is the case with Black Summer, a zombie apocalypse series on Netflix that is apparently a prequel of sorts to another zombie series called Z Nation, which I have never watched. There have been two relatively short seasons so far, and as far as I can tell approximately 15 people are watching it. In part this may be due to the continuing (if puzzling) popularity of The Walking Dead, which started off strong and became, like me, a bloated shell of its former glory far too soon. After all, if you’re hankering for some zombie violence, you’ll probably watch TWD2.
But I’m here to praise Black Summer. It ain’t Shakespeare, but it has something that most zombie stories—heck, most apocalyptic stories in general—lack: Incompetence3.
Verisimiwhatever
Apocalyptic stories are great fun—but only because we all secretly imagine we’d be among the lucky few to survive. If you firmly believe that the apocalypse will definitely involve your own painful and humiliating death (for example, eaten by a riot of tiny zombie children who overpower you far more easily than your pride imagined) the concept gets a lot less fun, doesn’t it?4
And then there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect: Many of us imagine that in some sort of stressful emergency situation—like an apocalypse—we would instantly transform into badasses despite there being zero signs of our badassery before that. Despite never having touched a gun before, if the zombies come bursting through the front door, we all imagine that we’d be able to pick up some random handgun and start dealing out the headshots5.
Which is hilarious bullshit, of course, and every zombie apocalypse story that shows regular folks suddenly becoming experts markspeople and survivalists is, in turn, also hilarious bullshit. Folks who presumably spent the entirety of their prior existence sitting behind desks and playing video games instantly being able to nail a rapidly moving zombie in the head, then coolly disengage like a goddamn Navy SEAL, is a heavy lift in terms of suspending disbelief. Or it should be.
Black Summer takes a different approach, and it’s great. The survivors in Black Summer aren’t competent supersoldiers—they panic, they miss most of their shots, and they spend a lot of time running in complete terror6. They have no idea how to survive in the wild and spend most of their time scrambling from one shelter to another, eating whatever they can find and usually ending their day screaming as they flee another zombie7.
It’s glorious. And it feels real. Well, as real as a zombie apocalypse story can get. And having its characters be terrified fuckups in a situation that would absolutely breed terrified fuckups lends the show an air of verisimilitude that most apocalyptic stories lack. In real life, people unfamiliar with firearms can’t just start dealing out headshots, people who aren’t trained fighters can’t struggle against dozens of grasping zombies without collapsing in exhaustion after a few minutes, and most of our time would be spent running. And probably screaming.
The Joy of Schadenfreude
Here’s the thing: Watching incompetents struggle against zombies like flies in a spider’s web is a lot more fun than watching some grim, sardonic expert casually massacre five hundred screaming monsters. There’s a certain lack of Plot Armor in Black Summer that’s refreshing—while the core main characters have a certain level of durability, enough of the other characters are slaughtered to make the death of even the those core characters a possibility, which adds a bit of tension that most shows like this lack.
And the incompetence adds energy, because it feels real. If some screaming person started running towards you, determined to eat your face, you’d likely do exactly what the characters on this show do: Run, in a panic. No one times an expert martial-arts kick, no one calmly sets themselves and takes a shot. A zombie arrives and people run, even if they’re heavily armed, because the chances of taking one down with a headshot in the three seconds before they’re on you are very, very low8.
This also means that having a gun doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in charge in the Black Summer universe, another refreshing change that amps up the power of the narrative. In most stories like this, if someone has an automatic rifle or a handgun and the will to use it, they get to call the shots and abuse people as they see fit. In Black Summer people certainly try that but no one is ever in control of a situation for long. In season two, for example, there’s a group composed of former law enforcement or military types—guys who own their own body armor and assault rifles9—led by a grim, taciturn man. Despite being extremely confident in their ability to dominate others and control situations, by the end of the season they’re pretty much all dead, and only rarely (and briefly) in charge of anything.
Because Black Summer understands that in an apocalyptic situation, chaos reigns, and chaos cannot be controlled. Where lesser apocalyptic narratives have characters with master plans and extensive control over their environment, Black Summer gets that no matter how hard you plan or how many guns you have, other people will have guns, and other people will have plans too—and when the zombies break into your compound, you’re going to run in terror like everyone else10.
In other words, it’s a zombie apocalypse for the rest of us: Those of us who know we have the hand-eye coordination of an elephant, and the running speed of a block of wood. People like us know we won’t last long when the zombies come, and it’s a joy to see a show that gets us. It’s also good writing, because it rejects and subverts a ton of really boring tropes without appearing to try.
Of course, knowing you’re going to be chum when the undead rise saves you a lot of time. Instead of building my Apocalypse Bunker, I can just sit here and drink beer until they come for me. Cheers!
Next week: I am Jack Torrance’s subtle insanity.
Increasingly, the existential question of the modern age is whether or not Ted Lasso is enough to get you to spend money on Apple TV+.
I noped out of TWD after spending an eternity on the farm. People tell me that the show recovered and got good again. This is an obvious trick, as the show was never actually good.
Finally! A subject I am an expert on. Jeff’s time to shine.
There’s a whole other essay about the appeal of apocalyptic stories being rooted in the sudden, exhilirating absence of rules of behavior. But I am a slow, ungainly man whose sole skill is a superficial appearance of intelligence. I love the rules of behavior. I need those rules of behavior. Without them I am dancing in cage while bikers throw bottles at me.
For many, video games have served to reinforce this belief. Me, I only play video games when I can use God Mode, so again, there is cold comfort there. What I’m trying to say is that when the zombies come, I’m pouring myself a whiskey and sitting in a comfy chair until they come to eat me.
One of my favorite aspects of the show is the way the complete and total collapse of civilization appears to occur in about 15 minutes after the arrival of the first zombie. After the events of 2020 an 2021, this feels … right.
As an Eagle Scout, I am here to tell you that surviving in the wild is not easy. Nature wants to kill you, and everything is a trap.
Are Fast Zombies the greatest literary invention of the modern age? I’m thinking maybe.
And who almost certainly have a ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag somewhere in their house.
Or, if you’re me, you’re going to emit a high-pitched scream, trip over your own shoelaces, and die how you lived: Showing your ass.