Santa Clarita Diet Recap S02E01
If you’ve ever gone shopping hungry and stood in front of the display of groceries, deep in thought but yet unable to think at all, and couldn’t figure out what exactly to buy, what to make, what to eat, what would fill the hungry hole inside of you, well, newly undead Sheila Hammond knows just where you’ve been.
Opening the fridge in Santa Clarita Diet Episode 2, Sheila picks over cold raw chicken, all puckered up in a bowl, and beef so tartar it is seeping; she tries them all but unfortunately, none of these meaty options are hitting the spot. Once you’ve had human flesh, it’s hard to go back, and until Whole Foods stops being so mainstream, there’s really only one way she is going to get her three-a-day. Uh-oh.
“Honey, put on your fancy killin’ jacket, we’re going out for dinner!”
Sheila doesn’t actually say this to her honey, Joel, but they do discuss, as a couple, this pressing need for sustenance. This conversation happens as Joel tucks into a nice breakfast and Sheila whines about being so, so hungry, and legal flesh just not being enough. The fact that Joel can eat at all, after he and Sheila have had a previous night’s fun dumping Gary’s soupy, viscous remains (a truly revolting scene – well done, art department!) out in the desert, is beyond my ken, but he’s frying up some incredible, edible eggs and bacon, and the wife is watching with so much salivating lust that I thought she might eat him.
Anyone who has ever been on a diet may lose sympathy for Sheila here, suck it up and eat the bloody ground beef, girl. It’s marginally better than ricecakes or a pepper cleanse. Regardless of what Richard Simmons says, diets aren’t supposed to be fun. Your trim husband chowing down on a full English brekkie (note for UK readers, it was not a full English) while you are feeling empty isn’t ideal, but a lot of us have been there.
But like Sheila we all cave in at some point.
Murder, She Ordered?
It’s a time to kill, John Grisham, but wait; the Hammonds are nice, ethical people – they can’t go out and just murder willy nilly! They have to go show a house to Mr. Nilly! Bwahahaha, that’s so funny because, actually, you guys, as Drew might say in her baby voice, it is so not normal. This is a point that gets wackied-up, so cutely belaboured, so over made, that I wanted to kill myself, become undead, make pacifiers out of my big toes and use them to shut up that f’ed out run of dialogue.
So “We Can’t Kill People!” does try to give Joel and Sheila an out – after she tries the deli selection in the fridge, she tries the cold cuts at the City Morgue, in a very smutty little scene. Agreed, an embalmed foot would be extra-disgusting to try and eat, all pumped full of chemicals. Necrophilia does seem more appealing, and possibly more environmental .
The awful neighbors don’t make an appearance, save one. The nosy tough guy cop, Dan (I thought that was you, Ricardo Chivara – but you had so much more fun when you used to live on Wisteria Lane and only had a cheating wife, a swapped baby and the occasional murder with which to deal.) Dick-for-no-reason Dan pokes around the Hammond’s back lawn, prompting nervous Joel to tapdance around with wild-eyed cover stories of spraying for ants, and Sheila, in the most real moment of the episode, to tell Dan to mind his own fucking business. Murder, bleaching up blood and a potentially awkward Homeowners Association meeting aren’t the only worries for our duo. Teenaged daughter Abby, played by someone who is somehow not Julia Stiles, is skipping school, swearing, and weirdly coming into the marital bed for cuddles, all as part of her angry acting out. Snuggling in your parents’ bed as a teen instead of going off to hang with your one friend, Eric, is probably not my first instinct, but then my mother’s morning breath only smelled of gin and my dad looked nothing like Timothy Olyphant.
SANTA CLARITA KILL COUNT: 1 person, 1 rooster and 1 foot
More Santa Clarita Diet Recaps here: EPISODE 1 – “WE CAN’T KILL PEOPLE” EPISODE 3 – “WE CAN KILL PEOPLE”
A former ABC National, Dallas and Atlanta radio personality, Martina O'Boyle is now making movies and covering culture in London, Dublin, and as far in Europe as the cheapie flights will take her, for Pop Culture Beast.