Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
'Black Summer' is Traumatic | Zombie Book Club Podcast Ep 51
Join us as we explore the bleak world of "Black Summer," the Netflix sensation born from the creators of Z Nation. We'll introduce you to the show's key characters—Rose, Spears, Sun, and Anna—whose unpredictable fates and resilience will keep you glued to the screen. Brace yourself for the relentless pace of its fast-moving zombies, which add a gritty edge to the survival narrative and a deeper conversation about how trauma responses—fawning, flight, fight, and freeze—play out in extreme scenarios. Drawing from real-life experiences and therapeutic insights, we analyze the behaviors of "Black Summer" characters and discuss the complexities of trust and vulnerability in life-or-death situations.
Whether you're a horror aficionado, a fan of dark humor, or just love a good survival story, this episode promises to be a banger.
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a show on Netflix, and it's one of the most bleak and horrifying depictions of the zombie apocalypse I have ever seen. I don't have anything funny to say about that, it just is it is. I'm Dan, and when I'm not surviving the bleak horror of everyday life, I'm writing a book that harnesses the gritty bleakness of my time in the army to craft a horrifying tale of how society will collapse from the inside during a zombie outbreak. It's a real pick me up. There's no humor in it. That's not funny at all. Oh, wow, can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:It has dark humor, things that are so messed up that you're like ha, hilarious. I look forward to reading it. I love it when my favorite character died that way, are there going?
Speaker 2:gonna be any dogs that die horses. I'm gonna kill so many dogs and horses. Dan laughs maniacally.
Speaker 1:See this is the kind of humor that I offer in my book.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm leah um and speaking of death, I would die in the first five minutes of episode one of black summer. I am not surviving this kind five minutes of episode one of Black Summer. I am not surviving this kind of zombie or this kind of TV series.
Speaker 1:It is bleak, it is terrifying, it's rough, I am dead. Today we're talking about Black Summer. It's a TV series on Netflix. You know who made this. The same people who made Z Nation a very campy and fun and hilarious joy ride through the zombie apocalypse made this gritty fucking horror show.
Speaker 2:Whoever that is needs to be a part of our book club because clearly they are in the venn diagram we've discussed yeah, if they can write gritty to funny yeah, why not?
Speaker 1:yeah, you never know, maybe we can get them on the podcast, you know you know, who it actually is. I think it's Craig Eiler is the name. All right, craig, I forget the name exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong. But also made Sons of Anarchy, the Shield, a few good ones out there.
Speaker 2:This isn't the moment where I should admit that I've not seen either of those. It's okay. Okay, but regardless. Very different from Z Nation, and we release episodes every Sunday on all podcasting platforms, so subscribe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it helps Give us five stars yeah.
Speaker 2:All that stuff. Just from this intro you should give us five stars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this intro is the best intro.
Speaker 2:I think we've had some better ones.
Speaker 1:This is an episode 51 intro baby, it is episode 51 immediately after recording episode 50 because this is what happened, so let's get into it. Yeah, uh, what is this?
Speaker 2:what is black summer? It's two seasons so far. There are rumors that season three has been canceled. Um, which we're very hopeful, is a lie, because the end of season two has real hope in it. Like I want to see what's going to happen next. Not hope as in. I think good things are going to happen. I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Not saying it's good, there's hope that they will suffer more.
Speaker 2:Yes, in an interesting way for us to watch, because that is what humanity does. We love to watch suffering on television. So this is a summary from z-nationfandomcom. This is a summary from z-nationfandomcom. A mother, torn from her daughter, embarks upon a harrowing journey, stopping at nothing to find her Thrust alongside a small group of American refugees. She must brave a hostile new world and make brutal decisions during the most deadly summer of a zombie apocalypse. In the dark early days of a zombie apocalypse, complete strangers band together to find the strength they need to survive and get back to loved ones. Love it. Season two. Winter comes with cold-blooded new challenges during the zombie apocalypse, as frantic scavengers and violent militias battle the dead and desperate. I think that is an unfinished sentence.
Speaker 2:I copy-pasted this directly and didn't read it first. Yeah, they are desperate.
Speaker 1:Militias. Yes, yes, you know, not many zombie shows or movies take place in the winter.
Speaker 2:This was kind of unique in that way. And season two, a clear decision to go from summer to winter, but call it black summer yeah, black summer, part two winter yeah, so we've got some, uh, some key characters.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. Before we get into these characters, what I love about this show is no character is safe. There are plenty of people that they introduce as main characters and they do not make it.
Speaker 2:I don't agree with that. I think you can tell who's going to stay safe right from the very first episode, but a lot of people that you think would continue along the journey don't.
Speaker 1:Well, our first character, Jamie King, who plays Rose, could have very easily died in the first season.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Many times.
Speaker 2:Many times they're not surviving because of necessarily skill. A lot of the time it's luck, yeah, and sometimes skill.
Speaker 1:Justin Chu Carey plays a person named Spears slash, julius James.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something untowards happening there might have taken over somebody's identity. My favorite character is sun uh, who is a korean immigrant to the united states who speaks almost zero english. I think understands a little bit, yeah, but understandably has a hard time speaking it because it's hard. New languages are hard, yeah, but they're also, I think, one of the most resilient and interesting characters in the show. And then, of course, there's rose's daughter, anna, who comes up a lot and is present through a lot of this. So there's a lot of other people we'll probably talk about, but those are the four you need to know yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:There's other ones, my favorite, barbara. I have a whole thing about barbara later. Yeah, we'll talk about barbara later. Let's talk about zombie types. What kind of zombies are we working with here? Leah, fast as fuck, fast as fuck zombies rageful yeah, these are, um, definitely rage.
Speaker 1:Um, like this is a viral zombie, a vz. Um, if, if that's one of my con plan 88 versions of zombies. I don't remember anymore, such a long time ago. I got to re-listen to that episode, so I know what the hell I'm talking about. Uh, but yeah, that's, uh, there's a zombie virus. They are uh immune to everything except headshots. They are fast as fuck. Important note everyone who dies turns into a zombie.
Speaker 2:And pretty quickly, very quickly it is. Everything about this is fast and they are also, I would say, relentless.
Speaker 1:In fact, there's one person in season one who turns before their body even hits the ground. Yeah, they die from a gunshot wound and they are running before anybody even knows that they're dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is like a worst case scenario zombie situation. This is not Shaun of the Dead shambling zombies. This is not takes me two weeks to reply to an email zombie, but I am. These are fast ones, yeah, and that's what makes it terrifying, because surviving in this world is almost impossible. That's how it feels from the very beginning. Uh, it's like I don't know that anybody's gonna make it out alive, or how they do, and a lot of the time it does feel like luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I, if I could say, though, um, a lot of the people, a lot of the main characters, are pretty incompetent killers of zombies, and I think that's one of the things that makes this show so great is that you have these people who are just normal people. They don't know how to bash in a zombie's head with a shovel. They don't know how to stab somebody in the brain. They can't even score a headshot. With an entire magazine of bullets and a semi-auto handgun. There's popping off rounds down the street. They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Are these zombie zombies you have to shoot in the head? I think so, right, they'll just keep coming, yeah. Headshots only Headshot, only zombies. If they're undead, shoot them in the head, yeah.
Speaker 1:If they're undead, shoot them in the head.
Speaker 2:Dead don't die rules still apply.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I appreciate that they are not, uh, a bunch of skilled fighters. There's clearly like there's your military folks who are more skilled. There's a cop character that's more skilled, but there's really only one character who's at the very end of season two. That is actually like an impressive fighter of zombies and it's, I think, a lot of that's adrenaline and luck yes like he is fighting for his life.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I love the end of season two, but let's not get into that, right now.
Speaker 2:It's why we want season three. Yeah, this is our second time. Sorry, I should repeat, I should correct myself. This was my second time watching this. Yeah, and your fourth fifth Probably.
Speaker 1:I usually rewatch this entire season. Every time that you go on a business trip, me and the dogs, we make popcorn. Um, ziggy eats popcorn until he's sick, nero eats popcorn until he's done eating popcorn because his threshold is much higher.
Speaker 2:And then I eat, uh, several bags of popcorn and sometimes a block of uncooked tofu yes, I also eat uncooked tofu while watching black summer so you don't even know how many times, more than me, but we re-watched it, inspired um, because we knew ollie eats brains was watching it, yeah, uh, and has a zombie that we're actually gonna share at the end of this episode, their take on um black summer, um you know, black summer.
Speaker 1:Every time I watch it, I realize that this is something that I need to store in my brain Because, more than just about anything, this is like my manual for how a zombie apocalypse should be, should be In my mind In a theoretical, fictional world For my story.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's this scary and this bad, yeah, and this tense, yeah in this bad, yeah and this tense, yeah, because the the running um. The experience of this show, at least for the entirety of the first season, is I don't feel like there's a break, a break, like I'm just constantly breathless, eyes glued to the screen, can't look down because somebody's gonna die and also most of the scenes are done in one shot.
Speaker 1:So, like you're, you're, it's like you're along for the ride with the character and you're experiencing it, as they're experiencing it, and it is just non-stop and relentless yeah, and the cinematography is great.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of music, they have a lot of silence yeah, almost no dialogue for most of the episodes yeah, and I think that's those are the things that make it feel very real and really excellent.
Speaker 2:But we're jumping in, don't we love? What I want to talk about first is the second time that, um, I watched it. Maybe it's because I'm a lot of therapy, I don't know but immediately I was like wow, this series is like a study of the four trauma responses that humans can have in horrible circumstances. Um, you have characters who are fawning. Do you know what fawning is, dan?
Speaker 1:oh, I do it all the time. What's fawning? Fawning? Do you know what fawning is, dan? Oh, I do it all the time. What's fawning Fawning is when you just kind of like, go along with whatever your abuser wants, so, like, so you just smile and nod and joke and you make pleasantries, you do whatever they ask you to do and you just kind of like, just kind of like you. Just, you just bow your head and you're like yeah, you're right, I am, you know, let's, let's go do the thing yeah, it's like codependence, it's people pleasing behaviors.
Speaker 2:Um, all of those behaviors are survival techniques and they are one form of, like trauma response and something bad is happening as you can fawn as one way of trying to survive, um, and that shows up and we're gonna. I'll give you a rundown of how it shows up in the show in a moment, um, but just briefly. The next one is flight. What's the flight?
Speaker 1:trauma response oh, flight is when you run your ass off as soon as. As soon as something goes bang, as soon as somebody runs in and they're covered in blood, you're just like I'm out yeah, I'm gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it shows up in daily life, like if you're a perfectionist, if you have a hard time sitting, still, if you're really overly anxious, that's your flight response coming in. Um, if you're avoidant, like you're like, oh, this thing is, I know that if I go talk to this person, that's also a flight response.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice, yeah I do that all the time. There you go, uh, and then my phone rings and I'm just like go go into voicemail. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there's fight. I think this is the most obvious one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean when you resort to aggression as opposed to any other means of dealing with an issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, all of these are survival responses that in many circumstances are a good response. Yeah, and often in our society, our uh responses people have because they've experienced the trauma and they don't really know another way. It's not always the appropriate way to respond, but it's what we're doing anyways.
Speaker 1:and then last and at least, there's freeze yeah, freezing is when you shut down, when, uh, either you shut down verbally, emotionally, or if you actually physically just stop dead in your tracks like a deer in headlights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and so people, apparently genetically. I was told by my therapist it can be passed down through generations that you might have a tendency to a particular kind of trauma response. You may learn a trauma response because of an environmental circumstance that you're in that is traumatic and this is your way of coping. I only learned like a year and a half ago that I can be I can fawn as a trauma response, which was honestly really hard to grapple with personally. But my therapist really helped me by understanding that any one of these responses is a valid response in a moment of trauma if it's going to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I go through all four of these. You know some people might not know but I am diagnosed with PTSD from my time in the Army and probably by childhood. If we're being honest here, don't tell the VA that. But you know, fawning when I fawn it feels gross and I don't like it. When I freeze, that feels like I start to feel like a really small and insignificant person and that feels gross. Flight I feel less gross about but like I feel like I'm just like trying to stay one step ahead from of all of these stressors in my life and it just keeps on following. Um, but when I have a fight response, that's the only time that I'm like yeah, I told somebody to go fuck themselves. Oh, it felt so good, it felt good and it like that's such a dangerous feeling to feel when you're having a PTSD. Response to stress.
Speaker 2:Well, because you're feeling power, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Like all those times that I fawned or I froze and I'm like I was helpless and I couldn't do anything. I told some guy in the Tostitos aisle to go fuck himself and I'm just like, yes, I would have taken him into the parking lot and fought him about this and I would not have backed down because I'm ready to fight and that feels so good to fight. Just tell somebody what I think right to their face, their dumb, stupid dip opinion having face. There's a story behind this. We'll tell it some other time.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you're able to get that out though.
Speaker 1:This happens to me more at work. At work, I'm less likely to freeze or fawn and I'm more likely to jump out of my truck and start yelling at somebody, either because they're being a total dickhead or they're just completely fucking everything up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that's the one that serves you best, right In a lot of cases. And probably yeah, and probably the guy who told you you should get some dip with your tostitos didn't really deserve to be told to go fuck himself. He did.
Speaker 2:No, see, that's your toxic fight. Talking right now, I get it, I have a toxic need. No, he did try to notice and not do it, but regardless, I guess you know this makes a lot of sense. We're talking about our own experiences, because these are things you do and I'm sure as you're listening to this, you're thinking of your own experiences and which of these four you have a tendency towards or moments in time. Sorry, if this is bringing up memories for you, I'm sure for everybody it does to some degree. But my point is that these aren't normal stress responses, uh, but long term, if you have a traumatic event and you are not able to emotionally resolve it or move past it, the stress response becomes like over activated, and I think what you're describing with your fight response is like an over activated fight response.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, it's. It's literally like uh, parts of your brain are actually shutting down, like your brain is deciding to send less blood flow to certain parts of your brain in order to survive. So, like in the case of a freeze response, at least in PTSD patients, they'll notice that there's a lack of blood flow going to the brocus area, which is the speech center of the brain, and that's because it wants you to just shut the hell up and be very quiet and still.
Speaker 2:That must be why Black Summer is so quiet. Yeah, maybe. Which is why I wanted to bring this up is because I think that Black Summer is the best depiction of trauma responses that I've seen in the zombie apocalypse. I think it's the most true zombie apocalypse. I think it's the most true to life. I think it's how people actually would respond in a lot of cases. I don't agree with all of the interpretation of the writer in terms of the overall arc of humanity, but I think it is like demonstrative of what might happen in a situation where we were all put under serious pressure. One of the things that you said to me when we first got back together was that the way that you really know who somebody is is when they're under pressure. Who are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a line from I forget who it was. It's an ancient Chinese philosopher and he said that you can live with a man for 40 years, you can share every meal with him and you can talk on every subject, but not until you hold that man over a volcano. Do you actually meet the man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is really, um, I think you told me this, cause I was in the process of getting divorced when you told me that, um, so we were not dating them, but that was very helpful for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, like around that time, like there's there's there's a lot of things that you have to figure out for yourself when you're getting back together with somebody, especially if you have history with each other. Um and I think yeah, and I think that a lot of people would like I would second guess a lot of things, but what I saw was that you were absolutely in your worst place and you were still being kind to the person who was doing harm to you.
Speaker 2:One might argue, I was fawning.
Speaker 1:That's probably true. But also, you weren't fighting, you weren't being malicious, you weren't hurting them on purpose because you had so many opportunities to hurt that person that hurt you and you were choosing to be civil with them and make logical choices that got both you and them legally separated from each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah in the fairest way possible. Yeah, and in that moment I saw who you were when you were held over a volcano, and in that moment I knew that I could trust you, because I saw who you were in your worst moment so bringing this back to you uh, are you in your worst moment going to tell me to go fuck myself for some day?
Speaker 2:I'm kidding you. I. I've seen you when, um, things are hard for you and that's just when you kind of shut down because you know you need space and that's okay, that's a, that's a perfectly valid response and people need time. But in the zombie apocalypse you don't have time.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, my, my ptsd. While it is something that's debilitating in normal everyday life, these are things that my brain has decided it needs to do to protect itself. And my brain also wants to protect the things that are important to me, like the people that I love and the people that I care for, and our dogs and our valuables. So the way that that comes out in me is that I'm not going to fight the things that I'm trying to protect just as a way of how I'm programmed, but like if something happened to us, then the most violent parts of me would come out.
Speaker 2:Good to know. I mean, that's why you're handy in apocalypse, yeah.
Speaker 1:And when there are disasters, kind of like when Simon's car broke down we talked about that a few weeks ago my brother, moving up here from Georgia, his timing belt broke on the highway in Virginia and that was a disaster. And because it was a disaster, I was operating at my most efficient. It was like when there are catastrophes are one of the few times that I actually feel like I'm a functioning human being.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you had to live through them over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:Also because my brain is like there's a disaster happening. I'm going to reroute all of this blood flow and chemicals in a way that's efficient for your survival, because I've been doing that every single day when nothing at all was happening and now something is happening. You can use all of this stuff to now go be efficient.
Speaker 2:Is there any character in black summer that you feel has a similar approach like do you think Rose is kind of like that where they just are constantly like they just are in pure plotting mode?
Speaker 1:I think. I think the survivors are like that. Well, they all are in some capacity. Their their brains are rewiring themselves before our eyes while we're watching them. Um, I forget the name of the guy who's the construction worker that goes to the diner with Sun and meets up with the guys driving the truck that rammed them off the road, and so on and so forth. His response is fight Right. But it's very similar in the sense that he's not out there to hurt people and he'll go out of his way to save people who he thinks are good people that he wants to save. But when somebody is trying to hurt him or his friends, he's waving a hammer out the window at them, like I'm going to fuck you up, man, yeah, like you're irresponsibly aggressive in those moments. But when it comes to protecting somebody, he won't cross that line. He won't leave somebody to die, even though it'll save him, because he needs to help his friends stay alive.
Speaker 2:He was a really interesting character who I think, dies. Yeah, I think, think, yes, he does and since we're not giving enough detail, hopefully that's okay to say on the podcast. Yeah, a lot of people die. A lot of people mentioned four who mostly don't die. One of them dies I'm not gonna say who out of the four that we listed, um, but who do you think? Uh, most demonstrates the fawning response in black summer? Oh, because this is the person actually who got me thinking about it. I was like, wow, this is an incredible.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've ever seen such a good example of fawning you know, I don't remember his name, but in our notes we have him listed as the guy who leads them to the lodge. Season two there's this character who claims that he's an airplane mechanic and he knows where things are. He's, he's very, he's a very silly character, like he's got like. There's something going on with this character that, like some screws have loosened in the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:And he's he's fully a fawn machine machine. Yeah, because, like, the only way that he knows how to survive is to ingratiate himself to others, and most of the time, everybody else is threatening to kill him. They're like we think you're lying, so we're going to kill you, and he's pleading for his life all the time.
Speaker 2:He never goes into fight, fight or freeze, he is purely Fawn. That is his only strategy. Well, he does flight.
Speaker 1:At one point that's true, and it doesn't necessarily work out for him no um, but he was left with no other options.
Speaker 2:Fawning has only has only taken him so far yeah, I think there are circumstances where, even if you have a default mode, in a circumstance like that, if he had fought he would have died, if he had frozen he would have died. Flight was his and fawning was definitely not an option with zombies, zombies don't care if you fawn other people you can fawn with and and it might keep you around like it did.
Speaker 2:it did buy him some survival time with rose and her daughter to get them to the lodge, but his life was constantly under threat and he never once tried to fight back.
Speaker 1:You know, that's an interesting thing to consider is that, like zombies, of the four trauma responses, there's very few that work with zombies. Flight or fight, yeah, and oddly enough, most people wouldn't think it because they're like you have to fight the zombies.
Speaker 2:But flight black summer shows flight is the most effective way to deal with the, the zombie response, the zombie trauma response yeah, I think it is the most appropriate zombie trauma response if there's somewhere to fly, to, flight to, to run from and fight only works if you are skilled in fighting, like if that is your go-to trauma response, then that's, and you have training if you're lori calcaterra, you might be able to kick some ass, because lori is uh skilled in many martial arts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, but if you're me I mean if you're me honestly I'd probably go into the flight, but I'd be doing like a flight, like hiding. I'd like get to the first place I could hide, because I can't run um again freeze, you'd find your you'd find you can't people please a zombie. I'm just realizing it's, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's the only one that doesn't work all the time yeah, 100 of the time.
Speaker 2:With zombies, don't fawn. Yeah, the other ones could I mean freeze can work if you have a hiding place.
Speaker 2:I think if you're hiding, that's flight response, because freeze is when you are dissociating. For example, I'm not just a fawner, I've done all of them, I'm a well-rounded trauma response person, but I've definitely frozen, and this is an over-activated response. Say, for example, in work meetings where there's conflict happening person, but I've definitely frozen like um, and this is an over activated response. Like, say, for example, in work meetings where um, there's conflict happening, often I will freeze and my brain is just like leaves the building, for example, um, so I wouldn't call running and hiding freeze. Freeze is like um, a zombie is running at me and I can't move, okay, yeah. Or I'm not doing the things that are protective because I have like dissociated from reality, like I think the best freeze example is again I don't remember any of these people's names the person who's constantly running away from zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I forget what his name is. I think it starts with a, b, like Bran or Brad or.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's call him Runner Guy. Runner like bran or brad or yeah, let's call him runner guy, because most of the time he's in flight and he's constantly running and, honestly, it works for him for most of the movie he is the sweatiest character he is running, he is running, running, running, running, running. Um, there's only one point where we see him really fight and it's because he has no other choice. Yeah, and he doesn't. He doesn't do a good job, he doesn't do a good job not at all.
Speaker 1:he tries to hit a zombie with a with a fire axe and when he goes to swing the fire axe gets caught on something behind his head and then he like screams to hit the zombie and drops the axe behind him and then has to run again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but he freezes when he's not in immediate, immediate danger. So freezing is like you're having difficulty making decisions, you're stuck, you're dissociating, you're numb, you're numbing yourself. So when they're in the school which, oh, we gotta talk about the school in a bit but when they're in the school, I mean, I think number one survival tip I feel like everybody should know this by now is don't make fucking noise right. And in this uh series it's very clear that noise attracts the rage zombies. And this guy decides to try and play the fucking drums in the gymnasium, or what do they call the room with all the music stuff.
Speaker 1:It's a band room. The band room, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the music room and Rose is like fuck, stop, dude. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're going to attract zombies and Spears tells him that if he tries some dumb shit like that again, he's just going to shoot him, or something like that.
Speaker 2:So he's either in full flight mode because there's an active zombie running, or he's fully dissociating. Like the way he behaves when there's not an immediate threat is like everything is fine, everything's fine. He's that guy, he's that cartoon with the dog with fire behind him. It says everything's fine.
Speaker 1:That's the most interesting thing that I noticed about that character I think he's probably the most interesting character of season one is that, uh, there are these moments where he just does seem to completely check out. It happens in the music room when he tries to show the, the deaf guy that he's, like you know, tapping his fingers on the drum, yeah and everyone's like what the fuck is wrong with you, stop that.
Speaker 1:And there's a a point later, when they get separated and he's in the um, he's in the library, he was, he's running. And then he finds himself in the library and it's like somebody's flipped a switch in his head and he's just like oh, books, yeah, I like these. And he sits down, starts reading a book and then you start to hear like zombies running in the hallway, people screaming, shots are being fired and like his book starts shaking and then he just kind of like slides out of his out of his seat in the middle of the library not in like behind something hiding and he just lays on the floor. Yeah, that's freeze, and he is just like like he's out in the open, but he's just like I'm just gonna lay on the floor another example of him in freeze is when he finds the grocery store.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, and he's going and like there's lots of. I think this is almost like a trope, where there's a grocery store and like it's a joyful moment.
Speaker 1:But he's like an untouched grocery store.
Speaker 2:Nothing's been looted yeah, but in this case he's not overly joyful. He's acting like it's a normal day and he's shopping. He even goes to the fucking checkout. Yeah, like it's normal.
Speaker 1:He walks in this place. He's been running, he's limping, he's running. He finds himself, he goes into the automatic doors and he walks in and it's again like somebody flipped a switch in his head and he's no longer running anymore. He's just like, oh right, I should pick up some stuff. So he gets himself a shopping cart and he's just like going through the aisles, he's picking out, you know, like, hmm, should I get this? He's like looking at the, at the nutrition facts, you know, choosing which cereal, cereal he wants, puts it all into a, into a shopping cart, goes to the checkout line, he's putting it on the conveyor belt. There's nobody there, yeah. And then he's like, oh, I forgot something, I just got to go. He goes back to another, another aisle, and that's when, because he didn't think to lock the door of the automatic opening doors of the grocery store, I'll be wanders in because the door opens for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he just kind of like, he's like oh shit. And then he just kind of like hides and becomes small, so like he alternates between flight and freeze constantly and it's bizarre to watch it really is.
Speaker 2:He's a fascinating character. He talks very little on the show yeah, because you're watching him do one of those two things pretty much the whole time. And then there's fight and obviously it's a zombie movie. There's a lot of fight, but mostly with other people, yeah, uh, less so with zombies. Who do you think is the best um example of the fight response as a trauma response in the show?
Speaker 1:oh well, there's. There's the construction worker. He's uh, he's great at the fight. Response there's spears um, one of the few characters with a gun. Yeah, um, terrible with it, but he tries, he tries, you know, he does his best. Uh, it's revealed at a later point that he led a kind of violent life before the apocalypse, so he's kind of geared towards that response we don't know a lot about his life before.
Speaker 1:We just know a little bit yeah, there's a uh, a police officer in season two who has a full-on break from reality at the beginning, when they're showing us his origin story, where he's uh, he's just getting all of the supplies in his house. He hears zombies running around in his house. He's saying something like, yeah, I'm going to be right in there, I love you guys. Something like that. And he works his way upstairs and finds his horde of shotgun shells and a shotgun puts on his body armor, looks at himself in the mirror and takes off his wedding ring and then just goes completely dark and just drops his wedding ring on the floor, which is kind of like an accelerated version of like disassociating from reality and only feeling the fight, response and being like I choose not to feel this pain anymore.
Speaker 2:This is no longer me I'm I'm dead inside now yeah, the way he looks at himself in the mirror.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like it goes back to the who are you in a fire? Um, and one of the worst things are happening. And who he is is not a good guy. He only sees fighting as the only option. He's the leader of one of the militias and his entire uh way of being is taking from other people, killing other people. Everybody's the enemy, not just zombies. Uh, he does not know another way, and I think that's like again an over activated trauma response, because there are overtures in the show where people could work with him. They tried it, they try to work with him and he cannot do it. But what's really weird is there's this moment at the end where he blames everyone else for not being willing to work with him and that's why everything's gone wrong and it's I'm.
Speaker 1:It's a baffling moment to me yeah, he has a whole monologue and it's like we could have all gotten along and what he says is true, but it's like he forgot that he was going around just like starting shit with everyone yeah and not like instead of taking offers of um allyship trying to think of what the word is like alliances he like shoots people instead, after they've offered it, like he's not a good guy.
Speaker 2:yeah, so that's really interesting too, because I I think that, um, unless you've been in a lot of therapy, I don't know how much people think about their trauma response. I think it's helpful. Yeah, I think it's helpful. Yeah, for me anyways, it's helpful because I can see when I'm doing it. I'm not always able to change it in the moment, but, um, I can at least reflect on it and then like, sometimes if something happens where I'm like, oh, this is a work situation, and my fawning response kicked in, or my freeze response kicked in. Maybe I'm delayed in my response because of that, but I'm able to say, oh, you know, I didn't actually handle that in the way that I wanted to and I can go back and address it later. Best case scenario in the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, whenever I tell somebody in the grocery store to go fuck themselves, I feel like I handled it perfectly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know what. I do actually think that maybe the I want to be right is kind of a fight response, because I also find it deeply satisfying yeah, and it's and I know it's fucked up to be so satisfied by being right yeah.
Speaker 1:I found. I found that that difference interesting, that I've mentioned earlier in this episode how I feel about different trauma responses, because like it's all coming from the same place. It's the hypervigilance of our trauma trying to keep us safe and it has four ways of doing that and it's interesting to wonder why some ways feel bad and some ways feel really great. Yeah, like releases so many good feelings and like what's that all about? Shouldn't I feel bad if I blow up at somebody because they harmlessly suggested that I should get dip for my Tostitos?
Speaker 2:I mean probably. My therapist would probably be like what does this remind you of from your childhood? You don't have to answer that for this podcast.
Speaker 2:Or what does this remind you of from another time that was difficult, to that for this podcast, um, or what does this remind you of for like another time that was difficult?
Speaker 2:Uh, it's kind of annoying sometimes unpacking stuff in therapy, because just recently, I'm not going to get into the details, but essentially my therapist thinks I minimize things and I told her something that she didn't know before from my childhood, which, of course, happened because she asked me a question. I was telling her about a problem I was having and then she asked me about if I'd ever experienced this kind of thing as a child. And it's annoying, I think that's all I was trying to say is, I'm like I don't want to talk about being five anymore, but it actually is helpful because you understand what the root of it is and it's not about judging yourself for those behaviors. It's more like, okay, I did this for a reason, but is it the thing that I need to be doing now, in this moment? Yeah, which leads me to the next big theme that I think is connected to this and also very human is that even in like regular life, I think most of us are wired to seek out safety. Yeah, we all want to feel safe.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean in this world of capitalism where you know we don't have to worry about wild animals tearing us apart in the streets. You know, the thing that capitalism nailed to keep us all in line is that we never feel safe, no matter how much fucking money we have, Doesn't matter how much we have in our retirement fund or our bank account, or how good our job is, how much we've saved, how many cars and assets we have. We could be a fucking multimillionaire and still think that we need more.
Speaker 2:I mean Mark Zuckerberg's bunker that we talk about is billionaire bunkers. Yeah, that's a good example. I actually had a panic attack the other night about money and we're doing okay. It just was I had to. We had to make a big expense for the house and I was like, oh no, yeah, my body is having this huge response to this thing. You didn't feel safe. No, and here's the kind of scary. Reality is that actually none of us are ever fully safe because we're never, sorry.
Speaker 2:We're never fully in control. You can only do so much. Things can happen to you at any moment in time, and that is one of the hardest things for me personally to make peace with, because most control behaviors are about trying to be safe and the reality is there's a lot we don't have control over. So, like I love having my job, I think of my job as really secure versus having my own business. But the reality is they could lay me off and we could be fucked up tomorrow, which was actually what made my panic attack. I started thinking like, oh God, what if I get laid off? And then I started spiraling. There's no threat of me being laid off just for anybody who might actually be worried.
Speaker 1:This is just my anxious brain and plus, we do have a lot of options.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do, and we have a lot of privilege and more options than many. Yeah, but that response is still there, and that's probably hyper vigilance, which is another thing we see a lot of in this.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, the hyper vigilance. The episode, I see it in the notes. I know you were about, probably about to say this, but I'm gonna steal it from you. No, I want you to say it, go for it. Uh, the lodge episode when, uh, when they get to the lodge in season two um, the daughter, is it Annie Anna?
Speaker 2:Anna.
Speaker 1:Um, you know Rose, when she gets to the lodge, it's a big hotel and the power is still on. They have running water, they have hot water and everybody goes to their rooms. They're really happy about that. They've got food, they've got hot, running water all the conveniences of modern everyday life that they've been missing for months. While they've been running, it's the dream non-stop from zombies and uh, and rose is like I'm gonna take a shower and she goes in there and all the fucking mud comes off and gathers in the bottom of the shower. It's actually a really great moment, cause you're like, I feel that I feel you've been there.
Speaker 2:You've been there, you get to be showered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and she's, you know, she's letting her guard down, she's allowing that to happen, which really sets off her daughter's hypervigilance. I think is what this is about is like because I felt this too when I came back to the states was like I'm like nobody. Nobody's worried about getting blown up right now. Nobody's looking at that piece of garbage on the ground and thinking there could be a bomb inside of that. This is crazy. Everybody's just walking around like they're gonna be alive tomorrow and like nothing can kill them. This is scary as shit. And then every time I'd hear an air raid siren which this is 2006 or whatever. So every song has a fucking air raid siren, and I'm like duck and cover.
Speaker 2:We're laughing, but it was not. Where's my kevlar?
Speaker 1:where's my gas mask?
Speaker 2:yeah, this at this point in time. Um, when I encountered you in 2010, you still had everything ready to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically in a closet behind you there are two flak fests that I still keep. Yeah, um, I don't feel like I need them as much, but I've got them, so I'm keeping them around, you know I don't think it's the worst thing. Yeah, I'm around um, but what I love about this is because they so brilliantly captured the ptsd hypervigilance, as rose not rose anna is sitting there refusing to get into the shower, refusing to clean her greasy fucking hair oh yeah, the hair is so greasy Refusing to even blink or turn her head away from the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, won't sleep. She's watching the crack of light under the door because she is positive that something is going to walk by that door. And she is like that all night until she starts hearing a noise and she goes to inspect it and there's a door open, being blown open and shut from the storm, and she has this really interesting moment which is kind of hard to make out if, like you, don't really understand what's going on. But she looks at a reflection of herself in the glass and she she makes a silent, screaming face at the glass while holding a shotgun in front of her. It's fucking terrifying and what I recognize from that is that she is a young girl and in this world that's a very dangerous thing to be for her, and she wants to know that she can look terrifying to someone else. She wants to practice looking terrifying to someone.
Speaker 2:It's interesting if that's what you took, because I was like are you trying to see what you'd look like if you were a rage zombie? That's where I went.
Speaker 1:I mean, we don't know for sure, she was holding the shotgun in front of her too.
Speaker 2:That's true, she was pointing it at her reflection. Yeah, it was just really, really powerful. And then, I think, also such a great example of hypervigilance, because I can acknowledge, as somebody who has hypervigilance around other things in my life, that if you keep looking for a sign that there is danger, you will eventually find something to justify your fear.
Speaker 1:And sometimes it'll be a good reason to be afraid yeah, in this case I don't think it was so.
Speaker 2:She eventually finds zombies. She does, yeah, locked, but they're locked in a in a hotel room. They can't get out there. They could probably shoot them through the window from the outside if they wanted to. It's not an immediate danger, but she is absolutely convinced that she's like we are. That that was her justification to say we are not safe and we have to leave. Because she was definitely in flight mode, and so was her mom, when right in front of them was the perfect fucking place to stay. Like why leave the lodge? You have everything you need, nobody's there and nobody knows about it. Yeah, it's perfect, you should not leave.
Speaker 1:But because of this feeling, this compulsion to keep going, because nothing is ever safe, yeah, this is something that I can relate to, because this is what a lot of soldiers feel like when they come back from a war zone is that there's an illusion of safety that everybody else seems to think is there, and it feels more terrifying to be safe than to know that you're in constant danger, to always be looking around, being like, yeah, it could happen at any minute. It's almost comforting sometimes to be like, yeah, a bullet could take my head off in any moment, but the second that everyone's like you're safe, now, there's nothing around here. You're like you sure has anybody looked?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how I mean my hypervigilance shows up in our relationship, which, dan, you're like. You sure has anybody looked? Yeah, that's how I mean my hypervigilance shows up in our relationship, which, dan, you're incredibly patient with. Um, I hope, because you know I'm self-aware of it. But that's me like, because you're such a safe person and sometimes, especially in the early days of our relationship, because of what I've been through previously, um, that freaked me out even more because I was like when am I going to to see the real Dan? Like when is this you're going to drop? When is he going to be actually a terrible fucking person? And it made me more hypervigilant and more stressed and like picking fights with you in the beginning. Yeah, so very different example, but both similar mechanisms for functioning and trying to keep yourself safe, because you're the safest person I've ever been with. And in the beginning of our relationship, I found that incredibly uncomfortable. I just couldn't trust it. I was constantly like I was like her in the lodge. I was looking for any reason to not trust you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also I just want to note on like her, her not wanting to take a shower in that moment Cause like like I feel like any rational human would be like, just do it. You've been out in the fucking woods for like months, Look at your hair, Do something. And I really identify with that. And I think a lot of people with PTSD as well especially combat PTSD, which is like to to do anything other than be vigilant, especially if it involves taking off all your clothes and standing inside of a shower can feel really scary because you are being vulnerable.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:To be naked and in a shower is vulnerability. It's letting your guard down, and there were times where I didn't know if an air raid siren was going to go off in the middle of a shower. So I'm like I have exactly eight seconds to get all of my gear on and run to a bunker if we're about to be bombed.
Speaker 2:So you would avoid showering for as long as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was an active decision. But I found that as this developed in me and these anxieties continued to grow, especially stateside, I'm like why am I like this? And now it makes so much sense? Is that it's allowing myself to be vulnerable to attack?
Speaker 2:Is that why a lot of veterans also eat really fast, maybe.
Speaker 1:That might be the Army. They just don't give you a lot of time. Yeah, in basic training they're like you have five minutes to eat as much food as you can, wow. And then. And then they hold you to that. Like you sit down because there's not enough seats for everybody. Like a whole company will go to lunch at the same time and you're cycling rows of people out for new rows of people. And then they're like like all right, this group is done, get up and throw all your shit over there and get in formation. And then you like, whether you're done or not, you gotta, you gotta throw it away, wow.
Speaker 2:So like when you, when you hear the, when you see the drill sergeants start to stand up, you're like oh, and you start just shoving food in your mouth like as much as you can, just like I need to eat as much as I can. I need this energy. That sounds very traumatizing all by itself. Yeah, uh, I think that overall, this show I just is such a great example of, like the question of who are you in a zombie apocalypse, who are you when the chips are down, which trauma responses are useful in which situations and which aren't. I think that's like just noticing again um, when you're doing those things, and in this case, because it's such a traumatic situation, I feel like everyone is a loose cannon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the other big theme that everyone's learning at the same time who they are yeah, uh.
Speaker 2:the other theme is like you can't trust anybody in this world. I, unless they are, you know like rose trusts anna and anna trusts rose. Like blood relation is pretty much the only thing I've seen, and that's like a parent-child relationship too, not even like partners, because season one, Rose and Spears like they develop a bond and they trust each other very deeply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that doesn't carry through to season two.
Speaker 2:It does not. And it doesn't because rose's primary purpose for living is protecting anna. That's the most important person to her. She'll do anything for her. But in the meantime, betrayal, selfishness, um, basically there's like weird underground societies where there's sexual assault happening and abuse like it's. The ugliest side of humanity is Black Summer. It's not a pretty look at humanity. I don't know that it would always be quite that bad, but I can see how it could be that way, particularly in the very early days when it's so desperate and so many people are just deeply traumatized and just don't know that they can trust anybody.
Speaker 1:Many people are just deeply traumatized and just don't know that they can trust anybody. Yeah, there's a lot of people just trying to get by and there's opportunists that think that this is a way for them to fulfill their needs or desires and they can build something out of it that will both fill the needs of the needy people while filling the desires of them, because they find themselves in a situation where they have their needs met and they're like maybe I'll meet your needs if you meet my desires.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty messed up. It's not pretty Kind?
Speaker 1:of like the world we live in.
Speaker 2:I think that's one part of humanity. Yeah, black Summer is kind of like black mirror. It's definitely looking at the worst of us, the worst part of us which is part of, is part of who we are, but it's not all of who we are. Um, let's, let's shift to like the other things we love that we haven't talked about yet oh yeah, I love the things that we love.
Speaker 1:The things we love, yeah, my favorite uh, I'll go first.
Speaker 2:Every zombie is fully human before they are a zombie. You know them as a person. I love this. You have some sense of who they are and what they care about. And then there are zombies. So you're attached to everybody who does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I this took me a couple of viewings to actually realize because, like, I'll kind of like forget which characters which what's happened, in what order, because sometimes it gets a little bit dodgy what order we're going in time wise because of the editing of the show, but typically if you see a zombie, it's probably somebody we've seen before and we've followed this person around for a little while and now they are chasing people down and trying to kill them. So it's not just a faceless horde of flesh eating ghouls, you know, it's like there's Barbara.
Speaker 2:It's a physical manifestation of that distrust and betrayal, which is that at any moment, someone can turn and hurt you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is basically my hypervigilance, is exactly that. Everybody who has ever been safe to me at some point yeah, not everybody, that's facetious, but a lot of people. That's my biggest fear. What else did you love?
Speaker 1:You want to know what I loved? Yeah, yeah. So this show has so many stories within the stories that we never really get the full scope of. We only see a hint that there was something going on that we'll never know about. They were having their own show and now they've crossed over into the show that we're watching and we're seeing them turn into a zombie or something.
Speaker 1:We see this right away in season one, where we briefly follow this person I think her name is Kate and we first see her get hit by a truck.
Speaker 1:Then we shift perspectives and we see her alive with who we assume is her boyfriend, and they're like they got a map, they're trying to figure out where they're at and uh, and she's like she's kind of frustrated wanders in the street. Truck hits her and then she's a zombie and she starts running around the neighborhood terrorizing the neighbors. You know dogs are barking at her, um, and we kind of see like what you know the zombies capabilities are like their problem solving and their reasoning abilities, so it's kind of serves that purpose. And then there's a point later where we shift to somebody else. I think it's sun, if I, if I remember right, writer um, or the deaf character who I can't remember the name of, and we see all of this take place in the background of what they're doing. We see the woman running around as a zombie, chasing people, attacking people, and it's like whoa, there's so much stuff just happening all the time as they say, it's all happening Also, just like real life.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that freaks me out when I'm, like you know, in a grocery store or just walking by people and be like every single one of you has a full fucking life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like the level of detail to everyone's stories in this story is really fantastic. And like if you're a writer, you should strive to be this detailed with your stories. Like the best way to let people become immersed in your world is to let them believe that it's real. And nothing feels more real than realizing there's stuff going on that the author isn't even telling you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's one moment's, one moment where I forget who it is I'm pretty sure it's Rose walks into a house and the in the house there's a guy with a gun and a bunch of people who he's pointing the gun at that are on their knees tied up. Yeah, and you never know what the hell's going on there or why that was happening.
Speaker 1:You just leave the house, yeah, and then she closes the door. That's it. That's the last we hear of those people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't know that's like such an incredible moment. It's satisfyingly unsatisfying because I want to know what happened to them. The card game communication between daughter and mother, Rose and Anna, was super cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this happened in the mansion in season two. Yeah, they find their way to this mansion. There's already people there and they're a little bit unhinged. So Rose and Anna sit down and they don't talk to anybody else, they don't talk to each other, but they start playing cards and we don't realize it right away. But what we learn is that they're using the cards to communicate about the people in the room, keeping track of where they are in the room, what's going on, and they're making decisions through communication with the cards and it's not totally clear to me anyways exactly other rules of the game.
Speaker 2:In fact, somebody tries to come and play and they're like this is complicated, and they deliberately make it really complicated so that he gives up yeah, they keep on changing the rules and then like acting like, uh, like he's just not getting it they're like.
Speaker 1:They're like yeah, well, first the past, present, future. And you just put down a card I'm, I'm doing past, so you do present. And he puts down a card and they're like you don't get it and what's interesting with that?
Speaker 2:that's also a story in a story. They don't explain to you how they develop this mechanism, but clearly this was a survival skill that they developed because they had to in previous situations that got them to this moment. Um sun is also like just her character overall the korean immigrant character because one she's incredibly resilient and savvy at survival in a place that is not her first language, yeah, and has to communicate across a massive language barrier. It's really amazing to watch and I appreciated that story.
Speaker 1:It's not a story I think I've seen before done this well at least yeah, um, I think sun is almost everyone's favorite character for exactly that reason she's very endearing even though you don't unless you speak Korean, you don't know what she's saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very intentional. They don't have subtitles.
Speaker 1:I do think that if you're watching the show and you're getting really into it, it's worth looking up what she actually says, because there's a point at the end of season one that she has a very long monologue in front of everybody and everybody. They don't know what she's saying, but they're very moved by it. It's, it seems, because she's also becoming very emotional and she's talking about. She's talking about her mother and how she remembers her mother and she hopes one day to like to to see her mother in this one place that she used to go I think I don't remember exactly, but it's it. It shows like there's a story within a story, like most of us aren't going to know what she's saying if we don't speak korean and they're not going to tell us what she's saying because that would that. That's. That's not the experience that everybody else is having yeah, it's so complex and multi-layered.
Speaker 2:Um. The last thing I want to mention that we loved, or that I loved, was there's this whole episode where it's not clear whether it's the character spears is hallucinating or if he's actually run into somebody who knew his older brother yeah, uh, back in the neighborhood that they grew up in and is with him.
Speaker 1:It's not clear from the very beginning to the very end whether this guy actually was ever there or just fully a hallucination yeah, they play it out like this is just a guy that shows up and for all intents and purposes, it is actually Brathwaite, this guy from the neighborhood that he grew up in. He follows him after Spears has gotten an injury and helps him survive in the woods, stops him from doing some dumb things and then helps him do like like, build a fire and, uh, tries to offer him some food. Turns out he has a nut allergy and he couldn't eat it. Um, later on they go to they. They are running from zombies in the woods, find them to find their way to a cult house where everyone's already about that.
Speaker 2:Another story in a story jonestown themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's only one guy left. It was like the ringleader and he just says I was waiting for you and hands a gun to Spears to finish him off, and the whole time, the first time that I watched it, I'm like is this guy real? And then I'm like by the end of it I'm like I guess he's real. And I watched it a few more times and it wasn't until this last viewing of it. I'm like I don't think Brathwaite was real.
Speaker 1:He rides away on a white horse which makes me think of death, and he crosses a river Hanging from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think that I don't think he's real, but we don't know for sure he could be. Yeah, be, yeah. I'm curious what people think if you've watched the show, if you think breath weight was real or not. Let's talk about what we did not love. Oh, did we not love things? Um, season two had so many gems in it, but it wasn't in fucking chronological order, and sometimes that's awesome, sometimes that's really well done. This time I was just. I was confuzzled, as I like to say.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what was going on half the time season two, episode one starts in the middle, then it goes to the beginning and then jumps around for a few more episodes and then goes back to the middle and then becomes chronological after the halfway point which is the point where I start enjoying it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I would say watch episodes two, three, one, then four, because it's so unnecessary, it's so stupid and I think that this lost a lot of people. Yeah, and if I had to point my finger at something, I'd say this might be the reason why there's no season three.
Speaker 2:Which would be heartbreaking, if that rumor is true, because the end of season two has such a cliffhanger yeah I want to see it I mean it's a satisfying ending, but there needs to be more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, you know what?
Speaker 2:just tell a chronological story unless there's a purpose, which there was no purpose. Like Memento is a better movie, memento it's Memento. Like a memento, what did I say? Like a memory Memento and that's different. Yes, I don't think memento is a thing actually, but memento.
Speaker 1:Memento.
Speaker 2:M-E-M-E-N-T-O Memento. Did I just get be a word, memento, yes, so memento has a purpose from christopher and alan yeah, um, and if there's a purpose in black summer to be all over the place, it's not clear in the same way that you get the payoff in memento, so like why they did it, I don't really know. And like.
Speaker 1:Maybe the. What they're trying to depict is that, like trauma can make memories confused and hazy where things don't happen the way that you thought that they happened. It makes time feel a bit confusing, because I do feel that, but also I don't want that to happen in TV shows. I have a hard enough time with real life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I need to know what's going on. It's already so fast-paced, you just got to let me watch it you know I still write 2003 when I'm filling out forms.
Speaker 1:sometimes I don't need a TV show to further confuse me.
Speaker 2:That's quite a year to choose 2003. It's my favorite segment of the show now, dan. Yeah, yeah, it's the racist, sexist, capitalist, colonialist, ableist misogyny of the living dead.
Speaker 1:Oh, we love all of those things. Misogyny of the living dead.
Speaker 2:Oh, we love all of those things Relatively quickly because I think folks are at this point relatively familiar with the different tests that we do. But just to quickly recap, Bechdel test do two women talk to each other with something other than a man? It's a pass. Oh yeah, there is interesting um commentary on gender overall. There is the character barbara, who I think you wanted to mention in the beginning is like an ode to night of the living dead because she's incompetent like the original barbara and the 1968 version yes, but she's an old lady, so it's kind of like is this the barbara that survived 1968, did she?
Speaker 1:survive two zombie apocalypses maybe? Well, actually in the first movie she doesn't survive true right.
Speaker 2:Second one, she does the remake yeah, maybe I don't know this is, but it's a. It's another incompetent kind of barbara. There's definitely the threat of sexual assault numerous times and misogyny, but I think that the way that it's depicted is intentional and um sort of critical and serves a purpose.
Speaker 2:Not, it's not just like let's put women in terrible situations because we like to watch that, yeah, um, so I think it does a good job for representation for women yeah, I mean, there's multiple um female main characters who drive the plot forward and not they weren't just like shoehorned in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they, they serve a purpose and they feel real what about the race test, dan?
Speaker 2:do you think that it passes?
Speaker 1:I think so yeah, we've. Uh, we've got spears um, we've got um airplane mechanic guy we've got sun got sun.
Speaker 2:We have construction worker guy construction worker guy.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, I think it's pretty diverse, actually, like it's um, of course, of course unsurprising the main characters eric rose and anna are white, but I think and they the show is centered around them, so you still have centering of white people, but it is uh, a lot of other primary characters are not white. Yeah, um, and again, like, I think that the storyline of sun especially makes this a unique one, because not only does it show the experience of someone who is Korean, but also an immigrant's experience, also somebody who does not speak English as a first language, and all of those things are new things I've not really seen done well before in the zombie genre. So I was really happy with that Vito Russo test. In terms of having LGBTQ plus characters, what do you think?
Speaker 1:We don't see evidence of any. No, um, but also I this is.
Speaker 2:This is a difficult one because it doesn't really focus romantic relationships or um sexual identity as story lines you know, I was thinking about that at first, then I thought more about it and it is very present. The threat of sexual assault is very heteronormative. Um, there are men and women who are married to each other, like Rose's husband's in the beginning, yeah, uh, there's um mother son dynamics that feel very gendered as well, and stereotypically gendered, which I guess is not um as well, and stereotypically gendered, which I guess is not um romantic relationships. But again, I think, like what I said in episode 50, what I've realized is there's ways to make that a part of someone's identity that isn't necessarily like have to be a romance, yeah, as part of who they are. So I think we can still do better there. So that's a fail. Um, and last but not least, the fries test, which is about having um people with disabilities appearing as complex individuals, and the narrative is not solely about overcoming a disability. Yeah, and you ideally have actors with disabilities playing these roles Pass or fail.
Speaker 1:I'd say pass because season one we have a deaf character. I wish I could remember their name. Maybe they don't have a name because they don't express it.
Speaker 2:That's very possible. They don't have a name because we don't talk a lot in season one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if they're unable to communicate because they're deaf and they have difficulty speaking, they might not be able to communicate their name to somebody.
Speaker 2:Their deafness was definitely a primary part of their story, which I think is fair because it would be their experience of the world, and I do wish that there was a little bit more to their character than demonstrating how hard certain things would be if you were deaf in an apocalypse. I do think that was the primary purpose of that character, but they existed, so that's a start.
Speaker 1:They were also a very kind character and I think that a lot of their story arc was like somebody trying to navigate the world not just with disabilities, but also trying to do the right thing and to be kind to people, and it completely fucked them over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, spoiler alert. And then you pointed out this other one, dan, which?
Speaker 1:I appreciated. Barbara can't read without her glasses. She needs glasses. She doesn't have any glasses and the first thing that we see her doing is trying to read a map. And she has a minivan and she almost gets robbed of her minivan and then construction worker guy comes along and saves her from that guy. Um, and the only thing that she can really offer the group at this point is help them navigate. And they're like he's. He's like tell us where we need to go, read the map, and she's like I can't see anything without my glasses. And then sun has to do it. Even though she can't communicate in English, she's able to look at the map and is trying to tell the guy where he needs to turn. So Barbara can't read and she can't really fight or do anything that helps the group and that puts her in a really bad situation. So she has to depend on their kindness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which the first person that wanted to steal her van wasn't going to give her. No, she was useless to him, so he told her that he would beat the shit out of her if he didn't get out of the van.
Speaker 2:Even though he was the same person who told her that she needed a man in the apocalypse yeah, to kick her out of her own car. Classy, moving on to the could you do it better question, I've been wanting to talk with you about this since the very first time we watched black summer, not even knowing that there would be our zombie design book club, which is. There's this moment where the runner guy we've already talked about him a lot um is running from a zombie and his only option is to run on top of a bus. And he's stuck on a bus the top of the bus, school bus and a zombie is running around him running around him trying to figure out how to get to him. Runner guy the only time I ever see him do any kind of fight is he decides to throw his shoe. I think was not really a fight. Actually he's trying to, like, distract the zombie with the sound of the shoe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, utter fail. In my opinion. Bad, in my opinion. Bad idea. You need shoes. Yeah, you need those shoes In the apocalypse. What would you do if you were caught on top of a bus?
Speaker 1:You know, I don't think you need the shoe to kite a zombie away from where you want to go. So you have some advantages to you is that the zombie can see you if you're standing. So walk towards the back of the bus and he does that a couple of times but go to the back of the bus and then lay down flat and then very calmly, low, crawl to the front of the bus and slither off like a snake, you'd have to be very silent, ninja level silence which I don't know if this guy can do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know if you go slow.
Speaker 2:so slow is smooth and smooth is fast well, the thing about it is that he was safe for a little while up there, but eventually the zombie figured out how to climb up there yeah, the zombie actually kind of went into um, like a dormant mode, like he laid, he laid down on the on the bus and just like disconnected from reality, looking at the sky.
Speaker 1:And he's there for like who knows how long, couple hours maybe. And when he goes to look for the zombie, the zombie's just kind of like standing there, like looking off into the distance. If he stayed there long enough, it's possible that somebody might have made some noise and drawn him away. Yeah, but he ends up making too much noise and that zombie comes right up the hood, the same way that he got onto the bus in the first place, and comes after him, and then he tries to parkour his way over to a motorhome.
Speaker 2:Parkour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and falls through the roof.
Speaker 2:But, he escapes. He escapes that zombie. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't do better. What Is all the running and flailing that this guy does? Holy shit, it's like it's nonstop. He is agile. This guy deserves an award for how much running he did in this show, and I don't even remember his name.
Speaker 2:I wonder if part of the casting was like okay, you need to run for however long.
Speaker 1:He's probably like a long distance runner. Yeah, he has to be able to do that, he probably got the job because he's like I can run my ass off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he's also a good actor, to be clear.
Speaker 1:I don't want to minimize his role.
Speaker 2:He's a great actor and the guy can run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, could you do it better?
Speaker 2:No, I think, yeah, I think the only option I would have in that circumstance is to lie on top of that bus and like, just not move. I think I would have stayed there a lot longer than he did. Like you said, I would have just been like, okay, I'm going to stay here until something draws the zombie away. Get some rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially if you're running.
Speaker 2:so much like your calves must be sore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rest until it wanders away, gets bored, yeah, like don't move for a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't even. I don't think that's necessarily good because, like, say, you shift your weight or you roll over, you could make a sound the zombie rovers you roll off the side. You roll off the side like I. It was a.
Speaker 1:He was in a bad situation so I can't really blame him um, you know what else I think would be a better, um, a better way to do this? What is to access the emergency hatch on the roof of the bus and climb down inside of it. That door is definitely closed because it's in the parked position. It's closed and locked from the outside. There's a handle on school buses near the front window, right, but they can also be locked. Being a school bus and the fact that it's parked, this vehicle most likely has fuel in it, but is the key in it. I guess you don't know. Um, it's probably not in it, but it's probably close by. But also, I wouldn't need it. Oh, I mean it's. I didn't know you had that talent.
Speaker 1:It's a, it's a pretty simple diesel engine. So you know, you just uh, you just wire up the fuel pump and uh actually probably has a mechanical fuel pump, um, but then you uh give, uh give the hotline to the starter solenoid and then hold the ignition wires together and uh twist them up and they'll fire up.
Speaker 2:this is the hottest thing you said to me all day. Yeah, yeah, I love. I did not know you had this skill.
Speaker 1:This is why we do the podcast Survival tips.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do some rapid fire ones that I saw this, so let's go back and forth, dan, okay, yeah, number one, wear your seatbelt, otherwise you're going to Barbara. That'll make sense if you watch the show. What was number two? Uh, this one goes along with number one. Don't drink and drive, yeah that's also good.
Speaker 1:Not in the apocalypse, in the apocalypse, not in the apocalypse. You need your wits about you. I know you want to disconnect from reality, have a few swigs of whiskey while you're driving, but it's not a good idea don't do it.
Speaker 2:Number three stay at the fucking fully stocked grocery store, but make sure you lock the door behind you.
Speaker 1:Literally all he needed to do was just latch the deadbolt and that zombie never would have came in, because the door wouldn't have opened automatically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we talked with JL from Oneshi Press about how you could actually retrofit a grocery store and start building a garden on top. There's so much opportunity there.
Speaker 1:And the glass in the windows of a grocery store are plexiglass. They're meant to withstand a lot of blood force, because you know they need to hold up against, like riots. What's number five, dan, keep your shoes on. This is a great one, and you know what? This is also something that I have a hard time with with my PTSD responses. I don't like taking my shoes off, because what if the house explodes or catches fire and I need to run outside really fast this is, uh, the antithesis of who I used to.
Speaker 2:Before plantar fasciitis, I was a barefoot lady yeah but now I have my shoes on all the time. Um, last but not least, stay at the fucking lodge. Stay at the lodge that is fully stocked with food, uh power, hot water, comfortable beds, doors you can lock.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stay at the lodge and lock the doors behind you I partially disagree with this one, because the lodge, with all of its lights on, is a target well, don't put all the lights on I think that they should have turned all the lights.
Speaker 1:Yes, they should have turned the generator off, except for when they need it. Conserve the fuel, take a shower, like once a week. Get some hot water once a week. Add propane stoves. It probably had a propane water heater, but it's a hard place to protect something that's that big with only a few people. But what you definitely could do is I'm sure that a lodge like that has snowmobiles, that that's that big with only a few people. But what you definitely could do is I'm sure that a lodge like that has snowmobiles, because they got to do emergency response somehow, if it's like somebody breaks their leg out on the ice. Load up with as much as you can supplies, food, water, a fucking propane tank, I don't know and go find a near nearby house with very few, very small windows and big heavy doors, something that looks like you wouldn't want to go inside of there because there's probably nothing in it anyways. And you, uh, you just hold out.
Speaker 2:I think that would make sense. You could find like just a part of it and hold out. You don't have to have a whole thing functional. How many Zeds would you give it, Dan?
Speaker 1:Oh man, if it weren't for the weird time jumping around in season two and the fact that they fire thousands of rounds without reloading in season one, at the end I would give it a 10. But it's I mean, it's so good anyways, and there's only a few things that really bother me I got to give it a nine, not nine and a half, but nine zeds.
Speaker 2:I think that that's pretty good. I'd give season one a 10. Yeah, I'd give season two a seven, and I think seven is sometimes generous, but it gets a seven because the last couple episodes are incredible. So I don't know if that averages out to, because I don't want to do math, but like, maybe like an eight and a half or a nine. Talk about man's no, there's so much more here. This is just a taster for those who haven't.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, I mean, we could do multiple episodes on black summer yeah, we could do reviews just on one episode, but we're kind of like whole season kind of gorillas over here, you and me. I want to end this with a zombie from Ollie, also known as Ollie eat brains. Ollie eat brains.
Speaker 1:Ollie eat brains.
Speaker 2:Ollie eat brains. These are zombies that they have on their Instagram, which is really fun, and, like I said at the beginning, I was inspired to re-watch this because I knew that ollie was watching it and I think, um, we talked a little bit about it back and forth and then I read their zombie and, because I have no memory, I don't remember what they said about it. So this is gonna be a live read of black summer. Uh, ollie's take on black summer. Ollie says, um, six, five out of six brains. Wait, there's six brains on your ollie.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have to explain this to me later six out of five out of six uh plot multiple stories of survival at the early stages of the zombie apocalypse come together with the common goal of reaching the stadium. That is true, this is season one. I should have clarified this is only season one. A zomboist thought, and zomboist spelled z-o-m-b-o-i love it. A zomboist thoughts.
Speaker 2:This could easily be a five brain series, but I was annoyed by a few directorial and writing choices that tugged at my ability to suspend my disbelief. Yeah, black summer doesn't hold back its punches, as it's happy to introduce characters you can connect with and then kill them. It kills a lot of characters it does and then bring them back to life and then kill them again so you have to suffer their loss twice. That is an astute observation. Of the many movies and shows out there that focus on zombie themes, I feel this one was more realistic in how people would react and behave in the early days. We agree, ollie, there's a lot of distrust, betrayal and deception, as some are out for themselves and others are looking for survival groups. Black summer is a more uh suspense than horror, which is great.
Speaker 2:I was in constant fear for the safety of my favorite characters. Some didn't make it. I know it's hard and no one felt perfect. Everyone had their flaws. The show doesn't hold your hand and explain everything to you and it doesn't even bother to tell you the truth behind some mysteries. Dot, dot, dot. Okay, I just convinced myself to upgrade this to a full five brain rating. I think those were some very good observations. Uh, ollie, thank you for sharing that zombie. And again, folks can find it on ollie eats brains at instagram. They have all kinds of zombies if you're looking for quick reviews of different zombie shows and movies, so you know what you want to watch or not watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, that's a nice bite-sized brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some zombies. Yeah, as Ollie would say, I love it. So this is episode 51. In four more episodes we'll be talking about the Remaining by DJ Mole. Wow, it's coming up. It is. I'm really excited for this uh, you know you should.
Speaker 1:I I highly recommend the series. Um, if you like black summer, love the gritty, uh, realness of a of a good zombie apocalypse story, because that's absolute what the remaining is. Yeah, but if you don't know, kevin Lee Harden, he's a. He's a soldier who's tasked with rebuilding society after a zombie apocalypse, and it's it's. It's gritty, it's, it's rough. Sometimes there's sand in your teeth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you feel vegetables are not properly washed, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some sand in your teeth. Yeah, you feel vegetables are not properly washed? Yeah, yeah, some some silty celery.
Speaker 2:This is what this, oh, I like that alliteration some silty celery, silty celery, also some essence in there. That was nice. Yeah, we've had to your book somewhere I will. I'm gonna be talking about silty celery in my book, if you want to buy it Anyways, I'm sorry, I fully took you off track with the sand in the teeth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know it's a whole series. I love the series. I would say book one is good. The rest of the series is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we seem to be like chronic book one readers. You know there's a whole bunch more books in the planet dead series we haven't gotten to from sylvester bar a lot of catching up. Yeah it's.
Speaker 1:It's hard out here for a zombie book club yeah, there's more to read than we have time for. It's just overwhelming. Just got started 18 or 19 months ago. That's not even that much. Yeah, we got more.
Speaker 2:We got there's thousands yeah, thousands of zombie baby is like, uh, maybe 16 months old now yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1:Um k l mary wrote like 60 books. How?
Speaker 2:am I gonna, how am I gonna read the last 16 months? Yeah, since we started this podcast yeah, uh, sylvester barzy also pumping them out. There's a lot of prolific writers that we've started to get to know or connect with, and it's impressive. How are you so productive? Laurie Calcaterra, also wildly productive. I don't get it. I need a lot of sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, doesn't? Sylvester Barsi spend every waking moment of his life working and raising children Two children.
Speaker 2:How do you write has a partner Works, let us know like, produces incredible things and also makes like a really has a really great oh no, I forget the words. It's a sub stack I think is what it's called where you can. He writes like sort of like newsletter things which are really good, yeah, and then he makes really good promotions on his instagram. I don't know, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:Some people are just way more productive than me and you yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm like drowning over yeah, and I think I think, uh, dj moly is also one of those people, because he's produced a lot as well, um, and I think it's a book that, like anybody could get into. It's not. I would say that for me it is not the typical kind of book that I would choose to read, um, because it's just very military focused. But and so when I've started reading, I was like I'm not sure if I'm gonna like this, just based on the description of the book.
Speaker 2:And then I started reading and I was like this is really good yeah, the, the writing chops are there yeah, and this is actually an example of like okay, this is um, a man, it's a white man who's writing it about a white male character, and because I read so much of not that it made it like especially like in the military, I was like this is a different perspective for me, so this is again like funny how that happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is why it's important to read all different um points of view in the world, because I'm learning things I would never know um if I had not read lee harden's story by dj mole in the meantime. Give us a phone call 614-699-0006.
Speaker 1:What can they do on the phone call, dan oh, they can leave us a voicemail up to three minutes long. They can also email us if they don't want to leave us a voicemail at zombie book club podcast at gmailcom yeah, you can also send a voice recording.
Speaker 2:If you're overseas and calling a US number is expensive, Totally get it. If you folks have done that and sell us, your not sell us send us. If you're a writer and you want to talk about your book on the show, you've got up to three minutes on that voicemail or in a voice recording to share with the listeners what your book's all about, how they can find you and why they should read it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, give us your best elevator pitch.
Speaker 2:We've got a big elevator.
Speaker 1:We do.
Speaker 2:It gets stalled a lot different floors. So you've got three minutes. You've got three minutes.
Speaker 1:We'll go up, we'll go down wherever you need to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to tell us your story. Honestly. I'm really excited about these gym dodges from last week. It was really fun to listen to, waiting for some more to come in, and we will make sure that we share them. On Casual Dead episodes, which is every other week, next week will be a Casual Dead. Now it's time for you to subscribe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do it. Even if you've already done it, do it again. Review, make new accounts, subscribe with those, those yeah, and you should give.
Speaker 2:What I'm looking for in a title on a Apple podcast review is this is the kind of show where they're recording it in their underwear in their zombie bunker, because that's what's happening right now, because it's hot out here, yeah, and my legs keep getting stuck to my chair especially in the zombie bunker. It's not much circulation, it's steamy and not in the fun way in the like bunker there's not much circulation, it's steamy and not in the fun way in the climate change heat wave way Just outside the door.
Speaker 1:It's nice and cool, but in here we're sweating it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need better ventilation in our bunker. We're learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel kind of dizzy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, five stars for suffering, basically, that could also be a great title five stars for suffering, yeah.
Speaker 1:But thanks. Basically, that could also be a great title. Five stars for suffering, yeah, but uh, thanks everybody for listening. Make sure you follow us on threads and instagram um, subscribe, write and review. It helps us. There's a link tree in the description. Has all kinds of links. There's also a discord. I put that in the description recently, as in an hour ago, and I don't know how to log into discord.
Speaker 2:I still can't get into my account, so you won't see me there. But you will see dan, as in an hour ago and I don't know how to log into Discord, I still can't get into my account.
Speaker 1:So you won't see me there, but you will see Dan Sometimes, Because I'm very busy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's lots of ways to talk with us, but remember, we're Shambling Zombies and for now we're going to shamble off away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to go shamble. Yeah, we're going to go shamble on our Saturday night date.
Speaker 2:We're going to do all that. We're going to have our date in our underwear on our couch with mustard on our shirt.
Speaker 1:I've got to tell the mustard man story sometime. Definitely Tell it now. Speaking of my PTSD responses, I'll tell you all about the mustard man someday.
Speaker 2:Have you met the mustard man? The mustard man. You don't want to meet the about the Mustard man someday. Have you met the Mustard man? The Mustard man, the Mustard man.
Speaker 1:You don't want to meet the Mustard man.
Speaker 2:Goodbye everybody, bye, we end this night I'll make a Mustard man zombie. Bye-bye, bye.
