Santa Clarita Diet

This week I watched the first episode of Santa Clarita Diet. It revolves around two realtors, Joel and Sheila, their daughter, and a character present in only this episode, Gary. Gary is a realtor that comes to town to begin working at the same place as Sheila and Joel. As the episode develops, you learn, along with the characters, that there is something abnormal happening to Sheila. It starts as a weird stomach pain, continues with a insane amount of vomit, and reaches a terrifying point when she discovers she does not bleed and cannot find her heartbeat. Most might say that it is weird and wrong that Sheila is wanting to sneak around, ultimately eating raw meat and people, instead of get help, however I believe that this decision is the best decision for her.

When people are exhibiting abnormal symptoms, such as throwing up a ridiculous amount, the appropriate thing would be to go to the hospital. When the emergency department takes too long to evaluate Sheila, the next move would be to immediately head to a prompt care or her primary care physician. Instead Sheila does not do this, and I support that. I understand well how important it is to get a health problem diagnosed and treated, especially when you pose a threat to others, however the risks for Sheila’s life to be destroyed far outweigh the benefits to society. She raises concerns about the potential of being trapped in the health care system and laboratories for the rest of her life, which is definitely what would happen to her. She would likely become the focus of many clinical trials, be sequestered for evaluations, and ultimately be deemed a threat to society as she has a hankering for humans. She likely would end up as a viral video or the centerpiece of American news for multiple weeks, making herself and her family miserable with all of the attention and comments on social media. When they go and visit their neighbor who takes a look at her, he gives them a fair diagnosis, that she is dead and undead. This amount of information is enough for Sheila, but not for Joel. He wants to be more informed about what is going on and what he can do to help his wife. While I empathize with the desire to need to know all of the facts, I believe that in some circumstances, just knowing the basics is enough. They know to keep her fed otherwise disaster will occur (which they neglected to do and it was proved). Clearly a change has already occurred and they just need to keep their attitudes up and do what they know will work.

The last few minutes of the episode deal with Gary coming to Joel and Sheila’s house and trying to woo Sheila after what he feels is a missed connection from flirtations the previous night. Majority would say she should have told him off at her house, or the previous night, and reaffirmed her love for her husband. Some might argue she should’ve even gone off with Gary. However I believe she did the right thing. While biting someone’s fingers off and then eating them is never okay, ff she was going to eat anyone, Gary is the best choice. He is new to the area, generally aggressive and looks like he would get along well with the boss of the realtor company, who is a rude businessman. Having two people who are powerful and not exceptionally nice would make the culture of the office negative, and harder for Joel and Sheila to thrive in that environment. While perhaps a change of job or a sit down conversation between Joel and Gary about Sheila would’ve been a better way to handle it, it also would have resulted in more negative emotions and perhaps a fight between the men which is not a productive way to handle conflict. Overall, Sheila and Joel make the appropriate decisions for their family during this time of uncertainty, however I’m not sure how they will recover from the dining of Gary.