Impending.

Because that’s what we’re all waiting for, right? This has been a year full of surprises anyway. In the meantime the whole zombie thing has been kind of wearing on me, but that’s understandable. I’ve watched about 1023 hours of zombie television in the last few months.

Still?

There have been a couple more TV series that I’ve burned through. Here a couple that are notable for entirely different reasons.

Korean horror isn’t much of a novelty since Train to Busan. That one entry right there shows that they know how to get the job done. The thing that sets Kim Eun-hee’s Kingdom apart and above a lot of the genre is that it isn’t technically a zombie movie. It’s a dynastic power struggle cum Korean period drama set inside a zombie outbreak. The characters are so well written. They are complete and fleshed out, if you’ll excuse the use of the term fleshed out in describing a movie with flesh eaters. It’s simply lavish and wonderful. There are two seasons with a third rumored to be on the way for Netflix in 2021. I’m really looking forward to it. Frankly, had The Walking Dead ended after two seasons I might have had questions but I really wouldn’t have cared. Kingdom is a blast!

I’d a suspicion that this other Netflix series, Black Summer, was in some way related to Z-Nation, the SyFy Network series that I laughed my ass off through last month (was it March?). Sure enough, this is a belated prequel and hence the use of ‘Black Summer which was referenced continually in Z-Nation. The similarities do end there. What sets this one apart from everyone right from the start is that when you enter the action at the beginning of the 8 episodes, things have already gone to shit and it’s pretty much every man for himself. I’m pretty certain that living humans kill as many people as the zombies in Black Summer. Nobody gives much of a fuck about anything but surviving and any partnerships formed are entirely reluctant. It’s pretty clear that it is all, for the most part, just for selfish survival purposes. Not that there aren’t a few decent people (even if not much character development ever happens which sucks for 8 episodes), but it’s pretty clear they’re going to do what they have to do. The problem is that just makes the drama very flat. There is no pretense of moral or ethical dilemmas. You don’t get to see the decline or impact. It’s all buckwild from the first 10 minutes of the first episode. That makes for some chaotic action but who cares. That’s not what I watch movies for. This was the failing of the Netflix movie Extraction too. It’s all just one big fight scene, and you can take that for what it’s worth. If you want to see eight hours of fight scenes and shouting, this one is for you, but they could have titled it People Are Cunts.

It’s pretty clear that I’m a sucker for this shit, but it’s not like I have no taste, ya know? I really can’t wait to see the third season of Kingdom.