Day of the Dead is a series airing on Syfy. A modern day reimagining of the classic film of the same name, the series follows six strangers as they try to survive the first 24 hours of a zombie outbreak in a small town in Pennsylvania.
This series contains examples of:
- Action Dress Rip: Amy cuts off the hem of her wedding dress so that she can more easily run from the zombies if she has to.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the original film, Dr. Logan was mostly good, if insane. This series' version is a cold-blooded Mad Scientist, albeit with the sympathetic motive of trying to use her discoveries to help her daughter.
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending of "Choke on 'Em!" features Cam and his zombified father looking and grabbing onto to one another with Cam declaring that his father won't hurt him, but it's left rather vague on what could happen next.
- Armored Closet Gay: It turns out that much of Luke's bad behavior is because he feels compelled to cover up the fact that he's gay from his red-baiting politician mother.
- Asshole Victim:
- The first victims of the zombie outbreak is Lauren's boss, Lazlo, who installed a hidden camera in her bathroom so that he could watch her changing her clothes, and who blackmails her into a date by threatening to give a bad report to her parole officer.
- In "'Til Death Do Us Part", Shawn gets horribly slaughtered by the zombies just minutes after trying to convince Amy to leave her fiancee for him.
- Rhodes in "Choke on 'Em!". After being a violent jerkass throughout the series, he's left to the zombies by the survivors.
- Awful Wedded Life: Trey, the Mayor's husband, is absolutely miserable in his marriage, but since his wife is the Mayor, and since they have a son, he feels he can't just leave her, so instead he's carrying on an extramarital affair with her assistant Nicole.
- Badass Native: Sarah Blackwood is a Lenape woman and the most competent person in the cast. It helps that she used to be Special Forces.Paula: Why do you get the AR-15?Sarah: Ever shot at insurgents at night with no scope, no moon, and sand blowing in your face?Paula: ... I like you.
- Canon Character All Along: McDermott turns out to be this universe's incarnation of Bub, as that's the name on the coveralls he steals after escaping the Cleargenix lab, and he ends up becoming a zombie that can think to a small degree.
- Chainsaw Good: Amy wields one in the final episode.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Jai feels compelled to try and save every patient he can, which is not a great thing when he's a doctor doing triage, although it is one of the reasons his fiancee adores him.
- Cool Old Lady: Mrs. French is a chain-smoking cancer patient who's planning to spend her last days living it up. She ends up single-handedly purging the Grey Mile retirement home from a zombie infestation.
- Crusading Widow: Amy kinda loses her shit after having to kill an entire store full of zombies and then finding out that poor Jai died. She ends up carrying a chainsaw because the others really don't want to entrust her with a gun.
- "Die Hard" on an X: "Death Comes to Paymart" features a brief version of this when Sarah breaks into a factory and takes out some of Rhodes' marines trying to find others who have been taken there to be gassed.
- Due to the Dead: In the opening of the finale, Sarah Blackwood performs an improvised Lenape funeral rite over Jai's body.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Dr. Logan's obsession with the zombification process is born out of her desperate desire to save her daughter, who is in a persistent vegetative state.
- Extreme Doormat: Trey Bowman has been letting his wife boss him around for years, and then letting his mistress manipulate him, and then letting his son browbeat him over his lack of assertive behavior.
- Eye Scream: Shawn tries to rush the zombies and ends up getting his eyes clawed out.
- Gender Flip: This universe's version of Dr. Logan is a woman. With a heaping helping of Adaptational Villainy, to boot - the old Logan mostly meant well, insanity aside, but so far this one is a cold hearted monster.
- Henpecked Husband: Trey Bowman, husband of the Mayor, allows his wife to boss him around constantly, although he is secretly sleeping with her assistant.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Mrs. French sets fire to her oxygen tank to take out a roomful of zombies, allowing Jai, Lauren, and Cam to escape and ensuring that the zombies don't get any of the other residents at her nursing home.
- Jai later performs one saving Cam, Lauren, Trent, Luke, Paula, and other survivors, deliberately crawling into a vent and exposing himself to a lethal amount of gas so that the others can get out after him.
- How We Got Here:
- The series opens in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse overrunning the town, before time jumping back to the hours before it started, with the rest of the show following from there. The show finally catches up to the opening scenes about midway through Episode 8.
- The end of "Their Evil Was Our Evil" reveals that McDermott and Blackwood's storyline was occurring the day before the Zombie Apocalypse started, and reveals how the outbreak actually started.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Trey accidentally shoots a protestor in the head, when the warning shot he fires into the air ricochets off a vent cover and hits the man.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After managing to get through her ninetieth day of sobriety, Lauren finally grabs a drink in the finale.
- It's All About Me: According to Luke, Cam keeps making everything about him. The reason they don't hang out anymore is because Cam kept trying to push Luke to come out to his mom just so that Cam could earn "ally" cred.
- Jerkass:
- Luke is the spoiled-brat son of the mayor, and gleefully exploits his status to get away with all kinds of jerkass behavior. That said, as events unfold his reasons for this attitude are explored and he becomes a more likeable person.
- Herb has been repeatedly meddling in his daughter Amy's relationship with her fiancée Jai, and was responsible for sending Lauren to prison for prescription fraud, even though she might have easily gone to rehab instead.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While a jerk about it Herb rightfully pointed out to Jai that they can't save everyone, correctly noted that the patient he was working in Paymart wouldn't survive, that Lauren was in fact tempted to take the pain medication she found for said patient for herself, and rightfully pointed out to Amy that her wedding day stopped being about her in the face of zombies.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Nicole steals the clip out of Paula's gun, hoping that Paula will run into a zombie and be unable to defend herself. Instead, she runs into the zombie herself and, since Paula has an unloaded gun, she can't save Nicole, who has her neck and shoulder torn off, killing her.
- Happens to Paula herself later: she purposefully allows a zombie to wander around the town's safe zone so she can shoot it and prove to some skeptical townspeople (who wrongly believe there's a cure) that they're dangerous and that she's right to fear them. It kills poor Trey before she gets the chance.
- Left Hanging: The matter of Lauren's infected arm is still unresolved as of the final episode.
- Magical Native American: Played with; one episode raises the possibility that the zombies are the result of a curse laid by the Lenape who used to live in the area, but the Lenape who still live in Mawinhaken, like Grandnana Blackwood, claim that the curse was actually a disease brought over from Europe by the white people, who spread it because they gave the infected Christian burials instead of burning the bodies.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Jai's future father-in-law isn't entirely thrilled about having his little girl marry an Indian man. While he isn't stopping Jai from marrying his daughter, he does insist that Jai sign a prenup because he doesn't expect the marriage to last and doesn't want Jai getting his hands on the family money in a divorce.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- It's as yet unclear what created the zombies. There are some indications that it might be pollution from the fracking, but Luke also suggests that it might be a curse on the lake caused by some settlers who were drowned when a nearby river was dammed. Later on, the idea of a Native American curse is also thrown around.
- Episode 7 sheds a bit more light on things: Centuries ago when white settlers arrived in the area, once of them, a man they referred to as "Cooper" started spreading the virus and forced the settlers and natives to seal him away underground. So we still don't know what caused Cooper to reanimate, but at least we have a Patient Zero to blame.
- Episode 8 reveals that exposure to the town's water can resurrect the dead, pushing it closer to the viral agent theory.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Nicole tries to arrange for Mayor Bowman to get killed so that she and Trey can be together. Her plan backfires terribly, and she ends up being mauled by a zombie.
- Mythology Gag:
- Like in the movie, Rhodes sarcastically refers to Logan as "Dr. Frankenstein".
- The zombie buried underground is revealed to be called "Cooper" by the natives who sealed him away. While this was the name of Rhodes' unseen previous commander in the original movie, that name will probably be far more familiar to franchise fans as the last name of the Cooper family from the original Night of the Living Dead.
- The season finale is called "Choke on 'Em!", which were Rhodes' last words in the movie. Fittingly, this is the episode where he dies, with the same last words.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: In "Death Comes to Paymart", Sarah confronts one of Rhodes' marines, and manages to stab him with her knife while he's trying to get his gun.
- Oh, Crap!:
- This is Cam's reaction after he manages to chuck a bottle straight through the rear window of Luke's car, which causes Luke and his buddy to get out of the car and come chasing after him.
- Rhodes' reaction when the zombie McDermott, whom he'd just been tormenting, manages to escape from his cage.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The zombie virus is harmless as long as the infected person is still alive. Once the person dies, the virus takes over and reanimates them. This also applies to necrotic tissue; as Lauren's infection spreads, she gradually loses control over one of her arms.
- Patient Zero:
- The man buried underground, referred to as "Cooper" by the natives, was a white settler who brought the virus to the area centuries ago before being sealed underground.
- Logan's daughter becomes this at the end of "Choke on 'Em!" in Pittsburgh.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Lauren attempts after escaping the funeral home by leaving the city but after seeing zombies everywhere she came back to help.
- Trent is mentioned to have done this at the beginning of "Choke on 'Em!" by Luke and Paula.
- Sealed Evil in a Can:
- The Patient Zero of this Zombie Apocalypse was chained up and buried underground for centuries by the Lenape natives and the region's original European colonists, until being accidentally freed by Cleargenix's drilling.
- In the final episode, the survivors lure the zombie horde into a mine system and then use explosives to collapse the only entrance.
- The Siege: A handful of survivors barricade themselves in a Paymart store, which is soon surrounded by zombies.
- Silver Spoon Troublemaker: As the son of the local Mayor, Luke Bowman often causes trouble believing that his family will cover everything up.
- Skewed Priorities: As the zombies attack Jai and Amy's wedding, her "man of honor" Shawn tries to propose to her, even though they broke up years ago and there is an army of undead outside.
- Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: The series hopes to set itself apart from other zombie shows by injecting some occasional humor. Example: Lauren bashing a zombie's head to a pulp and skewering him with a pole just to be sure... then realizing she just did so in front of the zombie's family who are there for his funeral. Cue their Stunned Silence.
- The Teetotaler: Lauren is 90 days sober when the series opens, and intends to stay that way. She even refuses to let Jai administer painkillers after she gets bitten by a zombie and needs to have the wounds treated.
- Too Dumb to Live: Pops Parker, Mayor Bowman's main electoral rival, tries to convince the other townspeople to use non-lethal methods for containing the zombies... and ends up being nearly eaten by one of them.
- Tough Love: Herb's excuse for sending Lauren to jail instead of rehab for her drug problem is that he did not believe that rehab would be brutal enough to motivate her to get clean. She points out that it's very hard to stay clean when a criminal record makes it hard to hold down a job.
- Visionary Villain: Logan wants to study the zombies to create a cure for death in the hopes of saving her own dying daughter.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rhodes justifies his efforts to wipe out the town's survivors by saying it's to stop anyone potentially infected with the zombie virus from spreading it to the rest of the country.
- We Used to Be Friends: Cam and Luke used to be friends, but they had a falling-out after the death of Cam's mother. "To Anyone Who Can Hear My Voice" finally sheds light on it; Cam found out that Luke is gay and kept trying to push him to come out to his mom, which pissed Luke off enough that he froze Cam out... and then Cam's mom died and he was pissed off that Luke wasn't there for him.
- Zombie Apocalypse: It's based on the Day of the Dead universe, so expect a lot of zombies.
