A friend and I have taken to watching The Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix. If you haven’t seen the show, it is a horror/comedy/satire about a “power couple” of realtors, taken straight from the lineup of HGTV. Their high pressure shallow life is interrupted when the wife (admittedly played very poorly by Drew Barrymore) becomes violently ill during a showing of a house (a house they were already having difficulty selling) and vomits gallons of yellow liquid in every direction, collapses, and dies. As the potential buyers race from the house, her husband rushes in anguish to the side of his dead wife, and while he mourns, suddenly she sits up, feeling much better.
Better, however, is probably not exactly the right term, for they soon determine that she has no heartbeat. Though she remains her bubbly self (even more so), she is a different person with new interests and new needs…namely consuming human flesh. The hilarious social commentary ensues as the couple work to maintain their high power lifestyle while accommodating the needs of an undead consumer of her fellow humans.
In the first “kill” scene, the woman is frustrated by a sleazy competitor realtor who has just stolen a listing from her. Without thinking she grabs his hand and bites off his fingers moving on to kill and eat a significant portion of his carcass. It was equal parts gruesome and funny.
However, my reaction was not horror or laughter. Instead I texted my friend, “Remember those times when we could get close enough to people to bite their fingers off!”
I may have been in quarantine too long.
Be safe, be strong. Keep your fingers away from her mouth!