Z Nation lurched onto SyFy network on Friday the 12th (Friday the 13th being on a Saturday this month–who thought up that brilliant idea?), and the response was…underwhelming at best. Yet another shamble through some very familiar territory, without an overabundance of new ideas, cool characters, or even energy. With so many really, really good zombie-story alternatives available, why do a bad Xerox (or would that be Z-rox?) of The Walking Dead?

Harold Perrineau

Just a few notes:

Okay, this is TOTALLY different than The Walking Dead, because these are, you know, fast zombies. Not slow. So that, you know, matters.

The idea is we’re three years into the zombie plague, though people and institutions seem to be just as panic-stricken and chaotic as if it happened yesterday. And the zombies themselves, though clearly and completely the result of a virus rather than a supernatural event, still seem to be going strong, even though the number of tasty humans has been reduced to damn near zero. 28 Days Later still had the best projection: wait a couple months and they’ll starve to death. But here…nah.

Basic premise? Here you go: a year after the outbreak, as the last of the government is dissolving, a doctor in the Eastern U.S. comes up with a vaccine. Gives it to one convict, who survives multiple zom-bites. A year later, the one surviving soldier (Harold Perrineau of Blade and Lost fame, in a curiously flat performance) of that doomed experiment shows up at a small outpost on an island in the Northeast, saying he has to get this here guy–the immune convict–to the last medical facility still operating, located in Southern California, at Mt. Wilson. After the island is overrun (coincidentally?) moments after he arrives, a few of the island survivors, the doc, and the grumpy con start on a road trip across post-apocalypse America to get the con’s magic blood to Mr. Wilson. There, now you don’t have to watch it. You’re welcome.

Tom Everett Scott centered and Kellita Smith on the right

There is one interesting question in here: the outpost is overrun by what looks like a whole bunch’a fast zombies working in concert, faking them out, lying in wait. So the Z’s of this Nation are fast and smart? That’s never mentioned again or even noticed, but…hmmm…

There are a couple of decent lines in here: “This is an extinction-level event. Do not panic.” Uh…what? “You haven’t talked to them in a month? That’s two years in apocalypse time.” “It’s a real, live baby. Haven’t seen one of those in years.” And the hu-mons that remains don’t talk about killing Z’s so much as “showing mercy,” which is a nice touch.

The parallels to Walking Dead really are unavoidable. We got this lean, no-nonsense African-American woman with a machete, a Michonne kind’a dame, and this decent-guy-driven-to-the-edge, your Rick Grimes kind’a guy, and this Herschel kind’a old dude, and a woman who looks kind’a like Red Sonja or Big Barda (the woman you wish Rick’s wife could have been), and a real cute baby, and a bunch of randomly wrecked institutional buildings that look like they raided the TWD sets after hours. Between all that, the graphic CGI head-shots, the gray-on-gray cinematography and ‘important’ lighting, you just can’t help thinking you’ve seen this all before. And will again, in about a month.

Using “Mount Wilson” as the goal is pretty hilarious. Everybody in L.A. knows Mr. Wilson is just a bunch of TV antennas on a very small mountain above Pasadena. Now just below it, off to one side, is the Jet Propulsion Lab, and that could have been interesting. Not that it matters: our intrepids don’t know what we know: the folks at the Mt. Wilson facility have already bugged out.

DJ Qualls

Yeah, we get it, it all very, very post-apocalypse…but how come every radio and walkie-talkie works like crap, whether it’s a local call or secret messages from the NSA? Was there a solar storm in there somewhere, and we just didn’t know it?

None of these guys, from any plot-thread, seem to be worried about a shortage of weapons, ammunition, or fuel even three years after doomsday. They rain unnecessary lead upon an already undead trio near the end like there’s no tomorrow, and putt-putt away in a whole caravan of vehicles. Road trip! Whooooa!

The show really can’t seem to find its voice. It’s 28 Days Later contempo-crazy at the beginning, a little more jokey and flip in the middle, and then tries–unsuccessfully–to go for Zombieland or Cockneys vs. Zombies in the last reel, what with the zom-baby and the NSA dweeb turned Civilization’s Last DJ.

Does it show promise? A little. There are some better-than-decent actors in here, like Tom Everett Scott and D.J. Qualls. But the strongest actor with the best vampire-zombie creds in the bunch doesn’t make it to the end titles (have fun over on Constantine, dude!), and you can’t help feel that everybody’s kind of phoning this in, at least a little. Some of the plot- and world-inconsistencies could get smoothed out in future episodes, but confidence is low, and surprises are in short supply. Damn. We had such high hopes.