Cover art by @terryblas on Instagram
by Frankie Fanelli
At first, I was hesitant to dive into Daybreak. Dystopian has always been one of my least favorite genres, especially post-apocalypse dystopias, so Netflix’s newest original series didn’t really seem like my cup of tea. Luckily, though, this show really threw me for a loop and I ended up pleasantly surprised.
Daybreak is set in a post-apocalyptic Glendale, California, a city in Los Angeles County. A bomb was dropped on the city rendering it completely desolate, but Glendale was far enough away that it only sustained minor damages. No one knows exactly what the bomb was but our main character suspects some kind of biological bomb because it didn’t just kill people, it spared everyone under the age of 18 but turned all the adults into zombies called “ghoulies.” Ghoulies are zombies who stumble around muttering the last boring, adult thought that went through their heads before the apocalypse came, but also have the capacity to rip your throat out and “chug your blood” as our protagonist so eloquently put it. This effectively turned the apocalypse into a teen-run wasteland, where the teens split into tribes reminiscent of high school cliques, but more Mad Max-esque, that the main character compares to “living in grand theft auto, except better.” As you can see, lots of great one-liners in the pilot alone.
The main character is a teen boy named Josh Wheeler, who refused to join any of the tribes and instead exists as a “stragler.” He has spent the entirety of the time looking for Sam, a girl assigned to show him around school when he first moved from Canada to LA and who he quickly fell in love with. Post apocalypse she disappeared, but left him a note asking, Where are you? We find out early on in the pilot that finding her is Josh’s main motivation and the reason he remained apart from any of the tribes (along with the fact that he was essentially already a lone wolf in high school and had no immediately apparent tribe to join.) Through the course of the first episode he is joined by a badass 10-year-old girl he used to babysit named Angela and his former high school bully Wesley, and the adventure begins.
This show holds nothing back when it comes to breaking the fourth wall. In the first few minutes of the show, Josh begins talking directly to the audience MTV-welcome-to-my-crib-style and this is how we get caught up on the situation Glendale’s teens find themselves in. At first I was put off by this; I’m so used to writing it off as lazy writing or an easy way to exposition-dump, but in this case it makes sense and sort of fits the Gen Z dominated setting. Plus, in a completely unique apocalyptic setting, a lot of exposition is needed really quickly in order to be able to jump right into the plot and this was a way to solve that problem.
In that same vein, Daybreak boasts a lot of teen tv show cliches: purposefully quirky, unrealistic dialogue, insanely boring adults who drone on about seemingly nothing, and a boy falling in love with a girl at first sight, complete with slow mo close up of her and dreamy music. I mean, the plot of the show boils down to a new kid in town who just so happens to gets shown around on his first day of school by a quirky, cool, hot girl who he then falls madly in love with and devotes his life to locating. However, all of these tropes and cliches are used in such a meta, self-aware way (example: Josh yelling “cut to montage” at the camera) that makes it comedic rather than cringey.
The show also delivers on the amount of violence, gore, suspense, and drama that you’d expect from a post apocalyptic dram-edy. Blood filled water balloons, Russian-made flame throwers, a teenage boy wielding a katana named Sam and using a skateboard as a shield, and a plethora of medieval weaponry are just some of the things this show holds within its first two episodes alone.
So if you’re a fan of fourth wall breaking, teenage wastelands, post-apocalyptic stories, Gen Z humor, or none of the above but are ready to be pleasantly surprised like I was, then give Netflix’s newest original series a try.
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