Z Nation Season 3 Episode 3
After last week’s Season 3 premiere of Syfy’s Z Nation bent over backwards to establish new factions within the roughly six-year-old zombie apocalypse that the characters reside in. The latest episode took things a step further by laying some pretty overt character groundwork, while still peppering in the perfunctory villain of the week. OK, I’m willing to buy that Murphy wants to set up shop in the Museum of Progress and that he’s in love with Spokane. When we’re talking about strange things that happen on Z Nation, this is the very tip of the iceberg. Instead, this story was more about the morality of Murphy and his powers to blend people into zombie/human hybrids. The character actually makes a lot of sense when he talks about utilizing his powers of mind control to rebuild a world that’s immune to the zombie virus. However, the fact that each person would be under his direct control poses quite the ethical conundrum. Or, at least it would if Murphy wasn’t toying with his new prisoner, and fan favorite character, 10K. It was revealed last week that the sniper was bitten by Murphy, and now he’s openly defiant of him, without being able to physically stop himself from doing what the blue messiah says. It’s tough to see and it proves that, for all Murphy’s pontificating about saving the world, he’s still just a straight up Bond villain. Every season needs a big bad I guess. However, considering the relatively successful leaps the show took in Season 2 to humanize the Murphy, his villainy is a bit one dimensional a little too soon. The team is low on supplies after their bout with the Zeros, the Chinese, Murphy and the Enders. As happens on this show, they find their way to a small town looking for logistical supplies. They see a postal worker, inexplicably still in uniform after all these years, trapped in his truck by a horde of Zs. The team approaches and quickly notices that the surrounding zombies aren’t interested in them, which is a first. They only have eyes for their trusty civil servant. He introduces himself as Walter J. Becker before insisting that the group doesn’t give mercy to any of the turned townsfolk. So, with a shifty postman, weird morals and a seemingly supernatural ability to attract zombies, the team is obviously skeptical. At this point, it seemed like this is going to be an irredeemably wacky episode. I was prepared to write another recap about how the show missed another opportunity to really write something original within the tired zombie genre in favor of some silly subplot involving more pseudo magic and an unrealistic setting. Then the third act shut me right the hell up. Sadly for the postman, he didn’t know that he’s dealing with a handful of the zombie apocalypse’s biggest badasses … and Hector (Emilio Rivera). They survive his trap but the team’s newest member, Dr. Sun Mei (Sydney Viengluang), gets captured by Becker. He gives his speech about why he killed everyone on Day One, and how it’s an odd sense of vengeance that keeps them attracted to him above all others. Fortunately, Mei turns the tables and manages to sick his beloved townspeople on him in one of the most brutal and violent comeuppances for a serial killer in recent memory. Overall, I’m torn about this episode. While it didn’t do much to drive the larger plot forward, with the exception of establishing Murphy’s base, it did have an effective twist at the end that brought zombie apocalypse psychosis to a place I’d never seen before. However, it took a long and strange road to get there that one could argue was a waste of a good amount of episode realestate. That’s kind of the main issue with Z Nation in general – a lot of great ideas with only OK execution. Having said that, we’re in the middle of Season 3 and I’ll be watching diligently next week, so they must be doing something right.
