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Why this homicidal, flesh-eating mum is the most relatable woman on TV right now.

 

Well, here’s something I never thought I’d write.

A homicidal, flesh-eating realtor is possibly the most relatable character on TV right now.

Drew Barrymore’s Shelia in Santa Clarita Diet is just like most women you know – she’s trying desperately to strike a balance between her career and her home life and is constantly feeling like she’s letting someone down.

Oh… and she’s also killing, dismembering and eating members of her local community.

The second season of Santa Clarita Diet drops on Netflix on March 23. Post continues.

Video via Netflix

You see, as introduced in season one, Shelia is undead. She woke up one morning and was suddenly a flesh-eating zombie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

At first she didn’t quite understand why she had a craving for her next door neighbour’s dirtbag husband’s thigh. But then with the help of her husband Joel, her daughter Abby, and Abby’s friend Eric, she soon discovered that she was, in fact, a brain eatin’ zombie.

While most of the first season was about establishing the whole flesh-loving zombie thing, the second season dives deeper into Sheila’s life.

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We see her try to balance her career as a realtor, with her home life with her husband and daughter, and her unquenchable thirst for humans.

She deals with the kind of stuff mums face every day – feeling like she doesn’t know what’s going on in her own daughter’s life, trying to make friends as an adult, worrying that she’s putting too much time into work… and then worrying that’s she not putting in enough.

That’s why Santa Clarita Diet is not the gory horror series people initially think it is.

Sure there might be eyeballs rolling across the kitchen floor and severed thumbs in the freezer, but the house is inhabited by a family who’s just trying to stick together and make things work – no matter how complicated and messy they get.

Pretty much like normal families except for said rolling eyeballs, frozen fingers, severed human heads etc etc.

“I like seeing a show about a surviving team and family,” Barrymore told Vanity Fair.

“We’re in a decaying society of people not being able to make it work, so this show offers some optimism.”

“This is not a horror-genre show,” she explained. “It’s about a family that is trying to make daily life work.”

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