‘Santa Clarita Diet': Is Drew Barrymore Actually a Zombie? Yes and No

Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet” throws around the term “undead,” and that’s a little more accurate than “zombie” in Season 1

Wait, so Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet” is a comedy about zombies, right?

Netflix’s comedy about a suburban mom named Sheila (Drew Barrymore) who suddenly finds herself a reanimated corpse who claims human flesh is supposed to invoke everything we know about the walking dead — including “The Walking Dead.”

[...] “Santa Clarita Diet” plays up a lot of the same tropes as other zombie fiction, but it’s taking a lot of liberties with the premise.

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In the first “Santa Clarita Diet” episode, nerdy neighbor and paranormal stuff expert Eric (Skyler Gisondo) discusses whether the word “zombie” applies to Sheila.

In most zombie fiction, a person infected with whatever it is that makes people zombies (whether it’s transmitted through a bite or just something that everyone has like in “The Walking Dead”) dies, and then their corpse is reanimated as a zombie.

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Like other zombification viruses, it’s transmitted through bites — Sheila infects Loki (Deobia Oparei), but we’re not sure how Sheila was infected.

In most zombie fiction, infection with the zombie disease leads to death, and after death, reanimation.

Ghouls are people who were irradiated in a global nuclear war but weren’t killed by the radiation.

Their skin falls off and their bodies cosmetically deteriorate over time (radiation sustains their muscles and bones), but they keep their mental faculties — for a while.