Netflix cannot stand folks doing a genre and them not having a cut. Moreover, they want a really big cut and they want to basically take over the entire operation. Only, they remain late to the party. Black Summer is a version of the Zombie shows we’ve been watching for years. However, it is a version of that show that loses all credibility by episode 4. If not for an incredible performance by Yuk Guen Lee, the show wouldn’t have been worth a single episode.
I think the conversation begins with Lee. An actor from Hong Kong, Lee has been around since the late 80’s as a child actor. She is responsible for carrying the show through multiple episodes where the writing fails to do more than anything we’ve already seen and succeeds in doing less in character development than I thought possible through 4 episodes. It was the 4th that killed the show (pun intended) for me.
The show exists in vignettes. Or at least it is supposed to. We fade to black every few minutes supposedly opening on another ‘beat’ in the script. The 4th episode is a perfect example of those beats leading us in circles. In that episode we follow a lone survivor (actually, one of the beats is called alone) as he flees a lone zombie. Now in this scene we realize the running man is a coward and a fool. 5 minutes in I’m waiting for him to die.
Spoiler Alert: He does not die. Instead we watch the silly running nonsense and him making every mistake in the world and being rewarded for it. We learn nothing about him and the entire episode (because it is the entire episode) is a waste. Even if he died, it would’ve been too much for too long.
Maybe that should be the name of the show: Too much for too long.