It’s Breakfast Club meets Mad Max but much more stylishly!
How best to enjoy Daybreak the new Netflix Original apocalyptic series that takes the teen drama and spins it on its head? I think that Binge or enjoy it weekly <hmm> Well I binged it since each episode left my ravenous for more!
I think John Hughes might be spinning in his grave with this new look at teen angst comedy drama ‘Daybreak’ on Netflix! The series is based on Brian Ralph’s comics series with Aron Eli Coleite and Brad Peyton co-creators helming the streaming series adaptation taking place at Glendale High School. The show views the prism through high school clicks, gender/racial expectations, class, divorce, daddy issues and canabalism! The tribes of kids who’ve taken over what’s left of LA include, 4-H Club (makes sense being able to survived off the land), athletes, the smart kids, the goths, girl power chicks and others that we don’t get to meet (logistics but I beast NoHo would be CRAZY with the gentrifiers vs locals). Grownups are around but they are ‘smart’ zombies called ghoulies that are ghosts of the adults who ruined the world (hello Climate Change) that eat ANYTHING including the mutated animals.
The ‘hero’ is the every basic white boy in Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) that’s surviving by focusing on looking for his ‘out of his league’ Brit girlfriend Sam Dean (Sophie Simnett) that got separated before the big one as he dealt with his own family drama. Rounding out the stars are Wesley Fists (Austin Crute) the Gay Former Sport Clique member making up for his sins by following the ways of Wu-Tang aka Kung Fu/Samaurai with a little cultural appropriation, Angelica (Alyvia Alyn Lind) the 10-year-old drug lord that’s way too smart and kind of evil for her own good, Principal Michael Burr (Matthew Broderick) is in flashbacks trying to see the best in his charges, Ms. Crumble (Krysta Rodriguez) is the teacher who showed weakness to the kids and tries to live it down, Eli Cardashyan (Gregory Kasyan) plays the kids living his BEST life in the apocalypse, and top of the heap are Turbo Bro Jock (Cody Kearsley) and Mona Lisa ( Jeanté Godlock) who aren’t the sport bullies you think <well they are> just not the normal teen drama popular sport bullies!
It’s a fun fast paced series that allows each character time to be the star so that you get a richer characters, part way through I switched sides of who I war rooting for and was surprisingly delighted with them breaking the fourth wall in this wild ride. It’s such fun I think I’ll read the source material. It’s not perfect since some of the jokes didn’t hit for me (but I am not the target audience) but overall it’s a fun show that’s not a remake does give homage to the movies/tv shows that it shares the road with but doesn’t fall into the trap of being a pale imitation. Instead it embraces it’s quirky differences and runs for the home base <I don’t follow sports so might be wrong on the allegory but you get what I’m saying>. It has some sex and for sure a lot of violence but it’s portrayal of not fitting Black Gender/Class/Sexuality conformity really hit home for me and would be a great conversation starter about consent as well.
Grade: A-
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