A small town girl looking for a prom date falls for a charming zombie.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
SUGAR WILLOWICK (16) is looking for a date for her high school prom. She isn’t having much luck until she rescues a young man from thugs. There’s just one problem: he’s a zombie. Unable to speak, Sugar calls him “Za” and takes him home to her mother and grandmother. Her mother, Lorraine, wants nothing to do with a zombie, but finally agrees to let him stay.
Sugar decides to find out his true identity and elicits the help of her friend BELINDA. Sugar isn’t able to find out any information. Sugar and Za grow closer. She’s determined to take him to the prom, but everyone shuns him and has trouble accepting him.
Regardless, Sugar invites Za to the prom and
…show more content…
The premise for this series is very appealing. The idea of a girl falling for a zombie definitely has potential. There’s a strong, faithful audience, who loves zombies.
The show also conveys a solid emotional premise and theme about tolerance and acceptance.
The show offers a quirky protagonist in Sugar. She also has an offbeat family, which adds to the charm of this show. There are some smart story choices, such as the idea of the prom.
While there’s a lot to like about the proposed pilot, and while it merits consideration, there are certainly areas to re-examine.
First, the opening nicely sets the tone. The problem of the week for Sugar is finding a date to the prom. There’s a solid inciting event when she finds Za. The rest of the show is driven by her desire to find out about him and the idea of going to the prom.
The main concern is Za. It’s very challenging to visualize him, especially when he’s first revealed. On screen that should not be an issue, but on the page it’s problematic. When Sugar first finds him, she mentions the word zombie. However, the visual of him isn’t strong enough for the reading audience to understand if she’s kidding or not. He’s not clearly described like a
…show more content…
Lorraine says, “Za” like pizza, which seems a bit contrived or forced, vs. funny.
The best humor is organic from character, in which their character flaws are exaggerated. Also, normally the comedic tension spirals out of control. In the current pilot, that doesn’t seem to happen. There’s really no tension or stakes. Try to find a way to spiral the comedic tension out of control. For example, maybe they find someone related to Za, but there’s some twist, or maybe Sugar and Belinda have to raise money to get their dresses for the prom, they somehow use Za, and then at the end, Sugar ends up making her own outfit. This gives the story more anticipation, tension, and focus. Each act should end on high tension.
As mentioned, Sugar is a fun character. She’s original and offbeat. It’s easy to like her. Her role could attract talent. She has abandonment issues, but she seems to love unconditionally. The idea of being abandoned sets up some future episodes to explore this.
Za, as stated, just isn’t as animated as he should be for the audience.
Lorraine is colorful and she has a very unique voice, “Like a summertime pop song.” She shares nice chemistry with Sugar and their relationship feels special and unique. She makes for a delightful comedic
One day, Precious is called to speak with her school’s principle who asks her to begin attending an “alternative” school being she is pregnant again and still in junior high school. Though Mary is furious that the Principle made this suggestion, Precious does begin attending the school and, through testing, it is determined that she is illiterate. The school begins to help Precious understand the opportunities that education with have on her life and the life of her children. After giving birth to her second child, Precious returns home to an enraged Mary who’s welfare checks have been cut off because Precious told the social worker the truth about where her daughter lives and who impregnated her. To protect the baby, Precious runs out of her home that night and eventually moves into a halfway house where see continues to make significant progress. ...
James Parker essay “Our Zombies, Ourselves,” informs readers that the zombie has almost outranked the vampire, and why they’re so popular. This undead monster originated from a Caribbean folk nightmare and was adapted over time by, the Halperin brothers, William Seabrook and George Romero and numerous others. Much like the vampire, zombies owe their fame to the progressiveness of technology, allowing them to consistently invade various media forms. The zombie has infested countless tv shows, movies, video games, and books, throughout the 21st century. Zombies themselves are soulless corpses who were regurgitated back into the world of the living. This making them rejects from the underworld, this presents the zombie as rejected yet inexpungable. What makes the zombie so popular, however, is that symbolizes everything that is rejected by humanity. “Much can be made of him, because he makes so little of himself. He comes back, He comes back, feebly but unstoppably” (Parker). The zombie represents humanity itself as well as what is rejected by humanity. Much like individuals today, the zombie is burdened by life’s demands, converting to nothing but a rotting, groaning human shell that stumbles through life without a purpose. The zombie is symbolizer of the real world, and all things irrepressible, whereas the vampire is a symbol of an alternate world and all things
Through her choice of name, McFadden is placing value on sex worker’s bodies, professions, and themselves as people. McFadden raises the idea at several points in the novel that Sugar’s line of work may be her own choice, but readers are more directly led to believe that Sugar doesn’t have any real options outside of her sex work. The sugar trade also has a brutal history, mainly through the infamous Middle Passage. Goods were traded to Africa for slaves who in turn, were sent to the Caribbean which produced sugar and rum for England. Slaves working in the sugar plantations lived in miserable conditions with high mortality rates. The danger and vicious cycle of the slave trade can be compared to the dangerous life that sex workers lead. Sugar didn’t have a direct “master” or owner, however she did face many abusive men such as the one that left her with the gash before she returned to the Bedford house and Lappy at the end of the
...he story with the various characters. Melinda’s acquaintance, Heather works hard at finding friends and becoming popular, but in the end she turns away from Melinda. The story is about the high school years. Many times when we are growing up we can’t wait to get there because we will be treated as adults, but the truth is the problems that come along when we are older can be difficult. The various clans of students help present the theme by showing us that there are many different types of people. The popular cheerleaders, the jocks, the geeks and those who are just trying to fit in. Melinda transforming the janitor’s closet symbolizes her hiding her feelings and Melinda’s inability to speak and tell people what happened to her. High school can be fun but unfortunately through the eyes of Melinda it was a very hard time.
She hates living in her new town, Sagrado, which causes her to become an alcoholic. This was also due to the absence of Mr. Arnold. She misses him, provoking her to go over board and slap Josh.... ... middle of paper ...
This TV series isn't all about the plot but about the message within the plot that viewers receive; this is a well thought out masterpiece of drama, that connects to millions of teens of the shows target audience on a high emotional level. Full of drama, as what happens in high school, where all the characters go from innocence to experience. The show has a good use of the domino effect where every little move causes another event. This effect creates a message of your words and actions have the power to change things and make a difference. The first domino effect is when Lucas Scott joins the basketball team where his half brother is the captain. Lucas joining the team starts drama between him and the whole basketball team along with their father.
The idea of a zombie is made up and it comes from nzambi, the Kongo word for the spirit of a dead person. In states such as Louisiana, or the Creole culture they believe zombies represent a person who has dies and brought back to life with no speech. Kings psychological argument on how we have an urge to watch horror movies because it helps to re-establish our feelings and feel natural again. Klusterman’s sociological essay helped us see the comparison of zombies and humans in real life. In conclusion zombies are not real, they are make believe but help bring a sense of normality to
Did you know that the word zombies come from African and Haitian people? From the legends regarding voodoo doctors that they believe used to and might still do. Bring back the dead for a short amount of time and turn the to mindless slaves. That will follow their every order with no hesitation. Which is actually like the walkers are doing in the Walking Dead but they weren't raised from the dead. I mean they were but not literally the virus brought them back, not a person. Same goes for Kitchenette Building the speaker is not a zombie or a walker but she might as well be. The fact that she continues to live a life she doesn't want and doesn’t make changes to fix it. She just continues to do the same thing every day that, I bet anybody
The first sign of problems begin to immerge when Alice goes out for drinks with a friend after work. Alice doesn’t come home until late that night and she appears to have forgotten that Michael had a trip that he had be on for work that night. Alice is initially irritated with Michael and then breaks down because she misses Michael when he is gone. He attempts to save her and make things better by taking her on trip to Mexico to fix things that are ...
We don’t see anything resembling a zombie until the third act. Even then, the “monsters” aren’t mindless brain eaters. They’re just decomposing at an accelerated rate.
Kirkman describes zombies as an infectious horror in order to establish a close relationship between zombies and contagions. One of the The Walking Dead’s most brilliant successes has been the characterization of the zombies , and it may be the secret of their popularity. In his book, The Walking Dead, Kirkman
They use a lot of information that is overwhelming, and does not add a lot of validity to the point they were trying to make. Throughout the article, the authors take from various other zombie pieces, such as movies, books, and TV shows and use them to add to their ideas. In some cases, they also use other pieces and discredit them as a way to prove their own point. For example, they talk about the “Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway. This essay presents the idea of the cyborg, which is an organism that is part human and part machine. Throughout the essay, Haraway gives examples of where we see the cyborg throughout media, and how humans might be connected to it. The authors in “A Zombie Manifesto” stated how they were influenced to title their piece after her, but they go on throughout the essay constantly trying to prove the piece wrong. They argue that the idea Haraway is presenting is not truly what humans connect to, and the authors think their ideas are more relatable. They believe their zombie interpretation is more relatable than Haraway’s cyborg interpretation. The authors are trying to make their interpretation more valid by invalidating another interpretation. This makes the piece hard to agree with, for an interpretation is relative to each person, and tearing apart another interpretation is an unproductive way to persuade readers to agree with you and your ideas. Another reason the article is difficult to agree with, is the fact that it is very difficult to understand. With the piece being as persuasive as it is, the authors did not take the time to ensure the writing would be easy to understand for all. In reading the article, it felt as though the authors had a specific group of readers in mind and didn’t accommodate to others who might find interest in zombies. The article is written in such a way
The vivid imagery utilized lends this story a great deal of depth as it brings Sugar’s encounters to life in the mind of the reader. Right from the start, Leach swiftly establishes Sugar as a sexually ambivalent woman as she illustrates the leopard-print bikini girl’s strong legs and braids “hang[ing] down her back cascading like a waterfall at mid...
Mogk, Matt. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Zombies. New York: Gallery Books, 2011. Print.
This successful cable drama keep add new characters and storyline to develop the characters we’ve followed through the horror zombie apocal...