I had never heard of this show before giving it a try, so I went into it without any expectations. Unfortunately, this did not deliver anything particularly good or memorable. The characters are all over the place, motivations are weak, and holy crap does the pacing suck. The premise is that of a group of stereotypical teens (more on that later) who end up trapped in their high school after an explosion of a chemical plant poisons the outside air with fallout and turns people exposed into something like mutant zombies.
--Spoilers from here on--The entire 10 episodes only takes place over a period of about 2 days, which is very much to its detriment. It's also very confusing, as they keep making it seem like more time has passed - you keep seeing the characters bedding down to sleep, but I guess maybe they just all take a lot of micronaps? At one point the water is shut off and they only have what bottled drinks are left. They say with rationing it should last a week - and yet, even though only a day has passed (as they keep repeatedly telling you by talking about how it's been two days in the show over and over again) they're suddenly really low on their water. Not sure if I should say they're all stupidly irresponsible or if the show just decided to forget what was going on.
The stupidity is not restricted to the lack of time passing. We get the stereotypical cast of characters (jock with his cheerleader girlfriend, the nerd, the bad boy, perfectionist girl, etc) who do very stereotypical things. There is, of course, the one who gits bitten and hides it from the group. There's the one who is an obvious jerk, who almost lets another character die by withholding the medicine he needs to live because he has a thing for his girlfriend. The main character is obviously the boy Grover, the whitebread boring lead who was never meant to be there in the first place, but showed up to detention he didn't earn in order to be close to a girl he liked. It's hard to care about any of the characters, or to believe they care about each other.
One of the girls it turns out is pregnant, and this brings basically nothing to the story. She doesn't seem to put much emotion into caring about the baby, and it's treated like exactly what it is - a poorly thought-out plot device, one they bring up when convenient and then abandon otherwise. She starts an out-of-nowhere relationship with one of the "bad boys" and over the course of less than a day suddenly the show treats them like they're in love, and have a huge meaningful relationship, which it never actually earns.
Eventually a man shows up who says he's there to rescue them, and has a vaccine that would allow them to safely breathe the air so they can escape. Only one of them has any misgivings about how this guy shows up and magically has a vaccine after only 2 days. When questioned why he was wearing a hazmat suit and mask if he's had the vaccine and doesn't need it he says because he'd already been out in it for 2 days and it was easier on him with the suit. That implies the vaccine was available to him the same day as the explosion. And with the exception of the one kid, no one questions this, and are willing to let him inject them with some mystery vaccine they know nothing about, even after he acts shady and refuses to answer questions, dodging them in very obvious ways.
It turns out the "vaccine" is actually a poison to kill them as they are witnesses to the mutants the chemical plant explosion caused, and he is part of a team trying to cover it up. Big surprise. One of the group (the pregnant one, of course) has already had the vaccine by the time they figure it out and try to stop him. As mentioned earlier, she never really brings up the baby, even when she's been injected with poison and is dying.
Ultimately, I only even finished this series because there was literally nothing else for me to watch and I was bored, but it's not really worth it. The characters are paper thin and VERY stupid (even when they try to convince you of how smart they are), the pacing is the absolute worst, and there are plot holes big enough to drive a semi through.
--Spoilers from here on--The entire 10 episodes only takes place over a period of about 2 days, which is very much to its detriment. It's also very confusing, as they keep making it seem like more time has passed - you keep seeing the characters bedding down to sleep, but I guess maybe they just all take a lot of micronaps? At one point the water is shut off and they only have what bottled drinks are left. They say with rationing it should last a week - and yet, even though only a day has passed (as they keep repeatedly telling you by talking about how it's been two days in the show over and over again) they're suddenly really low on their water. Not sure if I should say they're all stupidly irresponsible or if the show just decided to forget what was going on.
The stupidity is not restricted to the lack of time passing. We get the stereotypical cast of characters (jock with his cheerleader girlfriend, the nerd, the bad boy, perfectionist girl, etc) who do very stereotypical things. There is, of course, the one who gits bitten and hides it from the group. There's the one who is an obvious jerk, who almost lets another character die by withholding the medicine he needs to live because he has a thing for his girlfriend. The main character is obviously the boy Grover, the whitebread boring lead who was never meant to be there in the first place, but showed up to detention he didn't earn in order to be close to a girl he liked. It's hard to care about any of the characters, or to believe they care about each other.
One of the girls it turns out is pregnant, and this brings basically nothing to the story. She doesn't seem to put much emotion into caring about the baby, and it's treated like exactly what it is - a poorly thought-out plot device, one they bring up when convenient and then abandon otherwise. She starts an out-of-nowhere relationship with one of the "bad boys" and over the course of less than a day suddenly the show treats them like they're in love, and have a huge meaningful relationship, which it never actually earns.
Eventually a man shows up who says he's there to rescue them, and has a vaccine that would allow them to safely breathe the air so they can escape. Only one of them has any misgivings about how this guy shows up and magically has a vaccine after only 2 days. When questioned why he was wearing a hazmat suit and mask if he's had the vaccine and doesn't need it he says because he'd already been out in it for 2 days and it was easier on him with the suit. That implies the vaccine was available to him the same day as the explosion. And with the exception of the one kid, no one questions this, and are willing to let him inject them with some mystery vaccine they know nothing about, even after he acts shady and refuses to answer questions, dodging them in very obvious ways.
It turns out the "vaccine" is actually a poison to kill them as they are witnesses to the mutants the chemical plant explosion caused, and he is part of a team trying to cover it up. Big surprise. One of the group (the pregnant one, of course) has already had the vaccine by the time they figure it out and try to stop him. As mentioned earlier, she never really brings up the baby, even when she's been injected with poison and is dying.
Ultimately, I only even finished this series because there was literally nothing else for me to watch and I was bored, but it's not really worth it. The characters are paper thin and VERY stupid (even when they try to convince you of how smart they are), the pacing is the absolute worst, and there are plot holes big enough to drive a semi through.