What I’m Watching: Santa Clarita Diet

Santa Clarita Diet: Season 1, Episode 7 “Strange or Just Inconsiderate?” (B+)

Say what you will about this show being weird or excessively gory, but I think it has some of the best and most memorable lines on TV these days. While “Men can kill too” was enhanced by its delivery, I think I appreciated a few of Joel’s lines in this hours more, namely “In another time, they would have been cowboys,” “I see things I feel are true and I share them,” and of course, the winner, “You never know when your neighbor might kill you with a shovel – I don’t have to tell half of you that.” I didn’t think that Dan was dead already, but it turns out that it was great fodder for some physical comedy involving Sheila and Joel having to hide the body while bickering about using the garage as a home office, something they both ultimately decided they liked, and Eric getting his chance to come share his true feelings with Dan postmortem. It took me a minute to recognize Natalie Morales from “Parks and Recreation” and “The Grinder” as Dan’s partner, who sounds emotionless but harbors quite a bit of affection for Lisa, who didn’t seem at all devastated by Dan’s disappearance. Casting Dan as the one who killed Gary and Loki is convenient, though after the disgusting scene in which Sheila demonstrated just how hairy Dan was, seeing her find her own severed toe in the bathtub is disquieting news at best. This episode’s title was a slam dunk, referencing the humorously shameless description that Sheila and Joel adopted for themselves to avoid something much worse.