Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daybreak’ On Netflix, About Misfit Teens Surviving The Apocalypse

The trope of kids running a society by themselves after some sort of apocalyptic event seems to be a thing right now, at least on Netflix. First it was The Society, then The Last Kids On Earth. Now it’s Daybreak, a live-action dramedy based on a graphic novel series. Read on for more…

DAYBREAK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A quick pan over the Southern California coast, past Santa Monica, through downtown L.A., and over to Glendale. We see Glendale High School, where its principal, Michael Burr (Matthew Broderick) is making announcements.

The Gist: In a sleepy homeroom, Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) turns to the camera and talks about how he’s a C student, fighting off the fact that people are making a mint off nerd culture. As he’s making the speech, people disappear from the room. Then he mentions that a bomb went off, and now it’s the apocalypse.

Josh has done quite well in the six months since the bomb went off; only kids survived, with the adults becoming bloodthirsty “ghoulies” who mutter the last inane thought that entered their head before things went sideways, usually involving coffee shops or sales at Lululemon. He’s got supplies, smarts, and the ability to get away. He also knows where not to go, as Glendale has been split up into tribes, mainly ascribing to people’s social status in school.

He is also on a mission: He wants to find Samaira “Sam” Dean (Sophie Simnett). When he first moved to Glendale from Toronto after his parents got divorced, Principal Burr got Sam to show him around, and they started falling for each other. She was the same as Josh in that she didn’t fit into any one clique, but different in that she was friends with everybody. But most of all she liked people who weren’t vanilla or normal.

After thinking he was rescuing Sam from a group of golf team dorks, he finds that he’s rescued Angelica Green (Alyvia Alyn Lind) instead, a hyper-intelligent and profane 10-year-old who used to set fire to him or his stuff when he babysat her. She insists on following him, and they soon encounter Wesley Fists (Austin Crute), a jock that used to love swords and torturing Josh with his jock buddies at school, but is now a pacifist.

They head toward the mall, because that’s where Sam was last seen, but not before defending themselves in Josh’s well-stocked apartment from the Mad Max-ian group of jocks, summoned by the golf guys. Their leader, Turbo Bro-Jock (Cody Kearsley) and his henchperson, Mona Lisa (Jeanté Godlock) use the golf team to round up stragglers and strengthen their ranks. By the time he gets to the mall, though, the jocks aren’t chasing him anymore, but they have other issues to deal with.

Our Take: The first episode of Daybreak, based on a graphic novel series by Brian Ralph, is tough to watch, especially the first half hour of it. It’s so exhaustingly self-aware that it tries to cram in winks, asides, meta jokes and other silliness to the point where we have no idea who Josh or anyone else really is, and by the time we get some clue, we don’t care.

We’re not sure why, but creators Brad Peyton and Aron Eli Coleite thought it would be a good idea to lard down the first five minutes of the first episode with multiple Ferris Bueller references. Yes, it’s ironic that Broderick is playing the principal now instead of the rebellious student — though he seems to be a dorky guy who knows JAY-Z lyrics and plays video games, so maybe not the same as Principal Rooney, you know what we mean? — but one meta reference would have done just fine. There were so many that we just started getting annoyed instead of concentrating on the show.

The flashbacks are, of course, helpful in building both story and character, deepening Josh and introducing us to Sam. But then again, all we get to see how their relationship grew is another winking gag — “Cue the montage!” — and nothing that we can grab onto as far as what that relationship was all about.

It didn’t help that the plot of Daybreak is almost identical to the animated series The Last Kids On Earth, which is also on Netflix. But while Last Kids is definitely aimed at teens, we’re not sure who exactly Daybreak is aimed for. The rapid-fire, winking gags seem to be aimed at teens, but the language (and TV-MA rating) make it seem that it’s more appropriate for the 17-and-up crowd. And it seems that Angelica swears more than all the older teens combined. “Uh, douchers? It’s go time!” she says to Josh and Wesley as the golf guys start chasing them. We enjoy the creative use of the term “douche” as much as anyone, but maybe not from someone playing a 10-year-old?

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: The trio is confronted with a notoriously tough biker, and as the biker takes off his mask, Josh says to the audience, “What’s life like in the apocalypse? It’s never what you expect.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Broderick. Yes, he’s the biggest name on the show, but this show is definitely not aimed to people who saw him in WarGames 36 years ago. But, as you’d expect, he makes the most of his screen time, especially when he gives Josh a speech about why the walnut is one of his favorite foods. To be honest, we’re not even 100 percent sure why he agreed to do this show.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the golf team signal the jock gang, someone tells Mona Lisa about it, and she says, “Shut the fuck up. Golfers don’t rate as athletes. They have tiny balls.” Do you get it? They hit tiny balls and they have tiny balls! So clever!

Our Call: SKIP IT. We watched a little into the second episode of Daybreak (friggin’ cliffhangers in the first episode make us grumpy… the second episode is well aware of it because it’s called “Schmuck Bait”) and there were signs that things would settle down. But we were just too tired to push on any further, and there wasn’t enough we liked to return to the show down the road.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Daybreak On Netflix