What could be scarier than zombie hordes after a nuclear apocalypse?
High school teenagers.
Such is the premise of “Daybreak,” a Netflix original series loosely based on a graphic novel of the same name, which ran for one season that the streaming service first made available in October 2019. It takes place in Glendale, California after biological weapons have turned adults into the walking dead, “ghoulies” who repeat their last mortal thought out loud ad nauseam as they hunt down adolescents to eat. Meanwhile, the surviving teens and their “Glee” style cliques are now factions warring for territory and resources. There are fun pop culture references and a bit of inside ball for those who have ever lived in or adjacent to Glendale, and will recognize some of the streets and buildings mentioned.
Much of this is told through the fourth wall via Josh, the handsome white 17 year old smart aleck protagonist. If any similarities to Ferris Bueller seem more than coincidental, the casting of Matthew Broderick, seen in flashback as the high school principal Mr. Burr, removes any doubt. Like Piper on “Orange Is The New Black” before him, Josh’s encounters help pass around the point of view. And like that show, the narrative bounces between the bleak state of their world and the life the characters knew before everything changed.
The story takes a lot of twists and turns, with an epic plot and some poignant themes running throughout, and a brilliant season ending twist that would become a series finale rather than a cliffhanger. It would be a shame to reveal any spoilers to the uninitiated, but one character must be examined for the sake of this retrospective, and has to be seen to be believed. Her journey from monster to hero ultimately manages to share something meaningful about bad decisions, regret, abuse and manipulation, trauma, and disability, through the lens of a fever dream that would teach David Chase and Matthew Weiner a thing or two.
(Beware ye, here be spoilers ahead.)
The seventh episode is the only episode told largely from the point of view of a character played by Krysta Rodriguez (formerly of “Smash,” “Quantico,” and the original Broadway run of “The Addams Family”) we first meet in episode two as “The Witch,” when Josh and his squad are trapped with her in a mall. Although her identity is momentarily obscured behind her tattered black clothes, rat’s nest hair, and decayed teeth, she is soon revealed to be Josh’s old science teacher, called “Ms. Crumble” by the kids for not being able to hold things together when being bullied by the students. She has maintained some intelligence and vocabulary, though often rambling while struggling with both her flesh-eating urges (which she curbs with whatever critters lurk in the mall) and a loose grip on reality.
Crumble becomes a pet project to Angelica, a foul-mouthed preteen who is the youngest and arguably savviest of the survivors in Josh’s group. Her peers often refer to her as a sociopath, but Crumble seems to bring out a softer side. The girl even helps Crumble dress up for a makeshift homecoming dance the teens hold to make up for the one they lost. By the beginning of “Canta Tu Vida” (directed by British filmmaker Mark Tonderai from a script by “Leverage” and “Lucifer” writer Jenn Kao), Crumble is firmly entrenched as an ally to the teens.
But the episode opens like a twisted sitcom, inside Crumble’s head with something resembling memories of when she was a fresh faced teacher with a cute bob cut, except now with a laugh track and comical cannibalism. As she calls roll, each missing student is accounted for with an explanation by another student - “You ate him.” Where as before she would have crumbled in the face of disobedience, in this sitcom hallucination, she disciplines her unruly students by ripping off their body parts to devour, an unseen audience heard laughing. The opening credits run to Morrissey’s “Sing Your Life” and a sequence of gory eye gouging and “Hannibal”-style brain eating. A director calls for a cut to the action and Crumble walks to the director’s chair, finding Angelica at the helm with a script in hand.
“My life is not a sitcom,” Crumble insists, “I am a for-real person. I don’t eat kids.”
She snaps back into reality, Angelica caring for pulsating wounds that have appeared on Crumble’s back, another odd occurrence for the “half ghoulie.” Angelica says it’s just a bad case of back acne and the regular ol’ Crumble is right around the corner from returning. “My name’s not Crumble,” she announces. “Do I remember my name? Something is happening to me...”
She pleads with Angelica for help, but soon the girl has been banished from the Josh-led faction that now runs the mall (which is its own important throughline in the show, Josh learning to differentiate leadership from dictatorship, but it’s the b-plot for this episode). Angelica was privy to Josh’s presumed dead crush, popular girl Sam, still being alive and under the rule of football quarterback Turbo at the high school (Sam’s misadventures make up the c-plot this episode). Angelica withheld the intel so Josh would continue to lead the group instead of breaking away for a rescue mission. Now without the safety of the mall, Angelica embarks on a search for the Cheermazons, a sort of mashup between Diana Prince’s Themiscyra and Torrance Shipman’s cheerocracy, that has planted roots at the YWCA. Crumble, who finds out about the banishment later after having been waiting for Angelica to get back from an errand, also leaves the mall to track her down.
As “Zombie” by Langhorn Slim plays on the soundtrack, Crumble rides a bicycle, like a benevolent Miss Gulch. Map in hand (unfortunately, a Disneyland map, not so useful along Glendale’s Brand Avenue), she asks a squirrel for directions, subtitles indicating the squirrel suggests “left on Central.” She arrives at the steps of the YWCA and shouts “Hello...”, triggering a flashback to her dolled up in rock n’ roll mode, standing on a stage at a dive bar.
“Hello, Van Nuys! We are THE all-female Latina Morrissey cover band, we are Girlfriends In A Coma!” The group kicks off a truncated version of “Sing Your Life” in Spanish (the inspiration for the episode’s title) to the bemusement of the bar’s unimpressed patrons. One raises his beer at the song’s end, Matthew Broderick as Michael Burr. At this point in the series, he has been exposed as the only other known adult survivor, who not only maintained his intelligence but also donned a helmet and gas mask as Baron Triumph to kidnap and devour his former students. That’s right, Jim McAllister from “Election” became the Mayor of Gas Town in “Mad Max: Fury Road.” But here, in the Van Nuys dive bar of Crumble’s mind, he still is a pre-apocalyptic milquetoast principal.
There is some major Mystery style negging in this scene, with Burr throwing shade not only on Crumble’s singing interests, but her constant failure to connect with the students. “I am an excellent teacher,” she declares, to Burr’s continued skeptical facial expressions and disembodied audience laughter. “I’m a very good teacher... I’m a good teacher... I’m an adequate teacher... I’m a teacher.” Burr says she is bullied because the kids sense she’s torn, so she should choose between singing or teaching. “Morrissey is... my spirit animal.”
Morrissey’s legacy was already tarnished by the airing of “Daybreak,” his accessibility by Latinx, the LGBTQ community, and outsiders of all types more and more eclipsed by his increasingly right-leaning contrarianism and a closer 21st century look at questionable statements in the press as far back as the eighties. Still, those songs resonate for many who found comfort in the proto-emo Smiths and their frontman’s subsequent solo work.
“You don’t understand what he means to a girl from Pacoima who religiously listened to KROQ,” Crumble tells Burr. “Morrissey understands what it’s like to feel worthless. And that makes me feel... worthful.” Burr dismisses her singing as a hobby, so she dismisses him with a “Fuck you!”
Smash cut to Crumble and Burr having sex in his car in the parking lot. Director Angelica yells “Cut!” and chides Crumble for not being into it.
“I’m confused,” Crumble explains. “Is this what actually happened? Is this a flashback or a nightmare?”
“Yes,” Angelica answers.
The plot moves forward with Crumble finding the real Angelica about to be tested by the Cheermazon’s trials, enduring them alongside her. Crumble’s nightmares/flashbacks show her and Burr keeping a fling on the downlow, with the principal becoming more corrupt and aspiring to be an “apex predator” who can’t be resisted. He convinces Crumble to change some grades, ostensibly in order to push the school’s collective GPA in pursuit of qualifying for a grant. After he awkwardly forces a “Lady and the Tramp” noodle kiss with Crumble during a teacher’s lounge lunch, she again expresses confusion, angering director Angelica. Burr explains that the script has Crumble giving up singing and wanting to be the kind of teacher she saw in movies and TV.
Crumble reads the script aloud for herself. “I want to help students understand why they feel so lost. It’s just biology. The amygdala develops first in a teenager’s brain. It controls emotions and all the bad decisions that kids make.” She agrees with the sentiment. But she can’t reconcile the bad decisions she sees herself making in these visions.
She is able to somewhat articulate this all to the real Angelica, who promises to help her get better after they get through the Cheermazon’s gauntlet - a gladiator style fight against captured zombie mall Santas - and earn a place in their home.
After a starving Crumble survives the Kringle throng with Angelica, but horrifies the Cheermazons by licking up the blood of a fallen Cheermazon pledge off the ground, she recalls the day the bomb dropped. Her and Burr make out at the top of a stairwell at the school and she spots his new Jay Z style gold necklace, realizing there is no grant, only Burr taking bribes. She says she thought he was a good guy. “Kids are assholes, you know that,” he says. “So I’m taking what I deserve.” When she walks away, he tells her he’s just looking for the same control over his life that she wants. When she turns back, she sees Baron Triumph instead.
This time, it’s Crumble who calls for the action to cut. Angelica the director walks over. This begins the tour de force scene of the episode, with actress Krysta Rodriguez giving a soliloquy across a series of cuts alternating between cute bob teacher in the stairwell, sitcom cannibal in the classroom, Moz tribute singer onstage (and in the back of Burr’s car), and Crumble the Witch in the Cheermazon stronghold as she looks directly into the camera.
“I needed you, Angelica, to tell me why I’m a mess. To explain why I’m changing. But you’re the kid. I’m the teacher. I wanted to be like those teachers I saw on TV. (sighs) God, they always had the right thing to say, and they meant so much to their students. I wanted to be someone’s Morrissey. I wanted to matter. I didn’t. Burr made me feel wanted. He made me feel necessary and important. I shouldn’t have slept with Burr. Or changed the grades. But I did. (laughs) Even adults struggle with an evolving amygdala. And we make bad decisions. That doesn’t mean I’m not a strong woman. We are not perfect. We are trainwrecks. We are monsters. That’s what makes us human. I’m... human. And I need you to know, I know what happened to me.”
We see teacher Crumble and Principal Burr/Baron Triumph struggle when she rips off his necklace and he pushes her down the stairs, her head crashing into the floor and blood splattering as the light of the bomb goes off outside - her brain injury the reason she has persevered in a different way than the ghoulies. Burr abandons her to seek refuge in a fallout shelter under the school - the reason he is still alive with his faculties intact.
The Cheermazon Triumvirate that rules the tribe (“binary is basic,” they explain) asks the recruits to vote either for Crumble to be exiled, or executed. Angelica declines to vote, reminding the Triumverate that even they believe in more than a binary choice, and chooses a third option - to leave with Crumble. Her loyalty turns out to be the correct answer in one last test, and Angelica is the only recruit accepted into the Cheermazons. Crumble tries to sneak out during the crowning ceremony, but Angelica stops her. There are flashbacks, this time to all the moments Angelica and Crumble have shared together, as they sing in unison - in English this round - “Sing Your Life” (“You sing it in your sleep,” Angelica tells Crumble later, explaining how a kid born between “Ringleader of the Tormentors” and “Years of Refusal” ever learned the second single from “Kill Uncle”). It’s a character development moment for the previously hardened preteen, but also an epilogue for who Crumble was and what she is becoming.
“Our brains are constantly healing. I even remember my name now.”
“What is it?” asks Angelica.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not that person anymore. I’m becoming something else.”
Angelica convinces Crumble to stay.
“Well... I am an excellent teacher.”
Even in the zombie post-apocalypse, a girl from Pacoima rediscovers and reasserts her dignity and her humanity, and gets to be the hero.
Morrissey used to sing, “You have a lovely singing voice, a lovely singing voice...
and all of those who sing on-key, they stole the notion from you and me.”
For one perfect episode, we root for a witch, a monster, as she steals it back.
Hub is a writer, storyteller, and performer from Magical Higley AZ, by way of Phoenix (where the video for “My Love Life” was filmed, on Van Buren) and Los Angeles (not too far from where Baron Triumph ate all those kids). You can find more of his work at HubUnofficial.com.
