"Daybreak": Saving the Non-Gender Specific Person in Distress

I was definitely planning to skip the new Netflix drama Daybreak, about teenagers surviving the apocalypse while the adults are all zapped. Riot Girls, The Last Kids on Earth, Nowhere Boys....I've seen it all before.

More importantly, the promo is all about Josh (Colin Ford) trying to reconnect with the Girl of His Dreams. What does that even mean? It's heterosexist brainwashing.  How about a new mantra: so many girls, so little time, how can I choose?

Plus Colin Ford has nice abs, but attended a evangelical Christian school, has starred in heartwarming productions, and "has never been accused as a gay."

So I was noping my way out of there when I read that his sidekick in the show is gay.

It wouldn't hurt to take a look.

Episode #1:  A narrating Josh, aka Ferris Bueller, thinks that the post-apocalypse is awesome.  Sure, everyone over 18 (and, one assumes, under 10) melted into goo  or turned into trudging "ghoulies," roving gangs are kidnapping kids to "turn into hummus," and Sam, the Girl of His Dreams, has vanished, but you can get all the fast cars and glitzy gear you want.  It evens out.

Josh hears a girl screaming as Golf-Team cannibals prepare to eat her, and rushes to the rescue.  "Let the girl go," he says, "and I'll leave you to whatever circle jerk you have planned for tonight."

"That's tomorrow night," the gang leader, Terry (Chester Rushing, left), tells him, pointing out that gender norms don't exist anymore, so gay sex is no longer shameful.

Not to worry,they still throw around homophobic slurs.  Gay sex is still shameful.

So Josh rescues the foul-mouthed 10-year old Angelica. Then they encounter Wesley (Austin Crute), a gay black bully (I've never seen those three words together before) turned Asian-wisdom spouting street samurai. 

After battling the Mad Max-style Turbo Jock, the trio heads to the  mall, where reputedly Sam is being held captive by the evil Baron Triumph.  No Sam, and the evil baron turns out to be Eli (Gregory Kashyan), a former poor kid now holed up in the mall.  The only other resident is The Witch,  aka Mrs. Crumble, a deranged, semi-zombified former biology teacher.

Kind of derivative, with boring flashbacks, and why did Josh rush to rescue a girl, when a moment before he just watched while a boy was dragged to his death.

Right -- the Girl.

I'll just sample some other episodes.

They turn the mall into a free zone, for kids who didn't belong to a clique before the apocalypse, and try to live as normally as possible.  They even hold a "welcome to being alive" prom, with a gender-neutral ruler instead of a king and queen.

Although ostensibly the "good guy" leader whom everyone loves, Josh is rather jerk-like.  When a new Asian refugee is admitted to the sanctuary, he tells her that he's the new ICE, and she has to vote for him in the upcoming election or he'll have her deported.

Not approp, dude.


There's a lot about power struggles in the Turbo Jock tribe.

Wesley turns out to be dating one of the jocks, Turbo Bro Jock (Cody Kearsley, Moose on Riverdale), who is partially melted and cannot speak.

Principal Burris (Matthew Broderick), who somehow survived being melted, wants to finish "cleansing" the world by setting off a bomb.

Fade out kiss?  Well, Wesley and Turbo Jock Bro get one, but not Sam and Josh.  She rejects him in the end.  Turns out that she never needed rescuing, and she never wanted to be his girlfriend; all of this  dreamy romance-stuff was in his head.

Who'd have thought, Josh as unreliable narrator?  How postmodern!  I might have to go back and watch this after all.