Hey, Zoo is back! You remember Zoo, right? The CBS summer series about the animals of the world mutating and rising up against humans? The one where civilization’s only hope is a team made up of Bob Benson from Mad Men, a blond French spy, a safari guide, a journalist who I keep calling Caitlin even though I’m sure that’s not her name, and an alcoholic veterinarian? The one that also featured the blond French spy killing hundreds of evil rats with a flamethrower, and a prison break planned and carried out by a pack of murderous wolves, and a late-night zebra heist? Yup, that’s the show. It’s Zoo!
The second season — and really, what a delightful world we live in that a show that featured the line, “I don’t know which was worse, getting attacked by lions or finding out my sister is sleeping with my fiance” can get two seasons on America’s most-watched network — debuted Tuesday night with a two-hour premiere. A lot of things happened! I will now try to explain them to you to the best of my abilities, although it is worth noting that, as with last season, I refuse to attempt to follow the plot of this show beyond the level of “person casually watching a TV in a mostly empty bar.” Also, as you probably deduced from the first paragraph, I still have not learned the name of a single character on this show despite watching every episode. (This is a lie. Bob Benson’s name is Jackson Oz. Pretend I didn’t say that, though.)
There are really only three developments worth mentioning before I tell you about the thing where a bloodthirsty elephant chased a Range Rover down an airport runway. That’s the best part. We’ll get there, I swear.
– Bob Benson is a werewolf now! Or something! He got bit and his blood is mutating, but he and the French spy are hiding it from everyone because they’re in love, so she’s advocating for kind of reckless tests to be done on another infected human they found, who turned into a pizza-faced monster who gnawed half his own arm off and killed a dozen military members with his bare hands and is now their best hope at curing Bob. Also, this exchange happened, which has been cracking me up for hours now.
BLONDE FRENCH SPY: I got a copy of your blood tests.
BOB BENSON: What’d they find?
BLOND FRENCH SPY: Nothing. You’re perfect healthy.
BOB BENSON: Okay.
BLOND FRENCH SPY: Except your blood…
“You’re perfectly healthy… except your blood.” It’s so beautiful I might cry.
– The journalist whose name is almost definitely not Caitlin is stranded in the woods and being terrorized by bugs and adorable rodents.
– Bees!
Other things happened, too. The French spy saved a baby and then just, like, had a baby for a while, and then found the baby’s dad and that was the end of the baby plot. I hope the baby ends up playing an important part in the show later in the season. Like it has the cure or something. Chekhov’s infant!
But enough about babies. I promised you bloodthirsty elephants. Best part: The elephant is angry because Bob Benson just stabbed him in the ass to steal his blood for testing. Other best part: The people in the Range Rover in this next GIF, the ones trying to save Bob, are fleeing graverobbing vultures who have been eating humans and then puking human-filled bile into the clouds to cause acidic bloodrain to pour down from the sky, killing the crops and poisoning the water, which causes more humans to die, which gives them more bile to puke into the clouds, all of which is allowing them to stockpile a huge human corpse food supply, as though they’re preparing for something. At least I think that’s what happened.
Good show!
Oh no, but how are they going to escape an angry elephant (top speed: 25 mph) in a Range Rover (top speed: 152 mph)? They’ll need a plan! But who will be the brave soul who comes up w-
Ahhh.
So, two things:
- This pilot is my new favorite character, because what I didn’t tell you is that they had just found him unconscious like 30 seconds ago after that pizza-faced monster beat the hell out of him. I like to think he has such a horrible concussion that “I’m always okay to fly!” would have been his answer to literally any question she asked him.
- This is happening.
Look.
No.
YES.
YES.
They did it! That happened! They escaped a furious bloodthirsty elephant by driving into a jumbo jet that was in the process of taking off! Like, think about that. A lot. Picture yourself standing on the side of the runway watching it happen. Imagine trying to explain it to a friend. “So the car is racing away from the elephant and the plane is…” You’d sound like a lunatic.
I’ve been thinking about this since the episode aired, and I think I can say with 100 percent certainty that this is even more ridiculous than the runway scene in Fast & Furious 6, which is really saying something because that one lasted for almost 15 minutes, would have required a 30-mile runway to work, and ended with Dominic Toretto driving a car out through the exploding nose of a crashing cargo plane. You know what it didn’t have, though? A genetically mutated elephant hellbent on murdering Bob Benson from Mad Men.
So, yeah. Gotta score this one for Zoo.
