Can true love survive zombification?

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Last week, in my post Vyzhit Posle, I discussed the first season of a Russian TV show called Vyzhit Posle (The Day After on Amazon Prime). It starts with 11 young people being locked up in a bunker while above ground Eeeevil Russian oligarchs bungle an experiment to create a master race. Instead most of the population of Moscow is killed by a virus, except for young good-looking Russian girls who get turned into black-eyed zombies.

It was quite entertaining, and as Season 2 unfolded it turned out to be one of the better treatments of zombies I've seen in a long time. Before George Romero turned zombies into ambulatory corpses, the horror of them hadn't been hordes of monsters trying to kill, instead it had been the act of zombification itself. That is, the removal of human agency from a person was what was terrifying.

In case anybody decides to watch the show, which is full of plot twists and surprises, I'll try to avoid too many spoilers. That said, the show uses two of the girls who had been in the bunker and turned into zombies by the end of Season 1 to illustrate the implications of the loss of their humanity rather than just the rampaging zombie babe hordes.

In the top picture we have Nadya, the Yum-Yum Girl (high priced escort) who turned into a zombie in the final episode of the first season. It looked like Mitya, her good-for-nothing drunk of a hookup, got killed, but it turns out he escaped Nadya. Well, escaped her for a while. Nadya ends up being the alpha queen zombie, and in the above picture she and her zombie BFFs have tracked him down and herded him to her nest in the palentology wing of a museum. Yea, he doesn't look too happy. Also, entertainingly enough, her nest is a pile of stuffed animals. Hey, a zombie chick is still a chick, right?

The next picture is the research file on Aijan, the beautiful Kazakhstani girl who suffered so much in Season 1 as she slowly zombified. Valera, the skinhead with a heart of gold who became her sweetie had promised Aijan that he would kill her if she turned into a zombie. Well, he screwed that up -- the head Valera, gotta shoot zombies in the head -- and they discover she is back in the clutches of the Eeeeevil research lab. The experiments the caption refers to is them injecting her with every disease known to man. Sadly for Aijan, who can't catch a break on this show, things go downhill for her from there.

There is still a lot of soap opera tomfoolery, the occasional plot hole or two, and many goofy translations in their captions, but the show is good. Much of what they pull off as they show the plight of the bunker survivors and the zombie girls is quite effective.

Finally, and this is in no way a gratuitous display of hot zombie babes, below are a few pictures of them scampering about. Mind you, purely so's you can admire the high quality production design of the series.

Season I: Vyzhit Posle
SeasonII: Can true love survive zombification?
Season III: Hot zombie babes just want to be your friend (sort of)

Warning: never try zombie sex tourism - it will not end well