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Can Sheila Be Cured On 'Santa Clarita Diet'?

by Zakiya Jamal

When someone dies, most people usually expect them to stay dead. That's just the natural order of things. However, on Netflix's new series Santa Clarita Diet, Sheila Hammond (played by Drew Barrymore) dies and becomes undead for some reason. Other than the fact that she no longer has a heartbeat and likes to eat people, she's otherwise just like every other human being. She's just no longer technically alive. So can Sheila be cured on Santa Clarita Diet or is she going to be undead for the rest of her, well, undead life? The answer to that is a bit unclear.

The trailer for the new series doesn't give too much away about what happened to Sheila and how she became dead in the first place. When Barrymore and her co-star Timothy Olyphant, who plays Sheila's husband Joel, appeared on The TODAY Show, it was revealed that Sheila dies from a mysterious illness. One can assume the illness not only killed her, but also made her undead. If it was an illness that caused it, it seems fair to believe there is a cure. There's just one minor flaw in this plan — the fact that Sheila is already dead. Can they really bring her back to life? If this was the real world, I'd say no way, but since this is a TV show, anything is possible.

In the promo, we can see Joel talking to a doctor about Sheila's condition. It's possible that throughout the season they'll be trying to find a way to fix Sheila, but based on what I've seen so far, I don't think Sheila will want to be fixed. She seems excited about her new undead life. She only has to sleep two hours a night and still feels energized. She can now parallel park in one move and she just feels more confident than she did before she died. For Sheila, dying wasn't the end of her life, it was just the beginning. So even if there's a cure found for her, I doubt she'll want to take it.

It'll be interesting to see how Sheila's undead life affects her and her family. The couple also has a teen daughter, Abby (played by Liv Hewson), who appears to be the first to discover that something's seriously off with her mom. This series may be filled with gore, but it is already getting great reviews, so you'll definitely want to check it out.

Santa Clarita Diet will be available for streaming on Netflix on Friday, Feb. 3.