Our group finds themselves splitting up yet again as they continue to investigate the strange animal behaviour around the world; this time, Rio De Janeiro is being flooded with bats.
I’m beginning to worry that ZOO doesn’t have an endgame. Or, at least it does, but it’s thirteen episode order was too many for what probably should have been a shorter season. The story, or lack thereof, has increasingly begun to slow to a halt as the show continues. Sure, everyone has managed to come together and done a little investigating into the worldwide animal attacks, but there’s no sense of forward moving, that all this is leading to something. Instead each episode has the team uncover some vague piece of information and just sort of stumble into something else.
If ZOO’S pacing problem was never more apparent, tonight’s episode displayed it loud and clear. We had Abraham, Mitch and Chloe investigating bats in Rio, where they hatched a last minute plan to get the bats away from the favelas, while Jackson and Jamie go looking for a man named Leo Butler, a name written all over the journal of one Evan Lee Hartley, who is still on the loose.
Both of these story lines stay stagnant for most of the episodes running time, springing to life in the final few minutes before ending abruptly. TV shows rely on cliffhangers to keep you watching but this just felt like the show knowing it needs to spread out every little plot line for as long as it can in order to meet the seasons length.
But there’s still elements to like in ZOO and the cast try their best to keep the proceedings entertaining. Abraham continues to get some of the best lines, his delightful enthusiasm at getting to go to Rio and his exclamation that he “loves this job” was funny. Likewise his interactions with Mitch are quickly becoming my favorite thing, as Mitch’s offering of “bat facts” to help calm Abraham down on the plane was probably the highlight of the episode.
Chloe continues to be the weak link in the cast, and a lot of her dialogue is either expository details that help set up the plots or her responding to Mitch’s complicated science talk in a confused manner. The show pulled the ‘explain it to me in ways I will understand’ card a lot this episode, which would be OK if they at least found more interesting ways to get this information across to the audience. Instead we had around three separate instances of a character having to tell someone, mainly Mitch, to “explain it in English” for them.
The ‘animal attack of the week’ was replaced by a fairly unassuming story of an epileptic girl and her dog. After the dog is hit by a car the family worry about having to pay to get the dog back to shape, the mother and the girls step father discuss calling “him” and the girl keeps a picture of her and her real dad hidden away; her real dad being Mitch and the woman being the ex wife he’s always talking about. It was a wholly unnecessary but nonthreatening distraction in the end.
We’re moving into the halfway point of the season now, but the show is still struggling to find its footing. The growing pains of a new show should have been kicked by now and the show should have settled into itself. Unfortunately, now more than ever it struggles to find focus, something which the ‘case of the week’ approach to the story doesn’t help, as well as the globetrotting aspect of the show.
Heading into the second half of this season there’s a lot to improve, but also elements that work. If the show can drop the random story lines and have a single, focused plot, which it’s half heartily attempting with Hartley, then it might be able to save itself.
