Why Z Nation Failed

By Matthew Nemeth

Today I am here to talk about why Z Nation failed, for a show that did have a plot, tried to be very silly but actually did have some general good Zombie scenes, but at times, just tried to be too wacky. Here’s why Z Nation failed.

Ignoring Its Own Plot

The original plot of Z Nation was to get Murphy to that centre mentioned at the start of season 1 for operation “bite mark”, I honestly can’t remember the name of the place or centre that Murphy was meant to go because I’m pretty sure the show itself actually forgot as it hasn’t been mentioned for at least the last 3 seasons if not longer, the show instead decided to go for full wacky fun and essentially completely derail and ignore itself, I can’t at least at this moment ever remember a show actually ignore and basically forget its own plot.

Its on Syfy

To some of you, this might seem like an odd reason for its failure, but Z Nation being on such a small and dying network is another reason, the now final season was averaging at around 0.40 that’s extremely low. To put this into a small perspective The Walking Dead has around 4 million per episode and the average weekly show on Network TV gets around 1.3 to maybe 4 or 5 million on a big episode. I have seen Supergirl on The CW hit around 1.3 million for its lowest, so Z Nation was getting less than half of that and was only doing around 0.80 in earlier seasons, so clearly for a small network these numbers are clearly not sustainable.

Silly Plot With Silly Writing

If you think back to the Murphy plot (yes think back) its something fairly simple, this guy is immune to the Zombie virus and we need to get him to that place we haven’t mentioned for 3 seasons to see if we can find some kind of cure for the virus, you join Murphy up with the rest of the group and off they go. Instead, Z Nation not only forgot about this but decided to start introducing other plots instead such as Newmerica, the talkers as well as Zombie biscuits. So, yea…

In the end, Z Nation remained a fun Zombie show, if that’s what you wanted, but ultimately, the network, the ratings, the ignoring of the plot and the sometimes silly but not fun writing just took this train completely off its tracks. I look forward to seeing these actors in other shows and movies though, but I very little interest in the upcoming Z Nation Netflix Original Blackout Prequel series. (click here for more on that).

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