Drew Barrymore Adjusts to the New Normal on 'Santa Clarita Diet' Season 2

The second season of the Drew Barrymore-starring comedy "Santa Clarita Diet," which hits Netflix Friday, is hands down the weirdest show of 2018.

That's not to say the first season of the show was not strange. But the sophomore installment is one wild ride.

"Santa Clarita Diet" Season 2 picks up right where the first season ended. Here's a quick refresher: Barrymore's Shelia Hammond, a mild-mannered suburban mother and real estate agent married to Joel Hammond (Timothy Olyphant), also a real estate agent, wakes up one morning feeling ill. After an intense vomit session, she pukes up a ball of flesh, dies and comes back to life as a zombie mom of sorts. She's not a mindless walker you'd see on "The Walking Dead" - she's still her bubbly self although some things have changed, most notably she now has an insatiable craving for human flesh.

At the end of Season 1, the Hammond family finds an ancient Serbian book that has a remedy for Sheila's condition, which is getting worse (body parts are falling off, her personality is morphing into a true monster and her quench for human meat is only getting stronger). The remedy won't cure Sheila but prevent her condition from progressing - the problem is the concoction requires the family to obtain vomit from a pure Serbian person. (I wasn't kidding about "Santa Clarita Diet" being weird). After a failed attempt at getting the vomit last season, Joel ends up in a mental institution and Sheila, who is growing more violent and may harm her daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) and her friend the boy genius Eric (Skyler Gisondo), is forced to be chained in the Hammond's basement.

Season 2 opens with Sheila still chained up and Joel still committed, leaving Abby solo to get her hands on some pure Serbian vomit before her mom goes from bad to worse. After some hijinks, and with the help of Craigslist, Abby gets the vomit, adds it to the remedy and gives it to Sheila, stopping the undead-ing process that will turn her mom into a full-fledged zombie.

Happy knowing that Sheila won't be getting worse, the Hammonds (plus Eric) now have to come to terms that she also won't be getting any better either. Most of "Santa Clarita Diet" Season 2 finds the family adjusting to their new normal - that Sheila will forever be a happy-go-lucky mom who feasts on humans. Joel and Abby, along with Eric, have to get use to the fact that Sheila will be gnawing on a human leg during dinner - this is simply their new way of life.

It's more complicated than it sounds, however, as Sheila needs to kill people in order to eat. (Eating animals or people who are already dead just won't do.) Killing people for food can be tricky and Sheila and Joel try to set guidelines and boundaries when deciding who will become Sheila's next meal. They try to target people they perceived to be bad (most notably this season, Sheila comes across a softball team of neo-Nazis). This is actually a pretty heavy concept - a philosophy NBC's Kristin Bell and Ted Danson sitcom "The Good Place" would explore in-depth. But "Santa Clarita Diet" treats it as an ongoing gag with no subtext or deep thought.

And that's mostly the problem with the comedy and its second season. Season 1 found Sheila embracing change, turning an ostensible tragic life-altering experience into something positive to reroute the course of her life. In its second season, the Hammonds bond closer as a family over Sheila's condition, but "Santa Clarita Diet" doesn't dig too deep into the mindsets of its characters or the philosophy they employ because of their new lifestyle. Instead, Season 2 pulls back, expanding the show's universe as the Hammonds discover that there are other people like Sheila and attempt to get to the bottom of how these Santa Claritaians became undead.

Still, "Santa Clarita" is completely watchable. Like Season 1, viewers' enjoyment will most likely depend on how much they like Barrymore, who carries the show with her hilarious and warm performance. For all of its OMG and whacky moments (talking heads, flesh-ball-spiders, neck-ripping scenes) "Santa Clarita Diet" can feel conventional at times. Its second season is entertaining enough, offering a few laugh-out-loud jokes every episode, making it a breeze for a weekend binge-watch - with episodes clocking in around or under 30-minutes, there are worse places to visit than the undead population of Santa Clarita.