Recently Amazon Studios released online – for free – the pilot episode of their Zombieland series. With Ruben Fliescher still unable to manage to work together the budget or time to do a sequel to the much beloved 2009 film of the same name, which he has on multiple occassions mentioned was initially thought of to be a TV series, Amazon has taken a crack at it to be one of (a few) shows that they’re planning to be their big introduction to original programming. It also sucks.

Let’s begin by admitting all biases; I love the 2009 Zombieland. It’s silly, we watch a group of four strangers go through the ups and downs of trust all having a blast killing zombies and such.

With the characters carried over from the film to the series we are subjected to Amazon’s recasting. Here we have instead of Woody Harrelson we have Kirk Ward, for Emma Stone we have Maria Walsh, for Abigail Breslin we have Izabela Vidovic and Jesse Eisenberg is switched with Tyler Ross. Characters however remain as similar as can be, Tallahassee remains the gunhoo troublemaker, Columbus the awkward survival expert who avoids all confrontation as possible and survives via massive OCD, Witchita is the lovable female who deflects socially viable situations via wit and sarcasm and Little Rock the impressionable young girl who’s happy to be with her sister (we assume).

So in the film we get to know these characters which carries a certain currency that the pilot would’ve had if it weren’t based on it. This fact alone hurts the series.

The biggest strength that both entities have is the writing. They are both not The Walking Dead, they are not soap operas where we’re wondering if Tallahassee is going to storm off or whether Little Rock is going to get sad today because she doesn’t know who Al Pacino is or Tarantino, but rather at it’s heights it’s a series of gags that just work. Part of it all is how much these characters are able to play with one another and enjoy themselves without being complete assholes. For the most part the show still has this, we even get a fun gag where the show — as well as it’s characters — decide to keep track of how many times someone says the word — or a word meaning — vagina.

The problem with all of this is the not just the fact that while the writing may be as strong as the film in essence the plot isn’t. With the film while it devolves into lunacy of these four people mocking each other senseless the plot really doesn’t matter eventually. The TV show however hangs onto it’s plot so hard by trying to make that the gag itself. In the pilot our group is wanting to create their own safe community (why am I now thinking of Woodburry) and therefore are in need of more people. With the help of an ‘onstar’ helper they find a few people but one by one, almost immediately after meeting the group, they die by way of zombie. The show spend so much time caring about whether our group meet their end point it fails to see that hanging out with them was the real goal.

Lastly the final problem with this iteration is the most obvious. It misses the cast. 1000% the reason we, or least I, loved the film was that the likes of Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Jesse Eisenberg were able to deliver those snappy lines in a way that just worked. When Kirk Ward goes all Tallahassee on some zombies or against a car like Harrellson complaining that he wants his “caddy back” I’m just not with them. I see it as imitation more than anything else.