Channel Zero's third season, Butcher's Block, is a strong follow-up even with my newly high expectations for the show. It's also the first season I went into without having read the Creepypasta it's based on: "Search and Rescue" by Kerry Hammond.
Butcher's Block deals with sisters Alice and Zoe. Social worker Alice is dragging self-medicating, schizophrenic Zoe to a poverty- and crime-stricken city, in search of a fresh start. We quickly find out Alice is fleeing both her student loan payments and her schizophrenic mother's attempts to reconnect from a psychiatric hospital.
Now, I know what you're thinking: horror, mental health, ruh-oh. Historically, the two haven't made the best bedmates, and this onscreen combo usually ends in a tropey, offensive mess.
As always, Channel Zero surpasses expectation. While Butcher's Block is campier and even stranger than the previous two series, I was extremely impressed by its portrayal of schizophrenia. My grandfather was schizophrenic, and flashbacks to Zoe's early strange, hostile behavior as her illness surfaces rang true with family stories I've heard over the years. Alice's own schizophrenia is represented by a strange, squishy version of her own face, lurking in the deep, soft parts of her brain. It grins, and gurgles, and Alice is terrified of it.
While I managed to dodge schizophrenia, chronic mental health problems have dogged me since I was a teenager, and Butcher's Block's ultimate message is extremely refreshing for me. Mental health problems aren't a ghost, or a monster (even if it feels like that sometimes), or something that'll vanish if you press the right narrative buttons; they're just part of you. They're not the end of the world, they're just something you have to deal with, and the sooner you accept that, the better.
This, paired with some truly wild imagery and a fantastically surreal final act, has me absolutely jazzed for season four: Dream Door, based on "Hidden Door" by Charlotte Bywater. It's scheduled for an Oct. 26 premiere on Syfy.
