Everyone Else Burns' plot is explained in this article.
'It's going to be a special occasion,' says the speaker, who will pray, shelter, and then dispose of the sinful dead's remains.
In the opening scenes of Everyone Else Burns, mum Fiona uses these words to describe her spooky daughter, who is unaware that she is performing a middle-of-the-night apocalypse training exercise rather than the actual thing.
As sitcom introductions go, it gets us straight into the action, and while the scene is disappointingly lacking in decent jokes, Channel 4's latest comedy establishes the Lewis family's existence in a super-strict apocalyptic religious cult.
As we meet high-profile patriarch David (Simon Bird, The Inbetweeners), his long-suffering wife Fiona (Kate O'Flynn), their apocalyptic youngster Aaron (Harry Connor), there are a number of understandably disturbing facts about cult life, including the religious Order's oppressiveness, extreme misogyny, and merciless shunning of anyone who falls short of the mark.
After all, true crime enthusiasts know all too well that real life cults don't tend to have happy endings, especially for women. Podcasts like My Favorite Murder often tell the tale of well-known cults (MFM even sell merchandise featuring their catchphrase 'You're in a cult, call your Dad,'), and they usually conclude in violence, often including deranged male cult leaders brutally murdering women, such as the Anthill Kids, Synanon
A cult sitcom about a cult must tread prudently in an age when senseless violence against women is rarely overlooked by the public eye. Ideally, the victims should not be ridiculed more than the perpetrators.
Everyone Else Burns is definitely a mockery: your typical stuck-up, arrogant bore, a common and amusing character trope in family sitcoms. Only here, he's a stern religious patriarch, deciding what his family does, who they see, and how they spend their money. He destroys his family's television and refuses to replace it, and when Rachel discovers a new career she enjoys, he deliberately causes power cuts as a'sign from
Even with Simon Bird's great comedy skills, his character does well throughout the series, but it still feels odd to make light of such vexing examples of coercive control when it's a very unpleasant reality for too many women around the globe.
The fact that David is still holding all the power is probably to blame for the fact that everyone else else in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has been freed from their bunker after 15 years of imprisonment, and their tormentor — the evil-but-ridiculous Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm) – immediately loses his power, allowing his many crimes to be seen from a position of relative safety.
'It's full of hope. That's what's at its core,' Ellie Kempner said of the show, and show creator Tina Fey said it was about 'championing the survivor.' In Everyone Else Burns, Rachel and Fiona seem to have no'survivor story.'
'These females are strong as hell,' according to the Kimmy Schmidt theme tune, and the result, Everyone Else Burns' saviour is often slapped on by Morgana Robinson, who is Rachel's apathetic and vapid school teacher who helps her apply for university secretly (despite her parents' forbidding it).
The women do eventually refuse to be controlled by David and the church, and their humor in adversity does add levity to the cult's harsh reality, but by the end of the series not much has changed. Fiona is still married to David (viewers are apparently asked to forgive him previous behaviour after some vague'oh, he's a big softie really' moments), and Rachel is given a new ultimatum about whether or not to die forever from the cult.
Is this going to keep us hooked and ready for them to finally see the light in a second series? Maybe. But, as with all good cults, Everyone Else Burns must give viewers a much stronger assurance of their salvation if it wishes us to remain faithful.
Every Else Burns is now available on All4 to stream.