20 fast food and Netflix pairings for the classiest binge weekend of your life

Santa Clarita Diet – Popeye’s

If there’s one thing you don’t want to do while binge-watching a TV show that features cannibalism as a central theme, it’s eating a lot of red meat. The hilarious first season of Santa Clarita Diet features enough blood and guts to put even the most committed carnivore off meat forever. The same thing goes for pizza or BBQ, as an errant drop of red sauce might induce an involuntary gag. To avoid any unfortunate associations, you should make Popeye’s a staple of your Santa-Clarita-Diet-diet.

As opposed to roast beef sandwiches, steak-filled burritos or meat-juice-filled cheeseburgers, eating a bunch of golden brown fried chicken will be unlikely to provoke any stray thoughts about the taste and texture of human flesh. The franchise’s offerings also have a thematic connection to Santa Clarita Diet. Despite having similar aesthetic values to more benign fare like broadcast sitcoms or KFC, both the series and Popeye’s chicken have an unexpected bite.

Plus, the restaurant’s assortment of Southern comfort food classics will make some of the show’s harsher aspects go down more smoothly. Although deeply funny, Santa Clarita Diet has a tendency to put its cast through the ringer. With Sheila’s (Drew Barrymore) slow but steady decomposition, Joel’s (Timothy Olyphant) mounting anxiety at becoming a reluctant serial killer and Abby’s (Liv Hewson) increasing alienation from her parents, the Hammond family’s continuing adventures can be a bit of a bummer. And there are few things that make sitcom darkness more digestible than well-seasoned chicken, mac and cheese, corn on the cob, green beans and biscuits.