Throughout the series, Josh often breaks the fourth wall by introducing flashbacks, cuing montages, and contextualizing the apocalypse for the audience. These meta moments are less charming than lazy, rejecting subtle world-building in favor of information dumps. Much of the Daybreak’s comedy is similarly uninspired. ... Insipid comedy aside, Daybreak offers evocative reflections on the premature death of a generation’s childhood.

It is, by any measure, a pretty tepid addition to an already saturated genre.

It’s the show’s action and social commentary that falls short. The latter is represented in part by Angelica, too forcefully written by half, and in part by a burned-out-hellscape-as-social-scene metaphor that feels overdetermined. The show’s rules don’t really make sense: Most adults were vaporized, but some became zombies, and some were actually fine-ish. It was in flashbacks and in moments where Josh and Wesley were figuring out how to carry on that I saw the show “Daybreak” wants to be, one of fine and granular understanding of the roiling emotions of teen life filtered through the lens of popular art.

Every meta trick available is deployed to mask the show’s empty emotional core. What Daybreak does have is an excellent cast.

“Daybreak” is a show I wanted to like—I would accept the “Ferris” meets Romero pitch in a heartbeat—but I found myself alternately frustrated and bored way too often. It hits so many of the same beats over and over again, and often has the pretentious air of something that thinks it’s much smarter than it actually is.