Death Valley



"Let's get out there and kill something."

- Captain Frank Dashell

Death Valley is a Live Action half-hour Black Comedy/Horror show on MTV. It revolves around the UTF (Undead Task Force), a branch of the Los Angeles Police Department that deal with Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies in the San Fernando Valley. A year before the series began, these supernatural monsters suddenly appeared in the Valley for no known reason, forcing its inhabitants to adapt to their suddenly shifted lives.

The series is filmed as a faux-documentary in the style of Cops (series), with the members of the UTF followed by a camera crew that are capturing their efforts to deal with various supernatural outbreaks. There are six featured members of the UTF:


 * Captain Frank Dashell: A minor Cloudcuckoolander who also seems to have a sexual interest in every member of his team, Dashell recognizes that there are times to quiet down and do his job when the situation becomes serious.
 * Officer Joe Stubeck: The oldest member of the UTF, he has a wife and two daughters and tries to help and assist the populace with professionalism and an honest urge to make the world a better place.
 * Officer Billy Pierce: Stubeck's partner, he is preoccupied with looking good for the camera crew and having sexy and action packed adventures.
 * (Rookie) Officer Kirsten Landry: The newest member of the UTF, Kirsten wants to fight the newly arrived monsters but is often given the boring and monotonous jobs at the station instead. However, she has extreme martial arts training and has beaten multiple zombies and a werewolf to death or submission with her bare hands...always outside the view of the other officers.
 * Officer Carla Rinaldi: The no-nonsense member of the team, Carla would rather deal with zombies quickly than mess around. She has adapted to most of the new supernatural world and is no longer either excited or terrified by monsters, treating each encounter with the blase of experience. Captain Dashell believes her to be Hispanic, which she has refuted without elaboration.
 * Officer John "John-John" Johnson: Carla's partner, John is always extremely excited when it is time to take down a zombie. However, his glee for breaking zombie heads has gotten him into trouble more than once, and he also discovers early on that he has zombie problems in his personal life.

There is also a recurring team of camera men and sound engineers that form a minor supporting cast, frequently in the background and the edge of the screen when the officers are in the field. Unlike most mockumentaries, the crew of the Show Within a Show are often dragged into the action, sometimes assisting the officers in their adventures and even getting killed in the line of duty.

Death Valley provides examples of the following tropes:
""Now it is not important who caused this death, which is why I don't mind saying it was John-John.""
 * Action Girl: Kirsten Landry has the martial skills to leave her sparring partner senseless on the ground, despite the padded sparring equipment, and kill or disable zombies and werewolves with her bare hands. When Captain Dashell asked her if she was doing some sort of jazzer-size in the gym, she explained that it was actually a workout based on her fathers experiences in the military.
 * Action Survivor: John-John and Carla only begin to give their sound guy respect when he survives a zombie attack without being bitten. Throughout the series he occasionally pitches in to help in fights, once even hitting a zombie with his boom mic and commenting that it even sounded cool.
 * Adult Fear: Stubeck is a father of two little girls, and he spends a lot of time worrying what is going to happen to his kids as they grow up. Each time he encounters a woman in a demeaning or dangerous job he tries to discover what happened in their life to force them to this, and how he can help them get out of it.
 * All Girls Want Bad Boys: Kirsten dates a wannabe-musician hipster who turns out to be a werewolf. Stubeck summarizes his faults and generic "bad boy" style by pointing out he never has money, blames his problems on his parents and never told her he was a werewolf.
 * Ambiguously Brown: Captain Dashell once tried to reference Carla's quinceañera, to which Carla responds that she is not Hispanic, but she does not elaborate. Her actress, Tania Raymonde, is of French and Russian descent.
 * Anything That Moves: Captain Dashell has made sexually suggestive remarks, including some minor touching, to both men and women under his command. However, he has also stated (to the camera) that it would be inappropriate for him to engage in any sort of sexual activities with his subordinates.
 * Apocalyptic Log:
 * The documentary crew keeps filming in numerous certain-death situations, but their panic and fear often means that the footage is shoddy and they are screaming/cursing/praying throughout it.
 * When attacked by a werewolf on the set of an adult film, the camera operator following the UTF drops his camera and the "insert guy" picks it up and continues to film the action.
 * Batter Up: John-John actually has a holster for a bat on his back, which he uses to kill zombies. His partner Carla prefers to just shoot them in the head, but he points out that bats never run out of ammo.
 * Big Damn Heroes: When Carla was ambushed by a vampire while undercover as a vampire prostitue John-John shot the vampire through the wall to save her.
 * Bi the Way: Julia, Carla's girlfriend, is bisexual.
 * Boom! Headshot!: The quickest means of defeating a zombie, and Carla's preferred method.
 * Bottomless Magazines: Averted, whenever a character winds up facing a horde of zombies they run out of ammunition and need to either get more from a different location or kill the zombies by hand. Episode ten revolves around a zombie siege of the UTF when they discover that their ammunition stockpile has been stolen, forcing them to carefully ration their remaining bullets and (eventually) make weapons out of whatever material is handy.
 * Brick Joke: After Billy asks a drive-thru waitress about her "kabobs" (See If You Know What I Mean below) the next scene shows him, Stubeck and Jamie (The sound guy) eating kabobs in their car.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: The UTF cops might be incredibly Badass but at least half of them would be fired for their Cloudcuckoolander tendencies if they were on a regular police force.
 * Car Fu: When Billy keeps claiming that he's "not fun," Stubeck decides to kill the next pair of zombies they encounter with their police cruiser instead of shooting them. Their car gets stuck on one of the zombies and they need to push it off the corpse.
 * Casual Danger Dialogue: When Kirsten reveals that she is a virgin when the UTF is under siege by zombies, Stubeck asks if he can spend a few minutes with her and get information on her childhood and her parents child-rearing methods in order to replicate them with his own daughters. Kirsten says that she would be happy to do so once they have escaped the horde of zombies.
 * Catch Phrase: Captain Dashell's "Let's get out there and kill something."
 * Cough-Snark-Cough: *Cough* Lawsuit *Cough*
 * Could Say It, But...: After John-John accidentally kills an old man, thinking he was a zombie, Captain Dashell addresses the whole squad.

"John-John: "Meet the Fockers""
 * Chainsaw Good: While John-John usually wields his trusty bat, he is more then happy to switch to a Chainsaw when he has to, with the expected result.
 * Clear My Name: When the entire ammo and weapon supply of the UTF is stolen with nobody even noticing, many members of the force accuse Kirsten, who had only just revealed the truth about the GBGB parties she had attended with Natalie, the Captains niece. During the climactic fight scene, she charges straight at the zombie horde screaming "I'm not a traitor!"
 * Combat Pragmatist:
 * When Captain Dashell and Billy are fighting an extremely large vampire, who seems only mildly pained by the U.V. gun, they slam him into a tanning bed and turn the power up to maximum.
 * When the UTF discovers that all their weaponry and ammunition has been stolen they fight off a horde of zombies with whatever they can find, including (Amongst other things) a metal coffee pot (filled with water to make it heavier), a broken root-beer bottle and a drawer (Still in the desk).
 * Combat Stilettos: Averted. Carla has difficulty simply walking in heels.
 * Continuity Nod: In the season one finale, Billy questions whether it is smart to give the vampires the location of the UTF headquarters. Stubeck points out that, not only is their address public knowledge, but the vampires have already attacked the building, and actually blew it up only two weeks ago. Billy grins sheepishly and admits that Stubeck was right and, considering what had already happened, it was pretty dumb of himself to raise the point.
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Honestly, the entire UTF acts pretty weird much of the time. Yet when it comes to doing their job, they do it well.
 * Cursed with Awesome: The Vampire Wannabes that Kirsten meet have some pretty good points about why they want to be turned into vampires: Immortality, controlling zombies and amazing sex. Where is the downside?
 * Death by Sex: Inverted. When a werewolf attacks an Adult Film set, it is the makeup artist who is killed, with all the actors surviving.
 * Deconstruction: Despite its comedy status, the series often takes a serious look at how a real zombie/vampire/werewolf outbreak would impact (and be impacted by) the real world. This includes questions of disposing of the bodies of zombies, keeping track of who is infected by the werewolf virus, the political ramifications of police actions, etc. Even the mockumentary nature of the series is explored as members of the crew are exposed to scenarios that no camera crew is prepared to encounter, with a detriment to their ability to film the show.
 * Destructive Saviour: Captain Dashell needs to remember that Animal Control is a specific organization for a reason, and catching a rat really is different than catching a zombie. When he tries to impress Kirsten by helping out a couple who called the police, thinking they had a zombie in their attic, he winds up destroying their house before getting the rat.
 * Dirty Harriet: Carla goes undercover as a Sex-For-Blood vampire prostitute.
 * Disposable Sex Worker: Sofia, the first vampire seen in the series, is working as a "blood for sex" prostitute, having sex with people in exchange for being given their blood. Stubeck tries to reach her emotionally after he arrests her and tries to convince her to turn her life around, but she is killed in the next episode. However, instead of being brushed aside, Stubeck is morose over her death and Billy tries to reassure him by explaining that he cannot save everyone, and what counts is that he tried.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?:
 * The Werewolves have been used as a one-time metaphor for drunk driving, with Stubeck and Billy pulling over a werewolf in mid-change for driving during a full moon.
 * In "Two Girls, One Cop" the werewolf virus is used as a metaphor for HIV/AIDS within the Adult Film industry, with several references made to events in the early 1990's of HIV-positive actors spreading the disease.
 * Chloe's turning is called her being "gangfanged" and is clearly sexual replete with moans and other sexual imagery.
 * Natalie, the Captain's niece, describes  as being invited over to a male friends house, discovering that he had many other men with him who forced her to drink, and then attacking her when she was drunk and only climbing off her when his girlfriend came home. The entire scene, including the questions Kirsten asked, was a standard depiction of rape disclosure.
 * Dual-Wielding: When the squad runs out of weapons and ammunition during the zombie siege of their office, Kirsten carries two clubs when everybody arms themselves with melee weapons.
 * Due to the Dead: Both the police and the vampires have eleborate funeral ceremonies to honor their dead. The vampires' customs can easily squick out a human.
 * Ethical Slut: The actors of "Two Girls, One Cop," who are just normal people and entered the adult film industry for the good pay and because they enjoyed the sex.
 * Everyone Can See It: When John-John admits that he has a crush on Carla everybody in the UTF comments they had figured it out.
 * Fair Cop: Both Carla and Kirsten get a lot of flirting from their male co-workers and the civilians they encounter.
 * Fight Clubbing: Zombie Fights, where two zombies are made to fight over a piece of meat, are an on-line event, specifically compared to Bum Fights..
 * Fix It in Post: After Billy flirts with a news reporter, on camera, she informs him that he is confusing her with a different reporter that had been killed earlier in the episode. Billy continues to hit on her until Stubeck makes him realize the situation, whereupon Billy himself turns to the camera and asks if they can fix it in post.
 * Fun with Acronyms: Dep. Chief Ribbings in episode 6 replaces the term zombie with Potential Undead Suspect, or PUS (pronounced "puss"), setting up a CMOF at the end when his last words end up being "I am a PUS! Kill me!"
 * Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Though John-John is disappointed that Carla will never respond to his flirting, he is also ecstatic when he meets her girlfriend. He explains that a man can imagine many things in the fifteen minutes since he learned a woman was a lesbian.
 * Gorn: Zombie kills can get quite messy.
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: The documentary crew tells John-John that he swears too much, so he begins self-censoring himself by substituing tamer sayings in place of his usual swears.

"Ribbings: Look, I need you to kill me. I tried to do it myself, but I can't! I'm Catholic."
 * Green-Eyed Epiphany: Carla in the final episode of season 1 definitely has a reaction to seeing John-John flirting with his pretty nurse.
 * Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Carla is the squads best marksman, John-John is the only officer to carry a holster for his baseball bat.
 * Hot Teacher: Leslie, Stubeck's daughter, has a teacher that Stubeck (reluctantly) admits is hot (He quickly clarifies that he is only sexually attracted to his wife). Billy accompanies him to Parent Career Day in order to flirt with her.
 * Hypocritical Heartwarming: Billy quickly turns on the sound guy when he insults Stubeck, pointing out that only he is allowed to insult his partner.
 * I Cannot Self-Terminate: When Deputy Chief Ribbings gets bitten by a zombie:

"Camera guy: Do vampires have the power to control zombies? Billy: Not on True Blood, Jamie, but, uh, y'know what? You can add up all the stuff that doesn't make sense on that show and make an entire new show."
 * If It's You It's Okay:
 * While John-John was pretty much resigned that his attraction to Carla was strictly a one way street, after his one man take down of invading zombies, Carla was impressed enough to organize a personal get together in a hotel room later.
 * Played straight in the season one finale
 * I Have Brothers: Kirsten explains her hand-to-hand combat skills by saying that her father was in the military.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: Carla is the best shot in the UTF, frequently dispatching zombies from a distance with a single shot to the head. However, when she does miss she winds up crying in disappointment.
 * Incompatible Orientation: John-John has a minor crush on Carla, complicated by the fact that she is a lesbian.
 * Instant Sedation: The UTF has tranquilizer guns to use against werewolves, which knock them out as soon as they are hit.
 * In-Universe Camera: The UTF is being followed by a documentary team filming their activities.
 * It Got Worse: Kirsten points out in the season one finale that the crime rate is skyrocketing due to the werewolf, vampire and zombie problem,.
 * It's Personal: Episode nine highlights just how serious Captain Dashell can be at times. When he learns the truth about the GBGB parties he (After firing Kirsten) tracks down Rico, arrests him, roughs him up and brings him back to the station single handedly. When he learns that Natalie, his niece, was actually in the car with Rico at the time he pulls the vampire into the sun for a bit before giving him a few extra punches.
 * If You Know What I Mean: When discussing the delicious kabobs served at a Lebanese take-out restaurant, Billy decrees that "nice kabobs" sounds dirty, and explains how he would love to go up to a worker at a restaurant and compliment her on her kabobs. He later does so, to which the drive-thru attendant groans and closes the window on him.
 * Let's Get Dangerous: For all Dashell's oddities, when it comes time to kill some zombies he kills some zombies.
 * Let Them Die Happy: When Officer Brown is revealed to have been bitten by a zombie after the siege of the UTF and is already mostly turned into a zombie, Captain Dashell takes a plastic trophy off one of the desks in the office and presents it to Brown. He explains that it is to recognize and commend his bravery and service, placing it in Brown's hands before shooting him.
 * Loophole Abuse: Stubeck makes Billy promise not to go alone after the vampire that had jumped Stubeck outside a bar. Billy agrees, but then simply asks Captain Dashell to accompany him since, if he is not alone, he is not breaking his promise.
 * Man Child: Billy Pierce, who keeps making sexual innuendos when he arrests a prostitute, shows the pornography on his phone to anybody who will look and keeps trying to make clever jokes and poses for the camera crew following him around. Stubeck, his partner, tries to get him to take what they do more seriously, and on more than one occasion has explicitly told Billy to grow up.
 * Meaningful Funeral: The eleventh episode opens with the UTF attending the funeral of the LAPD officers who had died in the previous episode, and closes with Captain Dashell attending the funeral of Rico the vampire, who had also died in the earlier episode. Captain Dashell and the vampire leader, Rico's father, talk at both funerals and pay respect to the others fallen, and tentatively agree to meet for peace talks.
 * Mercy Kill: When Deputy Chief Ribbings is bitten by a zombie he pleads for others to kill him so he will not become a zombie. John-John decided to wait for thirty seconds to confirm if Ribbings was infected
 * Mind Control: The vampires are rumored to be able to control zombies, potentially explaining where the horde of zombies came from during the hijacking of the four blood bank trucks.
 * The Mole: Captian Dashell is convinced the vampires have a mole at the UTF station and assigns Stubeck to figure out who it is. After reviewing the video footage he discovers that
 * Moment Killer: Billy clams that Stubeck "glock-blocked" him when he was about to have sex with Kirsten.
 * Mood Whiplash: For all that the show is a comedy, it is still about a life and death struggle against supernatural evil and normal crime. The joking officers get sober pretty quickly once their personal lives and people they love are dragged into the violence.
 * My Name Is Not Durwood: Captain Dashell spent the first five episodes mispronouncing Kirsten's name. First he simply mistook it for "Kristen," but when she corrected him he tried to get it right and began inserting random letters (Including at least one 'G') on each new try. He finally got it right in episode six, but he was so preoccupied with work he did not even notice that he had done it, or how much it obviously meant to her.
 * New Meat:
 * Officer Landry, the rookie of the squad. She joined the UTF to fight monsters, but winds up doing the office paperwork and looking after the Captain's niece instead.
 * When two regular LAPD officers are temporarily sent to the Valley to help with a prisoner transfer, it quickly becomes clear that they are completely untrained for handling zombies.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A bomb strapped to a zombie turns out to be a dud. Then a pissed off Jon-Jon kicks the zombie and the bomb starts beeping again.
 * "No Respect" Guy: Kirsten, on her first day in the UTF, killed a zombie with her bare hands in the station, but none of the officers were looking at her to see the fight. It happens again in "Zombie Fights," where she again defeats a zombie single-handedly, but is criticized by Carla over her methods.
 * The Not-Secret: John-John is perturbed that apparently everybody in the UTF, including the sound guy, had figured out that he had a crush on Carla.
 * Obstructive Bureaucrat: Deputy Chief Ribbings, who institutes new protocols after John accidentally killed an octogenarian after mistaking him for a zombie. The new protocols require an officer to approach any potential zombie with the assumption that they are not a zombie and wait sixty seconds before using lethal force. All the officers explain that this will simply get them killed, and each time they attempt to follow the regulations they are forced to switch to lethal force anyway when the zombies attack them.
 * Once an Episode: Captain Dashell's Catch Phrase "let's get out there and kill something" ends every station meeting at the beginning of each episode.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: They have some of the traditional weaknesses, including sunlight and wooden stakes through the heart, but they do need to breathe and are no more inherently evil than normal people.
 * Parental Substitute: Stubeck is father-figure to both Billy and Kirsten, giving them advice on romance and living life.
 * Police Brutality: In general, excessive force is allowed against vampires and zombies without repercussion due to the nature of the perpetrators. Sometimes the characters go a little further than is necessary.
 * When Captain Dashell learns his niece, Natalie, is dating a vampire he drags the vampire into the sun and roughs him up a bit. When putting him into the back of his police car he instructs the vampire to watch his head, as he does not want to be sued.
 * Quip to Black: The show rarely goes to black itself, but Billy is frequently posing for the in-show camera crew and quipping while putting on sunglasses.
 * Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Steuback is trying to figure out who broke into the armory so he is watching footage of the captain changing the security code for the armory door. His gut tells him that The Mole obtained the code by watching the captain enter it but the footage does not show anyone else present. He keeps replaying the recording over and over till he realizes that
 * Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Billy is upset that Stubeck implies that following a blood donation truck to a hospital was his idea, Stubeck asks if Billy is also taking credit for the delicious milkshake that he got at McDonalds earlier that day. Billy says that yes, he is, since it was his idea to get a milkshake, and Stubeck admits that he is right.
 * Sex Is Evil: Discussed. When the officers are called to an Adult Film set due to a werewolf attack, Stubeck spends a lot of time wondering what childhood trauma or abuse drove these women into porn. However, once he talks to them he learns that they had normal, healthy childhoods with good families and education, and that they entered porn because it offered a good salary and they enjoyed the sex.
 * Shoot the Rope: When Kirsten is trapped by a zombie-criminal whose legs are chained together, Carla frees her by shooting the chain.
 * Shout-Out:
 * When the documentary crew tells John-John that he swears too much he starts self-censoring what he says, using the term "Meet the Fockers" instead of "motherf***er."
 * Billy points out that one of the zombies he and Stubeck encounter looks like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.
 * The title of episode ten is "Assault on Precinct UTF," a reference to the film Assault on Precinct 13.
 * Sincerity Mode: When one of the sound guys announces to the squadroom that he donated blood earlier in the day, Captain Dashell turns to him and sarcastically remarks that he has a lollipop in his desk. Later in the episode, the sound guy reveals that Dashell really did give him a lollipop (two, in fact).
 * Sound Effect Bleep: The characters on the show swear extremely frequently, all of which is obscured by standard "bleep" effects. John-John swears too much and the documentary crew asks him to tone it down, since they can only bleep so much, so he begins self-censoring what he says.
 * Sticks to the Back: John-John has a holster on this back for a baseball bat, which he carries in case of zombies.
 * Straight Man: Joe Stubeck, who treats everybody he encounters (Including vampires) with courtesy and an honest will to help. This includes trying to get the people he arrests to turn their lives around instead of continuing their cycle of crime and incarceration.
 * Sunglasses At Night: When Billy is posing for the in-show cameras and making jokes he puts on a pair of sunglasses, but Stubeck points out that this is idiotic since it is dark out and he will not be able to see.
 * Swiss Cheese Security: The vampires somehow manage to take all the guns and ammo out of the armory of a police station. Since the station seems to be manned around the clock, at least one of the police officers should have noticed something..
 * Take That:


 * That Came Out Wrong:
 * When Captain Dashell told Kirsten to get out of her clothes and prepare for the time of her life, he quickly apologizes and explains that he meant for her to put on her uniform since he was taking her on patrol.
 * "I'm getting very tired of everybody fingering Kirsten."
 * There Are No Therapists: Averted after the deadly zombie attack on the station. A therapist is brought in to help the cops deal with the events.
 * Toilet Humor:
 * Billy's specialty, to the disgust of his partner.
 * When Carla and Kirsten are called to an old woman's apartment, where she is keeping her zombie husband tied to a bed, Kirsten attempts to persuade her to allow them to kill the zombie. After an emotional speech, which drew on Kirsten's personal experience of losing her mother at a young age, the zombie farts and everybody present cannot help laughing.
 * Too Dumb to Live: People are still trying to live in the Valley as if nothing is happening and don't seem to take any extra precautions despite how dangerous zombie or vampire attacks can be
 * Deputy Chief Ribbings wants the cops to wait sixty seconds before shooting a zombie just to avoid another PR disaster
 * The cops repeatedly tell a group of teenagers to stop 'helping' the cops by attacking zombies since it is a good way to get yourself killed.
 * Both Billy and John-John do really stupid and careless things that can get them or their partners killed. Billy keeps eating dairy products even when everyone tells him that he is lactose-intolerant. Jon-Jon kicks a zombie corpse that has an unexploded bomb strapped to it.
 * A regular LAPD police officer tries to help a man trashing around on the ground while all around him UTF officers shout for him to stand back. One zombie bite later and we have another illustration why Genre Blind people should stay away from the Valley.
 * Too Much Information: When Stubeck rescues Kirsten from her boyfriend, who had not told her that he was a werewolf, she complains that he had the nerve to ask her if it was her time of the month. Stubeck promptly explains that he has no wish to hear about her time of the month in this or any other situation.
 * Tranquillizer Dart: The UTF carries tranquilizer guns to subdue werewolves, which knocks them out instantaneously.
 * Turn in Your Badge: When Kirsten eventually tells Captain Dashell the truth about the GBGB parties Dashell, while running out of the station in a rage, orders her to put her badge and gun on his desk; she is fired.
 * Vampires Are Rich: Rico, the vampire throwing the lavish parties that Kirsten infiltrates undercover, seems to be barely out of his teens. When Kirsten asks how he can afford all of it she is told that his father is a "big deal."
 * Vampires Are Sex Gods: Vampires can give what is called a "black kiss," where they produce a narcotic in their saliva and transfer it to another person through a kiss. Vampires have been known to sell this kiss in exchange for a blood donation, in at least one case setting up a small harem of women. Some humans even want to become vampires because of how great the sex will be.
 * Vampire Wannabe: The parties that Captain Dashell's niece goes to are filled with wannabes looking to get a buzz from kissing a vampire and, eventually, be turned into a vampire. They see it as cool and impressive, Kirsten sees it as insane.
 * Vegetarian Vampire:, after revealing that she has been partially turned into a vampire, explains that the process apparently will not be complete until after her first kill. She says she could never kill anybody, then emphasizes that she really means that; she cannot even bring herself to kill a moth.
 * Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Carla reasonably points out that while Kirsten combat moves are nice, she would save herself a lot of trouble and effort if she would shoot first instead of chasing down things that want to eat her.
 * Weakened by the Light: Vampires have a vulnerability to sunlight and members of the UTF carry ultraviolet lights to use against them. These are termed "U.V. Guns," but John calls them an "Uv gun."
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: It seems that Billy looks up on his partner, Stubeck, as a mentor and father figure. In "Zombie Fights" he resents when Stubeck unintentionally takes credit for his idea, and eventually admits that he is looking for appreciation of the work he does and respect as a cop.
 * Wham! Episode:
 * Episode 8 closes with, all to send a message to the UTF that they (The vampires) are stronger and are the ones who are really in charge of the San Fernando Valley.
 * The season finale ends with the UTF and the Vampires about to make peace, and maybe bring a little order to the chaos.  The UTF discovers that there are worse things out there than what they have seen so far.
 * Wild Teen Party: Natalie, Captain Dashell's niece, goes to a GBGB party and he has Kirsten follow her to make sure she is not getting into trouble. Kirsten learns that GBGB stands for "Give Blood, Get Buzzed," which refers to the practice of giving blood to a vampire and receiving a "black kiss," a narcotic contained in vampire saliva.
 * Worth It: When the UTF discovers that their ammunition has been stolen in the middle of a zombie siege, Captain Dashell instructs them to make sure every single shot counts. Carla, annoyed by the continuous beeping of a smoke detector, wastes a precious bullet to end the noise. She comments that it was worth it.
 * Worthy Opponent: At the funeral for the two LAPD officers that were killed in the tenth episode, Captain Dashell is approached by the leader of the vampires, whose son the UTF had killed. The vampire pays his respects to the two slain officers and invites Dashell to attend the funeral of his own son as a gesture of respect and potential opening to peace negotiations.
 * You Don't Want to Die a Virgin, Do You?:
 * When John and Carla are being swarmed by zombies, having run out of ammo and trapped in a van, John recalls when they agreed to have sex if it ever looked like they were going to die. Carla points out that he said that, and she never agreed to any such thing. However, when it looks like John has found a way to save their lives, Carla says she might just reconsider, until he fails and the entire affair is dropped. The documentary sound guy, stuck with them, offered to do "man stuff" if they could just all be gotten out alive.
 * In a Call Back to when they were trapped in a van by zombies, when the UTF station itself is attacked by zombies Carla tells John-John that she will book a hotel room if they do manage to survive.
 * When the entire cast is trapped in a zombie siege the members begin to list their life regrets, which ultimately devolves into listing specific sexual fantasies that they never got to fulfill. Kirsten then says that she just wishes she had sex; she had never met the right guy at the right time.
 * You Get Me Coffee: Kirsten has been sent to check on Captain Dashell's niece at a party and to check to make sure all werewolves are complying with local ordinances on full moon lock-down, despite joining the UTF specifically to deal with the supernatural monsters infecting the valley and possessing the combat skills to defeat zombies and werewolves with her bare hands.
 * Your Head Asplode: It turns out vampires can control zombies, and can also cause their heads to explode at will.
 * You Were Trying Too Hard: Captain Dashell only correctly pronounced Kirsten's name, after trying for five episodes, when he was too busy with paperwork to notice what he was saying.
 * Zombie Gait: The characters discuss the way zombies move. Zombie's that have been dead for a long time are termed "slow walkers," since their rotting bodies means they move in a slow, shuffling manner. Newly-dead zombies, however, are described by the officers as being like attack dogs, since they are fresh enough to run at a frightening pace.
 * Zombie Infectee: Unlike most zombie stories, those who are bitten by zombies are killed immediately in order to prevent the further spread of the virus. All zombie victims have either been shot immediately by the officers, or have asked to be killed so as not to become a zombie, including other police officers and members of the camera crew filming the story.