| "New Year's Day" | |||
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| Fear Itself episode | |||
Helen kissing a wounded Eddie |
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| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 6 |
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| Directed by | Darren Lynn Bousman | ||
| Written by | Steve Niles Ben Sokolowski |
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| Original air date | July 17, 2008 | ||
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| List of Fear Itself episodes | |||
New Year´s Day is the sixth episode of the NBC horror anthology Fear Itself. This episode is based on the short story The Dead Time by Paul Kane.
Briana Evigan plays Helen, a young woman who wakes up with a hangover on New Year's Day. Alarms are going off all over the city. It is soon revealed that a cataclysmic event at a local chemical plant has turned a large part of the population into zombies. Gradually as she wanders the city, Helen's memory of the previous night returns. Hoping to distract her from the recent death of her brother, roommate Eddie (Niall Matter) took her out to a New Year's Eve party which James (Cory Monteith) , a man to whom Helen is attracted, will be attending. At the party, Helen finds Chrissie (Zulay Henao), whom she has lost contact with since the death of her brother. Helen tells her that she's her best friend and the only person at the party who truly cares for the way she is.
Later, during the night, she remembers talking to James and telling him that she loves him, based on mistaken information that she received from Eddie. It turns out that Eddie, not James, is in love with Helen, and in her confusion about her feelings for him, she searches out James, whom she finds making out with Chrissie (it's implied that Eddie discovered them and tries to save Helen from being hurt). Helen remembers this last part of the party the next morning. She has survived the night and has finally made it to James' apartment. She breaks down the door to find Chrissie screaming. James then shoots her in the back while she's trying to talk to a frightened Chrissie. It is then revealed that, in despair, Helen committed suicide after the New Year's Eve party. She has been a zombie the entire night and all of her attempts to communicate with people have been thwarted because she isn't actually speaking English anymore, just zombie-like grunts and groans (this also explains why no zombies she encounters attack her). In love, Eddie (as a zombie) has been following her the entire night. After he kills James, they hold hands and exchange an "I love you" and "You too" in the zombie grunts and groans before turning toward Chrissie. As they approach to eat Chrissie, the episode's "film" dissolves and fades to black and the episode ends as a zombie version of "Happily Ever After."