What is that old Chekhov adage? That if a barn is introduced at the beginning of the season, full of zombies, that barn will burn down at the end of the season, full of zombies? Well, so much for the watch-system they had going last week: a massive herd, which was somehow explained in the cold open managed to have lumbered from Atlanta all the way through the enchanted forest (and the forcefield moat of quicksand!) and come up on the magical farm of unlimited electricity and hot water and food to dole out misery. Surprisingly Glenn and Daryl: Tracker Xtreme, were also in the woods and completely missed all signs of the horde. Even little Carl, who somehow sensed Shane's zombie-ness before he stood up last week, raising the gun seemingly at his own pops, didn't hear or see the thousands of walkers until they were literally meters away.
I am going to start sneaking up on people, lurching behind them breathing like a pneumonia patient who has just been punched in the face, and see if I can get close enough to steal their wallets before they notice me. According to The Walking Dead, I should be an Artful Dodger in no time.
But hey, quibbles aside, this episode, the last until fall was kinda solid. I mean it's a pretty decent zombie show if all of our loveable characters are in such immediate danger that they don't have a chance to see who is best at arguing.
They lost two extras I was sort of convinced were actually ghosts based on the lack of any interaction with other characters. And those deaths were nice and gruesome. Who knew you could live and scream so long as your jugular and innards were being noshed on by the undead? The more you know!
I really loved Andrea's story line. She seemed to drum up all the fears surrounding the zombie apocalypse: abandonment, the never-ending and unrelenting chase, exhaustion, desperation, hopelessness. The tension in all of her scenes was perfectly executed. My palms were itching watching her.
And then there was T-Dog! T-Dog got a bunch of lines again! Hur-ray! And he didn't get killed! They (the writers) had best be dealing with their race issues next season. Aside from giving ol' T-Dog some character development, maybe another Black character? Some more Black zombies at least? Georgia has a pretty major Black population, it's ridiculous to ignore that.
Lori is obviously the worst. I hate that, I do. Not that I am against lady villains but I hate that every week she's a different kind of villain. She's been the Lady MacBeth (I still don't get that, though, Shane was dangerous!), the temptress, the bad mother, the bad driver, the 1950s Stepford Wife, and now she's, what? Fucking upset that Rick killed Shane? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-iiiit. Granted Rick needs to work on his story telling skills (JUST SAY THE WORDS SELF-DEFENSE, RICK) but, come on (bonus points if you read that in Gob's voice)! She's a villain but she's always some variation of female stereotype villain. What's next? She gonna cast a spell on Maggie? Seduce Hershel? Kill Carl? YES! LET THAT BE IT! God, if there is one thing I fucking love it's those SVU story lines involving Munchausens! That would be perfect on TWD !!!
Apparently Lori is very much the Lori from the graphic novels. Which I guess gives the writers an out? The thing that bothers me, though, is that it's always the same shit with misogyny. You see that with fantasy all the time: Oh, the women characters are subjugated because that's what it was like in the medieval times! But you've created a new world that's only loosely based on that era and one of the only things you've kept is the misogyny! *shrugs, writes a new rape scene*
It's as if writer's hands, whether they be screenwriters or novelists, are always fucking tied when it comes to the roles of women.
The Walking Dead could combat this by filling out the rest of the women characters. Yeah, Andrea is becoming awesome but that's one great female character, one terrible for how many fleshed out male men? Rick, Glenn, Hershel, Daryl, Dale, even Shane. So even with two of them dead that's still four to one. Come on! Let's bring something more to Maggie and Carol and Beth! Something beyond nagging! You can do it, writers, dig deep and start talking to women who didn't just walk out of a Neil LaBute screenplay.
I'm pretty excited to see how things turn out for our plucky gang of farm-less survivors at the prison. Can't go well, right? I personally feel like a prison would be the last place I'd want to be, ever, but that might just be all the prison movies I've seen talking.
And hopefully someone will start paying attention to Carl. After all, it takes a village to keep a budding sociopath in line.
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