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The Walking Dead: How not to minimize liabilities in a zombie apocalypse

Caperton

Okay, The Walking Dead. I’ve been giving you a lot of passes. The horrible, awful accents. The fact that they were right there at the CDC and nobody thought, Hey, maybe we should stop off for some firearms and SUVs before we leave town, seeing as how Decatur has the greatest number of early-model Broncos with mud tires and a gun rack per capita of any municipality in Georgia. The fact that a show called The Walking Dead hasn’t had more than about three actual walking dead an episode since the beginning of the season. The fact that Daryl, basically the only character on the show with any sense, hasn’t been elected boss, general, and emperor-for-life of their little band. The fact that the entire crew could be in Fort Benning by now if they’d just lay off waiting for–and risking their lives over and over again to track down–one kid who, while cute, didn’t follow instructions and has been nothing but a liability. The solid half-hour of taaaalk talktalktalktalktalktalk every. Single. Episode. The awful, horrible accents. You’ve gotten a lot of leeway from me, show.

But we’re halfway through the second season now, and my patience, my willingness to suspend disbelief, and the handle of Popov I keep just for drinking games are all getting low. I got some stuff to say to you, show, and you’re going to hear about it after the jump, wherein there will be spoilers for S02, E06 (Secrets).

So you’ve got this storyline where Lori Grimes is unexpectedly pregnant and despairing over whether to bring a child into a filthy, chaotic, hopeless, joyless, post-zombie-apocalyptic hellworld. You know what? That’s awesome. Seriously, that’s an awesome storyline. I can totally see a person struggling with that under those circumstances, and there’s a ton you can do with that subplot. Good call, show.

So you give Glenn a pony and send him into town (even though y’all do have an actual car, but that’s another complaint for another post) to hit up the pharmacy for…

… a big ol’ handful of abortion pills.

Oh, show.

1. A big packet labeled “Morning After Pill” is like a white soda can labeled “Cola.”

That’s… just not what they look like. Plan B is actually available over the counter now, if you wanted to pick up a few just to see what they look like, in case you were interested in, like, accuracy, or whatever. You also might be surprised to learn they look nothing like Tylenol PM.

2. The morning-after pill doesn’t cause abortions.

Even if you take them by the heaping Tylenol handful, Lori. All that will do is make you feel really queasy, and then you’re sick and pregnant and living in a post-zombie-apocalyptic hellworld and your hair is really flat.

3. You might mention to Maggie that they’re not “abortion pills.”

She does seem to have grown up in a fairly sheltered, conservative environment, so maybe she doesn’t know there’s a difference. Still, “And here are your morning-after pills, which won’t even work, and I hope you get the trots, so there!” (fling, flounce) probably wouldn’t have the same impact.

4. It really is okay if TV characters get abortions.

The usual excuse is that if you terminate the pregnancy that’s causing all the drama, it terminates the drama, and then you have no story. (And sometimes that’s true–imagine Juno if she’d said, “Fingernails, huh. Go figure” and gone through with the abortion.) In this case, you’ve got a woman who not only slept with her husband’s best friend but probably got pregnant by him, but maybe not, and now they’ll never know, and we’ve already seen zombie kids on this show who didn’t seem terribly happy with their lot in life, and she was already considering letting her kid die rather than bring him back to a world full of misery, and you’ve got plenty of juicy storyline there without trying to bring yet another noncontributing character to your little band of refugees. Even without a dramatic Plan-B upchucking scene. It’s a really substantial theme–whether or not she ultimately goes through with the abortion, there are a tons of places you could go with it.

But for God’s sake, don’t punt.

5. Someone is going to have to have a come-to-Jesus with Andrea or send her on her way.

Okay, that has nothing to do with Lori, but seriously–you want to talk about a liability? Here you have a woman who’s been hopscotching from one freakout to another all season long, and you give her a firearm so she can shoot your only halfway competent character in the head? Because a person with unresolved emotional issues and no experience with firearms should be sitting up on top of an RV with a rifle? Come on, people.

48 thoughts on <em>The Walking Dead:</em> How not to minimize liabilities in a zombie apocalypse

  3. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. It was so frustrating to see that nonsense. The only tiny little saving grace is that Lori said she didn’t know if they’d work, which kind of leaves an out, assuming you actually do know how they work and what the difference is to begin with. I’m also really thankful that people in The Talking Dead chat jumped right on that with facts, links to articles, and general comments about how inaccurate getting “the morning after pill” would be. I was also glad that Rick said he’d support her no matter her decision… but almost everything else he said seemed anti-choice. Sigh.

  4. i was pretty annoyed with the “only ones” mentality, re: firearm possession.

    because obviously the women are incapable of handling a firearm. i mean, obviously.

  5. I am so excited that right after watching this week’s episode I hop on here to discover that OMG someone else is complaining about the thing that I was complaining about!
    Also, another note, no condom use, team? I know Glen and Maggie had some protected sex but honestly, Rick, Shane, Lori, Shane, Andrea, the zombie apocalypse is no place to get knocked up, and yet nobody thought to bring a box of trojans?

  6. There is so much sexism and traditionalistic nuclear family, only men get guns, women are the medical people, men that don’t shave their facial hair are more likely to be bad to women than the well-kept guys, uhmmm…what else? Everything else, that I only got by with watching a few(like 3?) episodes of this show. Terra Nova lasted a few minutes in before I felt like I was wasting my life.
    But yes, these shows do have slightly creative, if not mass produced many times over, plots.

  7. Thank you. The show is working my last nerve. Glenn used to make sense, before the whole “women and their crazy periods, how do they work?” thing. How these people survived regular everyday pre-zompocalypse life is beyond me. A 30-something woman who has been pregnant and has given birth doesn’t know how Plan B works? Seriously?! I’m at the point of actively rooting for Team Zombie to eat everyone but Daryl. And maybe Glenn. He can stay just because the way he ratted everyone out was sort of awesome. “Lori is pregnant and the barn is full of walkers!” Snerk.

  8. sorry to butt in from this angle, but I looooooooved the graphic novels, and I’ve mostly enjoyed the show and just wanna point out that there are lots of places where some of the reasoning behind some character’s actions are a little unclear in the show, insofar as there is an attempt to maintain the character from the novel. If that makes any sense at all. Altho, I gotta say, Glenn never said any kinda idiotic thing like that in the damn book, nor was there anything about a morning after pill; as it was clearly at that point waaaay too late for such things.

    Seems to me that the writers really admire the graphic novels, and are dudes, and are maybe more than a little clueless about the ladies. Which is kinda insane, given that we make up half of the population. So, I dunno, they live underground or something perhaps. I don’t wanna throw any spoilers out, bc its hard to tell what will make the show. There are lots of ways in which the show kinda goes off and does its own thing, but it seems to really attempt to keep the characters sorta the same.

    Um, and not to bag on Daryl, but he’s just barely starting to get over the messed up totally racist redneckness, I also think he’s a decent guy. But I certainly wouldn’t put him in charge of anything. He’s still far too close to murderous and impetuous racist for my taste. Oh, AND I didn’t even realize the accents were inauthentic. Shows what I know. 🙂

  9. Just askin’…have you read the graphic novels at all? I mean, the show is very very different (for example, Daryl isn’t in the novels and Andrea hooks up with Dale, not Shane, and Sophia never ran away). I think you’d like the novels more than the show, I know I do. At least until I got to the Governor parts hahaha…now that takes a strong stomach.

  11. falnfenix:
    i was pretty annoyed with the “only ones” mentality, re: firearm possession.

    because obviously the women are incapable of handling a firearm. i mean, obviously.

    That one’s a hard call for me. On the one hand, I completely agree that the implication that a woman can’t be just a competent with a gun really rankles.

    On the other hand, the way they’re writing the women this season, I wouldn’t trust a one of them with a pointy stick. The character assassination (if they can even be called “characters” at this point) is just criminal.

  12. Just to clear up for all who may read this post and wonder why the plan B pills wouldn’t work is the fact that they are called morning after pills for a reason, you can only take them THE MORNING AFTER potentially getting knocked up, and up to a few days after.

    Why is letting an 8 year wield a gun the only way to protect himself, I mean why not let the character Daryl teach him how to wield a cross bow the better answer. They should all be taking lessons from Daryl about survival skills, seriously.

    Also if Lori is upset that she’s getting told to leave the farm that they’ve been couch surfing at, why not squat at some other farm house in the area who’s residents are likely zombies now.

    Mind you, main stream tv always has loop holes, and I will probably continue to watch it if it gets back to the total chaos and horror; not the drama of angry and frightened communal living with the off-screen zombie apocalypse, because that seems is what the show is leaning towards these recent episodes.

  13. I have to disagree about the accents. As a person who grew in in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, the first thing that struck me about this show was how the surroundings genuinely looked like Georgia (down to the species of weeds and the mix of old and ultra-new architecture and infrastructure) and how lifelike the mix of accents was.

    True Blood is the banner example of a show with howlingly bad Hollywood southern accents; but allowing for the occasional misstep (“he was a sciiiii-ennnn-tist”), The Walking Dead is usually linguistically dead on. Specifically, there is no generic “southern accent,” there’s an accent mix that varies by regional origin, ethnicity, and (more subtly) class, right down to the northern retiree. The abusive husband had exactly the same accent as my uncle, an accent I had literally never before heard on television outside of rural NC news reports in my childhood.

    Starting with the Season 1 finale the show has regularly disappointed me on gender politics and authenticity of human behavior, but I keep coming back to it as a rare show actually set in the modern south. Well, undead south.

  14. A.E.F., I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I grew up in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, went to school in Athens, lived in Atlanta, and now live in Alabama, and I have never heard anyone sound as Minnie Pearl as some of those characters get. Yes, there’s a wide variety of accents under the umbrella “southern,” but to mine ears, they’re getting approximately none of them.

    The scenery looks right, though, because they shoot in Atlanta. Or did the first season, anyway.

  15. And that makes me think of a story starring a friend of The Boy’s. They grew up in Corner, Alabama, where the accents can get rather broad. She was recounting to us something her son’s friend said, complete with sound effects, and then she paused and said, “When someone from Corner is making fun of the way you talk, you know you’re in bad shape.”

    Mostly, I just get sick of this attitude that all you have to do is dump your diphthongs and your G’s and lean on your R’s like a pirate and voila! Insta-hick.

  16. It is likely that my expectations are pitifully low after a lifetime of enduring Gone With The Wind style theme park southern accents in media, but The Walking Dead still puts forth the best effort on that front that I can remember seeing on television.

    Maybe my attitude toward attempts at regional authenticity is like my attitude toward attempts at genuinely fleshed-out female characters; I’m shocked and inordinately pleased when the attempt is even made. (See Once Upon a Time, currently breaking my heart with its laudable attempt to have nearly all female leads and its horrible failure to be any good.)

  17. OMG YES to all of this stuff. Andrea is so different from her character in the comics. Book Andrea is strong and capable and handles her own damn shit. I cannot express enough how pissed off it makes me that the awesome character I know and love is now running around being all laydee irrational and haha shooting guns wrong dontcha know girls are bad at that and constantly seeking counsel from the menfolk.

    “OMG I totally know how to shoot now because a man believed in me. He made me shoot better by screaming at me about my dead sister. I’m gonna get me some of that dick.”

    As for the ladies learning guns, that’s also totally a book thing. Although there it was less ladies and more “Everyone That Isn’t Rick or Shane.” They were the only ones who had firearms and knew how to use them. But they didn’t waste time teaching people how. Personally, I think giving Carl a gun during the zombie apocalypse is a pretty smart move. I’d do it if were my kid.

    As for the pony thing, I think that could be easily explained. They probably want to conserve their gas.

  20. I found it weird how the scene where Carl is given permission to learn how to use a firearm conjured up thoughts on proper condom use and STDs… Anyone else get that impression, too? Anyway, the whole episode felt like a 40 minute PSA, and I found myself having to explain the difference between Plan-B and RU486 to my partner in between the “wtf Dale/Shane/Andrea/Maggie?!”‘s I kept shouting at the t.v. :/

  21. imagine Juno if she’d said, “Fingernails, huh. Go figure” and gone through with the abortion.

    I don’t watch the walking dead and have never read the books so I have nothing to contribute to this thread other than to say that I laughed good and loud at this line.

  22. I am up to date on all of the comics, and I can tell you that they are so much better than the show. They have made some very significant changes that to me, don’t do the story justice.

    I will say that I was very offended by all of the Darryl praise. It doesn’t matter that he is a great survivalist, because what he is, is a raging racist. They have purposefully set up Darryl not to look as bad, because he is juxtaposed to his brother Merle. That scene in which he was recently hurt, was done simply to re-invent his character. Now Darryl is seen as a good guy, despite the fact that he is a racist. They have gone out of their way to make T-Dog ineffectual and set him up to be saved TWICE by Darryl. I think those who have read the comics will agree, that T-dog is a poor replacement for Tyrese.

    What I don’t understand is the lack of analysis in terms of race. The author completely by passed this as though the blatant weekly racism is nothing. In terms of POC on this show, The Walking Dead has a big problem.

  23. THANK YOU, Feministe, for covering the crack-up that is this formerly interesting show. I gave up after the little girl disappeared in the woods and her mother was patted on the head and told “oh, don’t worry, we’ll find her later, honey, first we need to deal with this li’l love triangle storyline thingy.” Huh?? A kid is lost in a forest teeming with zombies and no one does anything about it? Even without zombies, a missing child is officially a BIG FUCKING DEAL. But the storyline is dropped in favor of more melodramatic closeups of the two squinty dudes fighting over the skinny brunette. That’s when I turned to my partner and shrieked “NO WOMAN WOULD EVER WRITE THIS SHIT.”

    I guess I should give the graphic novels a whirl, while I pray that my fave feminist post-apocalyptic comic, Y: The Last Man, stays in development limbo forever.

  24. Bridge: cross

    Many fully grown adults would have major issues arming a crossbow, it likely to large for him to hold, and Daryl is running quite low on bolts for it.

  25. A.E.F: Gone With The Wind style theme park southern accents in media

    I KNOW RIGHT? It’s like Hollywood dialect coaches only know The Foghorn Leghorn and The Hee Haw.

    (See Once Upon a Time, currently breaking my heart with its laudable attempt to have nearly all female leads and its horrible failure to be any good.)

    You are so right here.

  26. Fangsforthefantasy, thank you for that link. I wasn’t aware of the contrast because I don’t really know anything about the comic books outside of what The Boy has told me–I can only really talk about the show. But it’s definitely something I’ll look into.

    I do have to disagree with one point you made in your piece: T-Dog isn’t the only character who’s written as more or less useless. All the women in the show have basically been reduced to hyperemotional, incompetent dinner-cookers, child-minders, and despairers. But the show’s treatment of T-Dog is lousy, and as the POC population drops off more and more, the show does increasingly turn into Watch the White Guys Save the Day.

  27. Shannon Drury:
    That’s when I turned to my partner and shrieked “NO WOMAN WOULD EVER WRITE THIS SHIT.”

    Too bad you were wrong.
    Also, Stephenie Meyer identifies herself as a women IIRC.

  28. I’ve been watching this show since day one (though I never thought it was as good as the people who immediately decided it was in Breaking Bad’s league, which … no), but I’m getting to a point where I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing so. The women are written terribly — they are all dead weight or actively dangerous (thanks, show, for ruining Andrea, who was a good character in season one), and they have no consistent characterization. I mean, Lori is shown in episode 1 as a woman who is unhappy in her marriage and lashing out at her husband and then sleeps with her husband’s best friend in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and then her husband shows up and she immediately becomes a totally devoted and supportive wife who exists solely to defend him to the group and worry about their kid. Not to mention, we still haven’t gotten any explanation for why she was sleeping with Shane! Did she always have a thing for him, or was she just looking for comfort, or was it a calculating effort to keep a protector around for her and her son? And now Glen is making cracks about women on their periods, and Rick is berating Lori for wanting to abort a pregnancy — which is her choice at any time, but particularly in the middle of a zombie apocalypse! Jesus.

    That said, I concur with Fangsforthefantasy that the racial issues with this show are even more disturbing. After starting out with a lot of POCs, at least as background characters, we now have a group of 15 characters (counting Hershel’s people) of which TWO are POCs. In a show set in GEORGIA, where less than 60% of the population is white. I don’t think we’ve seen a single Hispanic character (9% of the population), and we’re down to just T-Dog to represent the 30% of Georgia that is African American.

    And worse than the show simply ignoring race, it has actively marginalized and rejected honest discussions about it. In season one, we saw a caricaturized racist in Merle, who basically had KKK tattooed on his forehead and thus was safe to call out (and then was left to die because of a mistake made by the lone African American group member — awesome). But Darryl, who shared his brother’s views (if less violently) overnight became a model group member and who has on multiple occasions saved T-Dog, who despite being a big, muscled guy has not been shown contributing anything to the group at all.

    The point at which I really lost it was when T-Dog, scared and delirious from infection, gives Dale an honest speech about how he thinks the group will eventually turn on the people who aren’t like them (minorities and older people), and is angrily derided by Dale for being ungrateful to the group, and then Darryl immediately rocks up and finds the life-saving drugs that T-Dog needs and selflessly gives them to him without a second thought. In that moment, the show literally became a dramatized version of that person in internet discussions who freaks out when their favorite celebrity is called racist because they’re totally a good guy, and it’s not like they actually committed a hate crime, and you people are just paranoid and looking for reasons to be angry. Gah.

    (One bright spot: Glen, who I assumed would be killed off in season one because that happens to Asian supporting characters in these kinds of shows so frequently, has actually been given a bigger role this season and, aside from the comment about ladies on their periods, has been pretty awesome. So, small consolation?)

  29. Marcie: Toobadyouwerewrong.

    Actually, the only episode in the entire show thus far to be written by a woman is the one that aired this past Sunday, Secrets. The first season, 0/6 writers were women. This season, 1/7 are. There’s no reason men can’t write good female characters, and lord knows women can write bad ones, but in a show that has put so little effort into doing anything with its female characters (and which has actively undermined them and made them out to be hysterical and on their periods), that breakdown in the writing room is telling.

  30. If it makes you feel any better, many of the douchebag dudely dudes I know who watch the show think it is actually really bad also and are really upset with how poorly the TV adaptation turned out. Given how hard they were hyping the show before it came out, if even they don’t like it, the show is going to have to either pick up soon or be scrapped. I am pretty sure its not going to get any better.

  31. Ahhhhh I have to disagree with so much here.

    A lot of the complaints raised here seem to be “these characters don’t act on the knowledge that I have. How horrible”. Maggie was raised in a rural community by a conservative christian father in a state currently considering a personhood amendment. I can’t imagine a person I would more expect to have misconceptions about contraception. Or that Lori is automatically just loyal and perfectly content to be under her husband when he returned, (who said so. Film media has always always been incapable of representing internal monologue on the level that print media can). And Darryl is intelligent, for sure, but don’t forget that when he showed up to the group that he was with his brother, a loud-mouthed racist who, even were he not racist a terrible asshole and abusive father-figure. And Shane showed up as well – remember that those who haven’t been at receiving end of police injustice will tend to listen to and follow the authority figure presented by an officer.

    This is a website dedicated to exposing the ills of society, but the comments section is exploding at the idea that a show which shows a world in which this imperfect society has completely decayed and everyone hasn’t immediately progressing to a utopian world of gender equality and rational thought. I’m not saying that the show is perfect, (in fact the almost all-white cast with only token POCs is a really valid criticism. It would be less apropros if the story was based the U.P. of Michigan, but its Georgia we’re discussing).

    I understand the need for popular media to help reverse traditional gender roles, (or strict adherence to them. The point is freedom to choose to be what you want to be), and the gender roles presented in TWD is pretty one-sided. But society is imperfect, Glenn would make snide remarks about periods and Maggie would think plan B is an abortion pill and police officers would view themselves white knights meant to fix everything. Or might. Characters should be flawed, and good stories should show development, and Shane and Daryl, at least, are both showing a lot.

    As one majorly privileged dude, i’m not pretending that i’m without my bias, but not every imperfection of characters, not every presentation of sexism in a character or submissiveness in a woman or lack of people of color is an example of purposeful reinforcement of gender or racial stereotypes. Sometimes people are operating under their own bias but not attempting to reinforce these biases, and maybe sometimes authors are aware of bias and stereotypes and bullshit norms but they are trying to construct real characters and all those things exist in real people.

  32. Matt: Ifitmakesyoufeelanybetter,manyofthedouchebagdudelydudesIknowwhowatchtheshowthinkitisactuallyreallybadalsoandarereallyupsetwithhowpoorlytheTVadaptationturnedout.Givenhowhardtheywerehypingtheshowbeforeitcameout,ifeventheydon’tlikeit,theshowisgoingtohavetoeitherpickupsoonorbescrapped.Iamprettysureitsnotgoingtogetanybetter.

    It’s still pulling in massive ratings and has already been picked up for a third season. I keep expecting the numbers to drop off, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  33. ok wow, I wasn’t up to date, I’d actually watched just through the previous episode (5) and I still had high hopes. I figured they’d turn this thing around any freaking minute. I don’t know why they’ve gone so far off chart. But the commenter who mentioned that the show has a big problem with race is right on the mark. I was trying to keep an open mind bc i love the books so much, and the casting was so right on, srsly. I kept waiting for Andrea to be the andrea I know and love. And I’d no idea why they threw in the randoms, but figured Tyrese and Michonne would put paid to the bs they’re doing with poc. Its Atlanta, y’all. Oughtta be a whole lotta black folks. And not all of em dead. Shane’s been on my last nerve the first time he opened his mouth in the pilot. This is a disgrace. Read the graphic novels instead.

  34. A friend crushed my soul by letting me know exactly why the show started sucking ass in the second season. Apparently, they canned Frank Darabont three days after Comic-Con, doubled the season, and cut the budget by about 20 percent. The result is more interiors (because inside is cheaper to shoot than outside), more talktalktalktalktalk (because overwrought monologues are cheaper to shoot than action), and questions like, “Does the audience always have to see the zombies? What if sometimes they just hear the zombies?”

    And what do we get? The zombie parade in S02, E01, that’s basically, like, half an hour of footage of the cast cowering under cars while the same ten extras walk past over and over, filmed only from the shins down in zombie pants and zombie shoes. And the rest is talktalktalk. Yaaay team.

  35. @ Caperton

    At this point Andrea is becoming the sharp shooter that she was in the comics thus leading me to believe that her character will get better. Because you have not read the comics you don’t know about Michonne, who they have already said will probably make her appearance in season three. In terms of the women, the best is yet to come.

  36. I’m pretty sure Glenn gave Laurie actual RU-486 later on when he tries to apologize to her. Also, isn’t Glen seeming to get a lot of shit for having sex? All the menfolk think he’s being a bad guest for sleeping with Hershel’s woman. It’s not all that progressive, but Maggie seems to be getting away just fine. I find that pretty refreshing. Laurie’s pregnancy seems straight out of the punish the lady for sex playbook, but things seem to be going differently for Glenn and Maggie.

    I really appreciate all of the stuff about birth control. Whenever I think of what would happen if, I think about “How would I have sex?” I also kind of appreciated Rick and Laurie arguing about what to do with the pregnancy – he says that he wouldn’t make her go through with it if she didn’t want, but pulls a giant guilt trip when he thinks she’s actually trying to terminate.

  37. Just throwing in to say that I didn’t know that the Plan B overdose wouldn’t work until I read this article. I thought what she was doing was incredibly stupid, there’s a doctor right there. He might even soften his attiude towards the group if he knew how desperate they were to not risk their children or potential babies. Hershel is sort of turning into the scary kind of zealot- what with the walkers in the barn and his insisting that they’re still people.

    I like Daryl, but I wish we saw more of what must be a struggle for him to put his racism aside. Merle’s appearance to remind him that he has nothing in common with the group is still churning in his head.

    Why doesn’t the whole group learn to ride motorcycles? That road block wouldn’t have slowed them down long enough to lose Sofia. On the other hand, I see the importance of having an RV, but why the hell they don’t get one that works, and sleeps 12?

  38. joeina2, my complaint isn’t that the show isn’t using their zombie apocalypse to reverse gender roles. My complaint is that it’s starting to suck. Glenn might make snide remarks about periods, and Maggie probably wouldn’t know the difference between abortion pills and morning-after pills (and I noted that in the post) and the police officers probably would have a white-knight complex, but that doesn’t mean that the characters can’t be realistic and three-dimensional.

    Andrea, who was fairly together and self-sufficient during the first season, stopped developing as a character circa S02 E01 and has now spent six full episodes as a bitter, irrational loose cannon whose impetuousness causes the group nothing but trouble. Carol went from meek to increasingly strong throughout the first season, and now has spent this entire season as a puddle of tapioca–seriously, she has done nothing. And Lori hasn’t had dialogue all season that wasn’t about Carl, Sophia, or the new fetus.

    You don’t have to reverse gender roles to give Andrea some common sense, or give Lori some new dialogue, or give Carol something to do other than cry and cook. You just have to make them three-dimensional and have enough respect for the characters to involve them in the storyline instead of keeping them around the margins to make sure there’s someone available to do something stupid when a zombie shows up. The problem isn’t that the writers are trying to construct real characters–it’s that they aren’t doing that.

  39. @ Caperton,

    Fair enough. A lot of my problems were more with comments than with your first post, too. But yeah, I see what you’re getting at.

    Maybe my support/sincere enjoyment of the series is more this: seriously, what other good zombie flicks/shows are out there? Compared with Survival of the Dead, TWD, even in its current season, is a masterpiece.

  40. I’m really disturbed by how patriarchal the show has gotten. There’s the two camps on the farm, Hershel’s people and Grimes’, and everyone has to run everything by them. There was one scene when Grimes asked if Glenn could ride into town with Maggie and even though she was standing right there, he asked Hershel, never once even acknowledging her. When Glenn told Dale that he slept with Maggie, Dale was aghast because “what will her father think”. And last episode, Hershel’s whole, “be glad you’ve got a son…” crap. Ugh, coupled with the horribly written women characters (Andrea wants to shoot a gun! Oh no, she shot Darryl!) and all the pregnancy-policing going on (Glenn’s whole “Lori’s too thin”), I’m just losing all hope for the show. Stay lost, Sophia!

  41. I disagree a little about Andrea. As unrealistically quickly as the transformation seems to have happened, she now appears to have become an official bad-ass sharpshooting zombie killer. As much as I hate Shane, I didn’t even mind her grabbing Shane’s crotch. (And when was the last time a woman did that on regular cable TV?)

    Anyway, as long as she stays the way she is now, it’s a whole lot better than her character before.

    Everything else people are saying, I basically agree with. Dale is such a nosy old biddy. I almost enjoyed the look on his face when Shane threatened him.

  42. PS: It was pretty clear to me that Dale was going on about what Hershel would think of Glen and Maggie not because he personally thought Hershel’s opinion was relevant or that his permission should have been asked, but because, knowing what Hershel was like, he was afraid they’d get kicked off the farm.

  43. Caperton: Thatone’sahardcallforme.Ontheonehand,Icompletelyagreethattheimplicationthatawomancan’tbejustacompetentwithagunreallyrankles.

    Ontheotherhand,thewaythey’rewritingthewomenthisseason,Iwouldn’ttrustaoneofthemwithapointystick.Thecharacterassassination(iftheycanevenbecalled“characters”atthispoint)isjustcriminal.

    that’s fair, and i will agree. however – instead of basically saying “no you can’t have it because i said so,” they should have ensured everyone could shoot…including the kids. people on patrol (seriously, why didn’t they bother with patrols?) should be armed at all times. everyone should be on patrol in shifts. don’t just take all the guns, hand them out to ONLY the men, and say you can’t have it because i said so.

  44. No accudations, just a general warning: Episode spoilers are NOT going to happen. I can’t even tell you what happens to spoilerers. That would be… spoiling.

  45. I just don’t get how she didn’t think of grabbing some birth control of any sort at some point. Who the hell has unprotected sex in a zombie apocalypse nowadays!?! I was a bit saddened by how this was represented with the pills and then her changing her mind. Although it didn’t matter in medical terms, it seemed agenda heavy.

    Additionally, the role of women and fighting off the “walking dead” has been severely limited and the few times they do kick ass we are supposed to be surprised. Ugh. Where are the tough butch women?

    Second season is so-so.

  46. Caisara:
    Irememberreadingthatalotofshows,mostnotablyTheVampireDiariesandGossipGirl,arenowwritingtheirshowsalmostcompletelybymarketresearch.LookslikeFrankDarapont’sreplacementand/orbossesfeelthattheyshouldexpandthetrendtoadultt.v.shows—andTheWalkingDeadistheperfectvehicle.

    What does that mean “market research”? I dont know what that is; want to understand

  47. If you read the comic, you know this series needs a strong dose of Meshon. Hope to see her and her blade soon.

  48. “Decatur has the greatest number of early-model Broncos with mud tires and a gun rack per capita of any municipality” LOL! I’m sure someone else has already said it, but you have not been near Decatur, Georgia for at least 3 decades by my estimate. I live in Atlanta and I think the southern accents on the show are very respectable. Not like the chick from the closer, whose accent is so horrible I’ve never watched the show since the commercials for it grate on my nerves so bad. The walking dead actors have nothing to be ashamed of, though no one can touch Hershel. The actor was actually born and raised in Atlanta as I understand it. Only people his age still talk like that nowadays, but I love his accent.

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