liveblogging the apocalypse
Okay, Walking Dead season two! It went pretty quick, all things considered.
I will say this for the show: I am interested in the plot and (some of) the characters enough to keep watching, even though I'm having major issues with a lot of it. And if you're one of those special people who like hearing me gripe about things, well, have I got an lj-cut for you!
- OH MY GOD CAN YOU STOP YELLING ABOUT THIS PREGNANCY is kind of a major note for this season. Yeah, honey, the WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME??!?!?!? is the point where you either leave Rick by the side of the road or shoot him in the head. This is not just drama. This is objectively gross. I do not know why this man is worth Lori's time, except that he has a lot of bullets and things with which to fire the bullets. The show even drops that their marriage was on the rocks before the world went to hell ... and then just never picks it back up.
But at least the whole I SLEPT WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND I AM THE WORST!!! reveal was totally anticlimactic. I'll give you that one, Rick, that you understand that situation correctly. Thank goodness, too, because all the ham-fisted secrecy was getting tedious.
It's interesting, what the show thinks is and isn't understandable. It's understandable to hook up with your husband's best friend when you think you're a widow. It's not understandable to conceal a pregnancy from your husband because omg that is his seed in there, and that's what really matters.
- Okay, I've thought about it some more, and here's Lori's problem: Rick. No, I mean, it's bigger than that -- Rick Is Right is one of the central tenets of the show, and for Rick to be Right, he needs someone around him to be Wrong for contrast. That's Lori's job. So she's just about the Wrongest person in the cast, and that's not because of anything that's her fault, but because Rick Is Right.
Even when Rick makes the bad decisions, Rick Is Right because those decisions often wind up being vindicated by the plot. Shoot two dudes in a bar without warning? It's okay because they would've raped the ladies. Hesitate about killing an unarmed man? It's okay because your son needs to learn about empathy by proxy or something. Stab your BFF in the gut? It's okay because he would've harmed your wife and your child and your baby (and did you mention enough that they're yours?). And when the decisions go south, he doesn't get scolded for it so much as he gets to have Manpain. While there are exceptions to Rick Is Right, there can't be too many, because he's got to remain that cardboard cut-out.
His whole big 'why do you follow me? I didn't want this job!' fit at the end of the season should have made a lot of characters go, okay, you're relieved of duty! But on a meta level, it makes perfect sense, because Rick Is Right. Follow the guy with plot armor.
- ...And then shooting the guys in the bar, and there it is. I was waiting for this moment, the one where the stakes went from ten to eleven for a spurious reason. I'm glad it died down after that bizarre firefight, but for a moment there I thought things were going all Season 5 of Breaking Bad.
Also, it goes unquestioned the implication at the time that this group they've been with is womanless, because there's a real horror: What would these guys (and guys like them) have done to the women? And then there's the answer, but it's just dropped and left like Merle's casual racism -- at least, by the show. Daryl's being visibly affected by this is touching, but it's not really a standin for the larger questions it raises. What's happening to women elsewhere? Is anybody going to ask about that? Anyone?
I don't know if I'm more worried that the show won't or will address it greater detail. I mean, the more something I'm watching can avoid rape, the better, but at the same time, it's opened a can of worms.
- Why the fuck are you just ditching that kid by the school bus, again? Crikey. And then you guys pause and come back only because someone you know might know him? It made me think of the difference between the at-camp funerals after Amy died and how Glenn insisted that they bury the ones they loved and burn the ones they didn't.
And the truth is, there is a difference between zombies you loved and zombies you didn't! There's such an extraordinary amount of death going on here that if you are in it, you have to make some distinction between the deaths that matter to you and the deaths that are beyond your ability to comprehend. It is at best a sheer psychological necessity for survival. The show is very good at individual tragedy, but it's not so good at recognizing that all these former people used to be, well, people. It's hard to fault it for that, though, because that's a whole lot to wrap your brain around. But like the rape thing, if you're going to go anywhere near there, you really need to keep going.
Sophia's emergence from the barn got a legitimate hand-covering-mouth gasp from me. That's a great use of that distinction, especially since there's already one person at the barn crying about the destruction of all the former people, but neither the party nor the viewers have any connection to them. And yet here comes just one more, and suddenly it's heartbreaking.
Anyway, the whole fiasco with the releasing kid is bullshittery. It's so ill-considered on all fronts, and it's missing pretty much all of the moral decision-making discussions that make it explicable. And yet, we're still letting the idiots who pulled that one together make any decisions for the group, much less all of them? That should be the dealbreaker for the rest of the group: Sorry, you use thirty-six miles' worth of gas and risk your lives for absolutely no reason? And then you take the guy you just saved and then declare it's time to kill him? You're fired. Just fired.
I understand why they didn't put that particular conundrum to the player in the Walking Dead game, because anyone who's not a complete backbirth wouldn't have made any of the choices these dudes made.
- I hate that Lori's entire job is to facilitate tension between Rick and Shane. That is damn near her entire function, and it's so frustrating and demeaning. Instead of being allowed to communicate 'no, I don't want you, and stay the fuck away, you are violent and you would've sexually assaulted me if I hadn't injured you', she's made to simper at Shane and then sidle up (topless) behind her husband to say, he thinks I belong to him and not to you! And then, of course, it has to be settled by an extended, stupid scene of man-fighting, because Shane doesn't accept that Lori has said no, so he needs the man that owns her to tell him no. I basically tune out every scene related to this plotline because this is grosser than the zombies.
...Wait, I just got to the part where Rick tells Lori he killed Shane ... and Lori pitches a fit? I mean, this is the woman who took off her bra, pressed her boobs up to her husband's back, and said to her husband, another man is trying to steal all your man-ness? And then she gets upset when this 'woman and children in danger!' baiting ends in bloodshed? That's right up there with a twist where Lady Macbeth takes one look at her husband's bloody hands and freaks out. I'm not saying this is Lori's fault, but shit, honey, is there a universe in which you couldn't see that one coming?
Oh, right, Lori's other job is to give shitty little Victorian speeches about how women provide a haven in a heartless world and shame Andrea for not falling into her uterus-appointed domestic role. And any point she might have about how, yeah, skipping out on chores makes things harder on the people who have to do them? It gets lost in her snotty, moralizing attitude, and double-lost under how Andrea's right, that it's pretty easy to keep your chin up when everything's going great for you in particular.
But at least that scene kind of makes the show pass the Bechdel Test? So bully for that.
- "Men have to do certain things, you know that, and they're either going to blame the little woman as the reason they do 'em or the reason they don't." Right there, Lori articulates the sexist spine of the series -- and the worst part about it is that it's presented not as commentary, but as fact. Men are just dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckers, honey, and they're always going to get mad at you for their dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckery, so ... you should ... still put yourself in a position to enable said dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckery? I mean, love them? And never expect them to change or improve?
Beyond occasional lust for that manly smell and sheer force of habit, I don't think the men who make this show have any reason why heterosexual women persist in being heterosexual.
- We can't have unattached women running around without using their vaginas! Andrea hooks up with Shane. Maggie hooks up with Glenn. Beth says she's got a boyfriend living on the farm with them, even though I couldn't swear to you which one he is (and maybe he got eaten? that was a very ill-lit scene). All the others get eaten. I'm wondering how long it's going to be before it is decided Carol needs to be under the headship of another man. (Please, Lord, no Carol/Daryl. I can't take the rhyming.)
- Look, if you want proof that the show's entire understanding of gender dynamics is borked, notice that Glenn gets sent out to do manly manly gun things, while Andrea and Maggie get to keep the home fires burning.
- whyyyyyy does anyoneeeeee listen to Riiiiiiiick
ever
- Thank you, Dale, for being the last remaining vestige of human decency. I'm sorry that the show killed you for it in the most disturbing, grotesque, ironic way it could think of.
- Never have I cheered so hard for the zombies than I did with Shane, even though the zombies weren't what got him. And part of it's that he's supposed to be a character I'm supposed to hate, I know, but he's far, far grosser than the show knows. His death eventually came not because he was sucha loose cannon, but because he was a man-threat to Rick's man-castle, with his goal of stepping in and taking ownership of Rick's wife and child and leadership position and all the other things that make a man a man.
I mean, it'd be a great point to be made about toxic masculinity -- about how, even at the end of the damn world, the kind of man that Shane is cannot be a man unless he has the best man-castle around -- if the show knew said point was there to be made.
- I'd say the most unbelievable thing about the Walking Dead is not its biology, but its physics. That many headshots? Seriously?
And a small roundup of our surviving characters:
Rick: Still tastes like Wonder Bread, but if every fourth slice had been soaked in vinegar. Will he be a hero today? Will his moral center slip? Roll a D4 and find out!
Lori: Problems with Lori have been addressed elsewhere in this post. I'm sorry, Lori. I'm sorry you are a foil for manpain.
Carl: I sense his growth is going to be interesting, especially with everyone else negotiating the difference between treating him as a child and treating him as an adult. I'm going to be upset, though, if instead of becoming an adult, he becomes just another one of these macho white boys.
Daryl: I now am starting to understand why folk are all sweet on him. He's a mean sumbitch, but he's not just a plain ol' sweet squishy center that's erected a wall of false toughness to cover his tender bits. No, he's every bit the roughneck he makes himself out to be. He's just also got a lot of kindness in him too, and I appreciate that contrast. He is also straight-up the only party member besides Andrea with the sense God gave a chicken sandwich.
Glenn: If having a girlfriend turns you into Macho Man Randy Savage, I'm going to start cheering on the zombies. Fair warning, sugar.
Maggie: I like her when she's being sensible. I hate it when she gets turned into little more than a vehicle for Glenn's character development.
Beth: You're a sweet kid. I'm glad you decided on aliveness.
Hershel: And I'm glad you didn't go down with the farm-ship. Ship-farm. Whatever. The group needs a resident Old Man, and you're crotchety enough to qualify.
T-Dog: ...Are you still here, Dog? I'm so sorry.
Andrea: Of course they had to split her from the rest of the party. She's right about damn near everything. Her rightness had already started showing up Lori; pretty soon it was probably going to start showing up Rick.
Michonne: I DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MICHONNE TO KNOW THAT I LOVE HER ALREADY is there a lot of Michonne/Andrea out there? Asking for a friend.
I will say this for the show: I am interested in the plot and (some of) the characters enough to keep watching, even though I'm having major issues with a lot of it. And if you're one of those special people who like hearing me gripe about things, well, have I got an lj-cut for you!
- OH MY GOD CAN YOU STOP YELLING ABOUT THIS PREGNANCY is kind of a major note for this season. Yeah, honey, the WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME??!?!?!? is the point where you either leave Rick by the side of the road or shoot him in the head. This is not just drama. This is objectively gross. I do not know why this man is worth Lori's time, except that he has a lot of bullets and things with which to fire the bullets. The show even drops that their marriage was on the rocks before the world went to hell ... and then just never picks it back up.
But at least the whole I SLEPT WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND I AM THE WORST!!! reveal was totally anticlimactic. I'll give you that one, Rick, that you understand that situation correctly. Thank goodness, too, because all the ham-fisted secrecy was getting tedious.
It's interesting, what the show thinks is and isn't understandable. It's understandable to hook up with your husband's best friend when you think you're a widow. It's not understandable to conceal a pregnancy from your husband because omg that is his seed in there, and that's what really matters.
- Okay, I've thought about it some more, and here's Lori's problem: Rick. No, I mean, it's bigger than that -- Rick Is Right is one of the central tenets of the show, and for Rick to be Right, he needs someone around him to be Wrong for contrast. That's Lori's job. So she's just about the Wrongest person in the cast, and that's not because of anything that's her fault, but because Rick Is Right.
Even when Rick makes the bad decisions, Rick Is Right because those decisions often wind up being vindicated by the plot. Shoot two dudes in a bar without warning? It's okay because they would've raped the ladies. Hesitate about killing an unarmed man? It's okay because your son needs to learn about empathy by proxy or something. Stab your BFF in the gut? It's okay because he would've harmed your wife and your child and your baby (and did you mention enough that they're yours?). And when the decisions go south, he doesn't get scolded for it so much as he gets to have Manpain. While there are exceptions to Rick Is Right, there can't be too many, because he's got to remain that cardboard cut-out.
His whole big 'why do you follow me? I didn't want this job!' fit at the end of the season should have made a lot of characters go, okay, you're relieved of duty! But on a meta level, it makes perfect sense, because Rick Is Right. Follow the guy with plot armor.
- ...And then shooting the guys in the bar, and there it is. I was waiting for this moment, the one where the stakes went from ten to eleven for a spurious reason. I'm glad it died down after that bizarre firefight, but for a moment there I thought things were going all Season 5 of Breaking Bad.
Also, it goes unquestioned the implication at the time that this group they've been with is womanless, because there's a real horror: What would these guys (and guys like them) have done to the women? And then there's the answer, but it's just dropped and left like Merle's casual racism -- at least, by the show. Daryl's being visibly affected by this is touching, but it's not really a standin for the larger questions it raises. What's happening to women elsewhere? Is anybody going to ask about that? Anyone?
I don't know if I'm more worried that the show won't or will address it greater detail. I mean, the more something I'm watching can avoid rape, the better, but at the same time, it's opened a can of worms.
- Why the fuck are you just ditching that kid by the school bus, again? Crikey. And then you guys pause and come back only because someone you know might know him? It made me think of the difference between the at-camp funerals after Amy died and how Glenn insisted that they bury the ones they loved and burn the ones they didn't.
And the truth is, there is a difference between zombies you loved and zombies you didn't! There's such an extraordinary amount of death going on here that if you are in it, you have to make some distinction between the deaths that matter to you and the deaths that are beyond your ability to comprehend. It is at best a sheer psychological necessity for survival. The show is very good at individual tragedy, but it's not so good at recognizing that all these former people used to be, well, people. It's hard to fault it for that, though, because that's a whole lot to wrap your brain around. But like the rape thing, if you're going to go anywhere near there, you really need to keep going.
Sophia's emergence from the barn got a legitimate hand-covering-mouth gasp from me. That's a great use of that distinction, especially since there's already one person at the barn crying about the destruction of all the former people, but neither the party nor the viewers have any connection to them. And yet here comes just one more, and suddenly it's heartbreaking.
Anyway, the whole fiasco with the releasing kid is bullshittery. It's so ill-considered on all fronts, and it's missing pretty much all of the moral decision-making discussions that make it explicable. And yet, we're still letting the idiots who pulled that one together make any decisions for the group, much less all of them? That should be the dealbreaker for the rest of the group: Sorry, you use thirty-six miles' worth of gas and risk your lives for absolutely no reason? And then you take the guy you just saved and then declare it's time to kill him? You're fired. Just fired.
I understand why they didn't put that particular conundrum to the player in the Walking Dead game, because anyone who's not a complete backbirth wouldn't have made any of the choices these dudes made.
- I hate that Lori's entire job is to facilitate tension between Rick and Shane. That is damn near her entire function, and it's so frustrating and demeaning. Instead of being allowed to communicate 'no, I don't want you, and stay the fuck away, you are violent and you would've sexually assaulted me if I hadn't injured you', she's made to simper at Shane and then sidle up (topless) behind her husband to say, he thinks I belong to him and not to you! And then, of course, it has to be settled by an extended, stupid scene of man-fighting, because Shane doesn't accept that Lori has said no, so he needs the man that owns her to tell him no. I basically tune out every scene related to this plotline because this is grosser than the zombies.
...Wait, I just got to the part where Rick tells Lori he killed Shane ... and Lori pitches a fit? I mean, this is the woman who took off her bra, pressed her boobs up to her husband's back, and said to her husband, another man is trying to steal all your man-ness? And then she gets upset when this 'woman and children in danger!' baiting ends in bloodshed? That's right up there with a twist where Lady Macbeth takes one look at her husband's bloody hands and freaks out. I'm not saying this is Lori's fault, but shit, honey, is there a universe in which you couldn't see that one coming?
Oh, right, Lori's other job is to give shitty little Victorian speeches about how women provide a haven in a heartless world and shame Andrea for not falling into her uterus-appointed domestic role. And any point she might have about how, yeah, skipping out on chores makes things harder on the people who have to do them? It gets lost in her snotty, moralizing attitude, and double-lost under how Andrea's right, that it's pretty easy to keep your chin up when everything's going great for you in particular.
But at least that scene kind of makes the show pass the Bechdel Test? So bully for that.
- "Men have to do certain things, you know that, and they're either going to blame the little woman as the reason they do 'em or the reason they don't." Right there, Lori articulates the sexist spine of the series -- and the worst part about it is that it's presented not as commentary, but as fact. Men are just dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckers, honey, and they're always going to get mad at you for their dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckery, so ... you should ... still put yourself in a position to enable said dipshit dumbass apelike motherfuckery? I mean, love them? And never expect them to change or improve?
Beyond occasional lust for that manly smell and sheer force of habit, I don't think the men who make this show have any reason why heterosexual women persist in being heterosexual.
- We can't have unattached women running around without using their vaginas! Andrea hooks up with Shane. Maggie hooks up with Glenn. Beth says she's got a boyfriend living on the farm with them, even though I couldn't swear to you which one he is (and maybe he got eaten? that was a very ill-lit scene). All the others get eaten. I'm wondering how long it's going to be before it is decided Carol needs to be under the headship of another man. (Please, Lord, no Carol/Daryl. I can't take the rhyming.)
- Look, if you want proof that the show's entire understanding of gender dynamics is borked, notice that Glenn gets sent out to do manly manly gun things, while Andrea and Maggie get to keep the home fires burning.
- whyyyyyy does anyoneeeeee listen to Riiiiiiiick
ever
- Thank you, Dale, for being the last remaining vestige of human decency. I'm sorry that the show killed you for it in the most disturbing, grotesque, ironic way it could think of.
- Never have I cheered so hard for the zombies than I did with Shane, even though the zombies weren't what got him. And part of it's that he's supposed to be a character I'm supposed to hate, I know, but he's far, far grosser than the show knows. His death eventually came not because he was sucha loose cannon, but because he was a man-threat to Rick's man-castle, with his goal of stepping in and taking ownership of Rick's wife and child and leadership position and all the other things that make a man a man.
I mean, it'd be a great point to be made about toxic masculinity -- about how, even at the end of the damn world, the kind of man that Shane is cannot be a man unless he has the best man-castle around -- if the show knew said point was there to be made.
- I'd say the most unbelievable thing about the Walking Dead is not its biology, but its physics. That many headshots? Seriously?
And a small roundup of our surviving characters:
Rick: Still tastes like Wonder Bread, but if every fourth slice had been soaked in vinegar. Will he be a hero today? Will his moral center slip? Roll a D4 and find out!
Lori: Problems with Lori have been addressed elsewhere in this post. I'm sorry, Lori. I'm sorry you are a foil for manpain.
Carl: I sense his growth is going to be interesting, especially with everyone else negotiating the difference between treating him as a child and treating him as an adult. I'm going to be upset, though, if instead of becoming an adult, he becomes just another one of these macho white boys.
Daryl: I now am starting to understand why folk are all sweet on him. He's a mean sumbitch, but he's not just a plain ol' sweet squishy center that's erected a wall of false toughness to cover his tender bits. No, he's every bit the roughneck he makes himself out to be. He's just also got a lot of kindness in him too, and I appreciate that contrast. He is also straight-up the only party member besides Andrea with the sense God gave a chicken sandwich.
Glenn: If having a girlfriend turns you into Macho Man Randy Savage, I'm going to start cheering on the zombies. Fair warning, sugar.
Maggie: I like her when she's being sensible. I hate it when she gets turned into little more than a vehicle for Glenn's character development.
Beth: You're a sweet kid. I'm glad you decided on aliveness.
Hershel: And I'm glad you didn't go down with the farm-ship. Ship-farm. Whatever. The group needs a resident Old Man, and you're crotchety enough to qualify.
T-Dog: ...Are you still here, Dog? I'm so sorry.
Andrea: Of course they had to split her from the rest of the party. She's right about damn near everything. Her rightness had already started showing up Lori; pretty soon it was probably going to start showing up Rick.
Michonne: I DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MICHONNE TO KNOW THAT I LOVE HER ALREADY is there a lot of Michonne/Andrea out there? Asking for a friend.