The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is a cable television phenomenon, in many ways the king of cable (though last night's episode was dethroned by The History Channel's miniseries The Bible; to show where my twisted loyalties lie, I recorded The Bible and watched The Walking Dead). People can put whatever spin they want to on the brilliance of the show, or this or that, but really most people watch to see zombies get splattered and an occasional unlucky human get bit in a grotesque manner. I like to believe I am one of the former, watching for the psychology of seeing a group of people live through the end of the world, but I must admit that seeing a katana go through a zombie skull can be gratifying in its own way. 

I am writing about the show because last night's episode, Clear, was perhaps the most disturbing I have seen. This is a claim that cannot be taken lightly by watchers of the show--there are many, many disturbing moments--but there was something about last night that gave me the willies. It kept me awake in bed. I couldn't get over one image: that of an orange backpack laying on the side of the road.

(There will be spoilers beyond this point, though none that will have any long-term implications for the show.)

The premise of the show was a road trip episode. Rick, his creepy son Carl, and the enigmatic Michonne wisely leave the rednecks and the infirm at the prison to fight it out in case the Governor and his people show up while they are out looking for more guns. Why not just leave the prison? you ask. I have no freaking idea. 

The episode opens with a sign erected on the side of the road telling a girl named Erin that whoever left the sign was trying to make it to Stone Mountain (isn't that where Kenneth from 30 Rock is from?). It is a haunting image. Parents (?), extended family (?), friends (?), leaving this hopeless/hopeful message that Erin would see this sign and somehow be able to find them. It helps to remind us that there are people out there other than Rick's fascist prison gang and the Governor's fascist hamlet dwellers. 

Moments later we see our heroes in their sponsored automobile burning down the highway in search of heat. Up ahead in the road is a backpacker, a real live human backpacker, who is pleading for them to stop and help. He is alone and desperate.  Michonne doesn't slow down as she drives. They hardly look back. Frantic he starts running after them. Moments later they find themselves stuck in the mud and are attacked by a cohort of nearby zombies. This is one of the more interesting zombie scenes in the show. There are several zombies pounding on the windows of the car, but the group seems entirely nonplussed. Rick casually cracks the window, tells the other passengers to plug their ears, sticks his revolver into the head of the first zombie and the brains get splattered. That is the only kill we see. The next shot is of a neat pile of zombies stacked on the side of the road. In many ways this season isn't really about the threat from the undead. They are all such experienced zombie killers that they hardly constitute a threat anymore. They are more of an inconvenience than anything. A side note in the battle between the survivors.

Rick and Carl help get the car free and as they are getting in the backpacker comes running down the road, again pleading for help. Once again, the group hardly casts him a second look and they take off. You knew what was going to happen at this point. You knew this guy was dead and they were going to find him on their way back. And this is what happened, though it happens offscreen. 

I am leaving out the bulk of the episode: the gang encounters Morgan, the man who helped Rick in the pilot episode of the show, saving his life and explaining the nature of the devastation to him. The conversation between the two was fascinating stuff, and to me further damns Rick for his refusal to help the unnamed backpacker. Here is a guy, Morgan, who had no reason to take a chance on Rick, yet did and saved his life and allowed him to find his family again. But Rick seems to resolutely refuse the same kindness towards others. And who, really, has Rick been burned by? Shane was apologetic in the moments before Rick stabbed him in the heart. The only other traitors were prisoners who had been trapped in a supply room for a year. 

After leaving Morgan to his grim future of living by himself in a Home Alone style booby-trapped attic, the gang takes off back to the prison (what is with the geography of this show? Somehow the prison is a hop and a jump away from Rick's hometown. Why, then, was it difficult for them to find? They spent the winter going SWAT-style through South Georgia. Wouldn't you know about the prison right down the road from your house?). They pass the familiar mess of wrecked cars where they encountered the zombies in the first scene. Shortly up the road is a mutilated corpse and on the side of the road an orange backpack.

I had hoped that there would be a moment of great regret on the faces of the characters at this point. A realization that they had abandoned a man to a cruel death. Instead, after passing the backpack they back up and the 12 year-old boy reached down silently to put the pack in the car. There might after all be something useful in the pack. The wearer of the pack would only have been a nuisance. I about cried. Seriously. I teared up. It was awful to watch. 

This was one of those rare moments where the show slows down enough to let you contemplate the terror that has befallen the world since the advent of the apocalypse. And when you do that it makes for great TV, but it also allows the human tragedy to soak in and confronts you with just how awful this new world really is. With people like this as survivors, maybe it is better for the world to go ahead and just end. Honestly, at this point I have a hard time rooting for Rick. What makes him better than the Governor? How different is it to actively kill someone or to abandon them to fate in this zombified world? I can see those who argue that he made a pragmatic decision, a cold calculation. I can see that point, but whatever he did it certainly wasn't human.