It’s easy to get caught up in trying to find justification for every single minute detail of your favorite TV show--we all have an abundance of free time on our hands. Oh, what’s that, single-mom-of-ten-kids, you don’t have four hours to spare just so you can dissect the secular motive of every single character from LOST? Can’t spare a few hours to write an essay on how Walter White’s favorite color of Hanes underwear on Breaking Bad reflects his mood? Well, no wonder you've had such a hard time making any sense of everything always in your life. Yeah, The Others were ghosts, great theory. Don't let the stupid hit you on the way out.
Now...Seeing as though we’re free of all those suckers who have "priorities" and "electric bills to pay," let’s go to the local 'Bucks, crack open our new Mac L-tops, and have a little chat about The Walking Dead.
In case you’re not into zombies, Sunday night was the Season Two Finale. And boy was it was a doozy. And by "doozy", I mean: shit-show of carnage and mind-boggling choices and predictable cliffhangers, but still, it’s way more entertaining than most shows on TV right now (Two Broke Girls is almost as funny as getting robbed at gun point). And naturally, like the day after any big season finale of any halfway-popular show, people flocked to Internet Town, USA and flooded the message boards to gush and bitch about EVERYTHING that happened in the show. Ugh, did you see Andrea’s sneakers, they were sooooooo stupid, I would be wearing hiking boots with machine gun jetpacks on them (that's what you wrote, FYI).
And this is fine. Again, we all have hours upon hours to sing songs and dance around the parks and playgrounds of America from sun up to sun down. But I guess where my real issue lies, specifically with this show, is: certain people's absurd expectations of realism. Certain fans/non-fans will nitpick about character reaction/development, dialogue, and the overall realism of a show that’s focused on, well, ahem - the motherfucking ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! Again, it’s a show about zombies—so why in the fuck are people debating the realism of anything? If, during an episode, a spaceship landed in the middle of a field, and out poured a thousand green aliens wearing cowboy hats and Eddie George throwback jerseys from 1999, why would that situation be any harder to believe than a virus turning your mom into a flesh-eating undead corpse and everyone in the show being able to shoot zombies in the head from 400 yards away with a .22 caliber pellet gun? Okay, sure, if the show was focused on the Revolutionary War and billed itself as historically accurate, and then midway through the series Sylvester Stallone emerged from Fort William Henry dressed as Rambo and started using a Bazooka to blow up the British infantry, then yes, you have yourself a legitimate gripe. But zombies? Zombies eating people? Nope. Your argument is moot.
Look, I get it, most of the characters on this show are terrible people and stupid and make poor decisions. Just so I can put it out there and get this over with quickly, here's what I think of everyone: Rick is a terrible leader and a terrible husband/father who leaves his family behind every chance he gets to go do something stupid; Lori is a piece-of-shit and she deserves to drown in a zombie lake for being an adulterine and a manipulator with bug eyes; Andrea is a cold bitch and she sucks and I wish she died ten seasons ago; T-Dog is named fucking T-Dog which is just terrible; Daryl is cool but he drives a Chopper with Nazi SS symbols on it so that's weird; Carl is the shittiest kid ever and everything he does is unbelievable because the actor who plays him is pale and stupid; Glen and Glen’s girlfriend are about as interesting and complex as a fart; Sinead O’Conner AKA "Worst Mom of the Year" nominee has balls for calling out anyone over anything because all she does is run around crying and letting her daughter get eaten; Herschel is a dumb old asshole with a shotgun that has unlimited ammo and fails to comprehend that there is no magical man coming out of the sky to save him ever.
Does that about sum their group up? Yup. Okay, moving on...
But regardless of just how shitty this band of merry survivors is, it’s still a show about zombies and the end of the world. And that’s awesome. So I don’t care if it focuses on Uncle Joey from Fullhouse and his stupid fucking puppet running around a parade ground. And I don’t care if Rosie O’Donnell has a three episode arc next season as the Sheriff of Fatso Town - in fact - I encourage this. Shit, if the ghost of Pat-fucking-Morita came down from Karate Heaven and fucked everyone up (most importantly stupid Lori and Carl), I would be the first in line to shake the hands of all those involved in writing such a Pulitzer-worthy storyline.
Bottom line - the show is about zombies, and the zombies are eating everyone’s fucking faces off. And zombies are make-believe. So that's that.
But I guess that’s the whole point of Jesus/Allah/Buddah/George Washington giving us “opinions” is so we can debate everything ever created, even though no one I’ve ever met has ever changed their opinion after a “debate”. Usually these “debates” end both friendships and un-punched faces. But oh well, Petey was an asshole anyway. So does my argument justify poor writing? No. But I really don’t watch horror movies for the triumphant acting or the witty writing. I watch them to see how good the special effects are, and how many different ways the whack-job special effects directors can have people shredded by a hungry pack of the undead. I guess I’m not the kind of person who tunes into a show about the end of the world filled with horrible flesh-eating monsters to debate ways on how the characters and the situations could be more like my own real life? Weird, I know! I'll be over here watching a movie about guys restaining their decks - can't wait!
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