The Moth Chase

To all….Well, it seems that each season ends in flames–the blast from the CDC in season one, and, now, the flaming farm at the end of this season. And the secret that Jenner whispered to Rick is out…”Whatever it is, we’re all carrying it.” We’ve been speculating for a couple of weeks about the unbitten zombie transformations, and now we know that no one can escape the zombie transformation. Of course, Rick’s revelation sets off anger amongst the group about why he withheld the news from them. Their trust in Rick as the leader is quickly dispelled just as Rick declares the “end of democracy.” Just that statement made me wish that Shane had beat Rick to the draw. (Obviously, Lori was feeling a bit of the same.) Read the rest of this entry »

Hey friends,

I’m a bit pressed for time tonight, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. First, while we still haven’t hit the high of two weeks ago, the show continues to improve, by culling and characterizing, in ways that provide some room for hope. Second, a few theories on this new development with the zombifying virus.

First: improvements in the show. The single best thing The Walking Dead can do is kill off some people. This is so not only because it raises the stakes, but as I said a few weeks ago, thus far TWD is not a show blessed with a talent for developing realized characters, and so an ensemble approach is death to any momentum it possesses. I haven’t been a fan of Dale for a long time, but I thought last week’s episode worked, for the most part: while Dale has generally functioned as a mouthpiece for the moral dilemmas the writers wanted to introduce, his campaigning for Randall’s life had a nice urgency to it. It finally gave him a real purpose (unlike divining Shane’s abandonment of Otis, or arbitrarily hiding guns in a swamp), and it revealed the moral inertia of the group he was up against. Conversely, Shane’s character had really lived out his usefulness, but seeing him go at Rick’s hand took TWD to a new, very dark place. This is especially so when read against the attack on the walkers in the cold open, which was staged to look very much like a gang taking out its rivals in a turf war, and those terrifying shots of ravening walkers juxtaposed within the frames of Rick and Shane’s struggle. The downside to all of this, though, is that the barrel of interesting characters is pretty shallow here – are they going to give T-Dog something to do? Carol? The most promise here is with Andrea, I think. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi all,

I’m in two minds about this episode. I know we’ve all been frustrated by the writers’ insistence on telling rather than showing what is going on – but this was an episode that seemed to require lots of words. After all, its whole purpose was to get us to reflect on the power of words vs. actions vs. thought, etc., and all the ways in which words can justify (or condemn) a man. Of course, it still felt heavy handed (a few times I expected someone to reference 9/11, burn a Qur’an, or start chatting about those pesky WMDs…at the very least I wanted Shane to command the group to “stay the course,” not “cut and run”). And as usual, I can’t say these discussions revealed anything about the rule of law, the problem of torture, or the dangers of pre-emptive strike that I hadn’t thought about before. They simply performed the dynamics of the debates without adding anything to them. But at least this time the words themselves were a form of action – an alternative to the types of quick decision making that can lead to regret. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey all,

Sorry to have missed the conversation last week – but I was in complete agreement with the whole tirade of this show not managing to stay smart enough to do anything with the multiple potentially interesting themes it has introduced. And yes, I too wondered why it took all night to drive back to the farm?! But mostly, I was frustrated with the fact that any zombie action seemed staged entirely for the purpose of keeping fans of guts and gore invested, but not for any deeper meaning. Shelly pointed out last week that we might be coming up with gracious interpretations of the show to justify our own blogging of it, and I was about to suggest that we therefore stop…but then this episode, for me, worked again.

Perhaps it’s because I’m most intrigued by gender narratives – I spent the first half of the season wondering if the writers were trying to set up a gender dynamic of men’s vs. women’s work, but their set ups never quite paid off. Last night they did in spades! Sure, Lorrie’s over-the-top insistence that the men are the protectors and the women are the domestic queens felt a little over-wrought, for sure. But Andrea’s response revealed just how much this system trades on patriarchal ownership of the little ladies. Not being owned herself, she is free to pursue the types of work that matter to her – something, it seems, Lorrie might actually envy. But it was her question of Lorrie with regards to Beth that truly stung – can you tell her everything’s going to be ok, Read the rest of this entry »

To my blogging partners…..

So, ever since the western scene from last week, I’ve been thinking about TWD and masculinity. I was wondering if Kathryn, Natalie, and I failed to see something in the show, because we are failing to see anything enlivening about the female characters. We went down this road a bit with Lori, when there was a bit of exhaustion with her character and her decision to take a spontaneous—and truncated—road-trip, and Kathryn and Natalie bantered about women drivers. But, honestly, the women in this show take all of their cues from the men. (Andrea taking cues from Shane, Carol taking cues from Daryl). Read the rest of this entry »

Hi all,

To be clear, I was mostly bored in this episode – to me it ran like a recap of all the emotions we are supposed to be feeling, and all the themes we are supposed to be thinking, without actually building on any of them. The climax – at least in the ‘talking about the themes,’ not  actually ‘showing the themes’ came with Rick’s assertion that death has always been with us. If we didn’t give up hope before, why would we give it up now? It’s not about what we believe. It’s what we do. (Yes, Rick – I believe we’ve heard this speech before). Said with that gravelly voice, it’s almost convincing – but of course, once I can tear myself away from Rick’s authoritative presence, I remember that Read the rest of this entry »

We are all mourning the long hiatus of The Walking Dead and in the interim we’ve kept adding to this final conversation. Read on for our extended discussion of the mid-season finale.

Well Moth Chasers, this “mid-season finale” really tied together so many of the themes we’ve been exploring in our conversations: what constitutes a new normal and new norms in this apocalyptic world, relationships between family bonds and care for strangers, and the models of leadership that will survive/allow others to survive. And we finally got to the bottom of what happened to Sophia (more or less), meaning that at least one of the reasons for staying on the farm is now gone. Read the rest of this entry »

Well Moth Chasers, this “mid-season finale” really tied together so many of the themes we’ve been exploring in our conversations: what constitutes a new normal and new norms in this apocalyptic world, relationships between family bonds and care for strangers, and the models of leadership that will survive/allow others to survive. And we finally got to the bottom of what happened to Sophia (more or less), meaning that at least one of the reasons for staying on the farm is now gone. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morning Moth Chasers,

I realize people might want to talk about the whole Lori, Rick & Shane secrets are never really secrets storyline this week – and if you do, please go for it. Besides Lori actually coming clean about Shane, that story didn’t really grip me. But I’m eager for someone to tell me why I’m wrong!

Instead, here’s my question for the group this week – do you believe with Herschel and his crew that there might be some good life for the barn-walkers? Or should I say, for mom and stepson and the so-and-so’s from down the road? For a moment I thought, that silly idealism is going to get everyone killed. But being reminded of how Amy’s death still plagues Andrea so viciously, and how even Glen is infected with this mad violence for the purpose of survival, I found myself for a moment wanting to believe with the homestead dwellers that there might be some semblance of mom left in these creatures after all. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s a wonder you people have survived so long.”

– Hershel Greene

Walking Dead, “Chupacabra.”

Hello friends,

Well, it looks like many suspicions were confirmed. There is indeed *something* going on at the Greene residence–why are they keeping these zombies in the barn? Is it because they’re friends or relatives and Hershel hopes for a cure? Is it because he himself is doing something to them? Is he planning on using them as biological weaponry in against other outsiders? Target practice? I don’t know, Katheryn–but good call! And, Natalie, nice call on the epistemology/nature of belief stuff. I took this week’s episode to center first and foremost on the stakes, survival, and evolution of norms and normative authority. Implicitly, the question is raised by Daryl–in a world where the dead walk, is it so strange to believe in a chupacabra? Explicitly, Shane raises the question explicitly, asking whether the maintenance of certain norms–from prior to the walking dead–is a sort of nostalgia. Read the rest of this entry »