The Walking Dead

This is a post full of squee so be warned...

I never considered watching this show really until moving to my new digs and finding my brother is such a fan of the show. And it was on Netflix so that made it click-bait.

Oh my God.

So the premise is that all humans have a virus inside that can turn them into zombies, usually upon death but in an egregious case or two, a super flu can do it too. So the world is over-run by ravenous undead and those who survive have to be strong, fast, brutal and ...

The series follows a group of survivors led by Rick Grimes. Rick was a police officer who was shot and in a coma, then woke up to this changed world. He has a son Carl and a baby daughter Judith: they're his reason to be and keep going. Rick isn't the moral heart of the show because honestly, there's a certain brutality in him that every now and then is a little breath-taking in a bad way. (One scene where a large man was about to rape his son in front of him led to a blood bath of epic porportions that still has me catching my breath.)

 What's amazing about the show is all the survivors and who they become and how they fight. They fight for humanity, they fight because as Morgan said, every life is precious, they fight because the people they were before the world changed are people they don't want to leave behind.

But the best of them are painted in greys. My favorite characters are Carol, who has evolved from a battered wife into a woman who wouldn't blink to kill if it protected someone that matters to her (and she's been brutal in necessity beyond what anyone could imagine), Darryl (the amazing Norman Reedus) who is a hillbilly, redneck hunter who was made to survive the apocalypse but not necessarily his own heart (oh sweet nuance, you serve him well) and Glenn, who was a pizza delivery boy pre-Zombie and now stands as the moral heart of this amazing show.

I watch the show and want to write fan fiction about it. I sit and discuss it with anyone else who watches it (I have some other squeeing fans at work too). I think about it.

And I watch it with a knowledge that there's layers to these stories that they add for viewers who want to go deeper. The zombies are presented in different ways, the backgrounds change... it's like a world full of Easter eggs if you're willing to look.

The fifth season just ended and on a note of moral ambiguity with Rick. I love it. I want to sit down and talk this out with another fan. I want to turn over the implications of what it means that Morgan has become who he is now and saw Rick as who he is now. I want to talk about Deanna who has now lost everyone and how that's going to change her. And Glenn. Glenn who watched Noah die so brutally (that was amazing when his face got ripped apart) and yet couldn't kill the man who was at cause with it.

It's a brilliant show. If you've been thinking about giving it a try... do. Then let's talk.