"Did He Ever Return? No, He Never Returned, and His Fate Is Still Unlearned..."

... Oh, poor Charlie...

... He will live forever 'neath the streets of Boston...

... He's the man who never returned.

"MTA" by the Kingston Trio

Walking... and walking... and walking...

Sheesh! Someone needs to brush!

Okay, right up front, I'm not a zombie fan. I've found the fad a bit overblown and ridiculous; the monsters, as they may be, are usually slow, they don't have any character, and the only thing you can expect to see when they are on the big or little screen, with much depth, is the holes they inflict on a victim's cranium. They rank up there with serial killers, for me. They were human, and still maintain human components, just in a slowly decaying fashion. Usually their dialogue consists of three letters out of the entire twenty-six we have in the English canon. (Hmm... I wonder if the Japanese zombies are able to say more things?)

The whole post-apocalyptic element of a zombie story tends to be so depressing and overwhelming, I'd generally rather leave the medication I'd need to sit through on of these movies in the cabinet and read a good book about giant monsters or something.

Now, how exactly do I explain cramming all four seasons of The Walking Dead into my sparse free time, finishing off the last episode a mere week or two after watching the first? It’s certainly not acquiring a taste for gore, as this show has plenty of it; it’s also not a cheery view of an undead population taking over an increasingly unstable world, as there isn’t room for much to be upbeat about (especially when a beloved character is killed unexpectedly, which causes frequent anxiety).

In other words, I don’t know how to explain it.

Let me say, though, I like the show. Part of it is because – okay, hold your breath, because I’m pretty sure you’ve heard this more than a few times – Walking Dead isn’t really about the dead; it’s about the living. Oh, you know zombies inhabit a huge part of the storyline, and you can bet your bottom dollar there’s going to be blood. But the show, as a whole, is about human beings; living, breathing human beings. The show is about living, breathing, people and how they handle the tragedy that has befallen them. Ironically, it’s more interesting than I’m making it sound.

You know what struck me, though? It took me a few episodes before I realized this was happening, but as we follow a small band of survivors through a horrific and increasingly dangerous world, I found myself increasingly anxious whenever they encountered other survivors; even more so than when they’d run into the bloodthirsty undead! At least with the rotting flesh-eaters (No, I’m not a vegetarian…) you know generally what to expect – there aren’t very good at manipulating a situation. With living, breathing people… well, that’s a different story altogether.

If you are faced with a zombie, you figure out pretty quickly (learning from other’s tragic mistakes) you need to go for the brain. If you are faced with a human, the kill or no kill, murder or self-defense question mucks up what you do. There are characters on the show who don’t feel the need to pause on this philosophical issue; they see what they want and they murder to get it. The survivors you follow on their journey are a little more upstanding, and tend to live to move on, but not always.

I don’t know exactly what I was setting out to do when I sat down to write. I definitely don’t want you going to watch The Walking Dead because I said I liked it. At the same time, I hope no one continues to judge and decide on the show, like I did, without offering if some sort of merit in our increasingly diverse and sometimes messed-up entertainment culture. I was surprised to find a close friend was watching the show – someone who generally wouldn’t watch anything scarier than an M. Night Shyamalan (and those can be scary, but nothing like this) movie – suggesting I give it a shot. I’m glad I did, but not sure I could ever justify it. It’s just a good, creepy, tense, and unpredictable story. I think that’s why I like it, but I’m not sure…