You know what struck me about The Walking Dead?
After watching the first four episodes, I couldn’t name the main character or any of the characters for that matter. Point of disclosure: I wasn’t feeling all that well when I watched the episodes over a course of two nights. And I’m not great with names. But it’s still striking that at the end of the fourth episode, I was still referring to the protagonist as that Sheriff Guy.
So far, I like the show, but I think it may be a victim of high expectations. I was hoping for something a little … “smarter?” Maybe smarter isn’t the right word, but here’s why it’s the first that comes to mind.
The series opens with a shot of Sheriff Guy, who I now know is Rick Grimes, walking down a deserted road, his patrol car abandoned behind him, an empty gas can in his hand. He reaches a campground, wanders around among the tents and abandoned vehicles. Then, hearing something, he crouches behind a car. Looking under the vehicle, he sees someone shuffling along in bunny slippers. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. The mysterious walker then reaches down and picks up a stuff animal toy.
For some reason, this is all the reason Grimes needs to assume that the person must still have a heartbeat. So he stands up and says to the person, a blond child, “It’s okay, I’m a police officer.” The kid’s back is turned and all you can see is her filthy blond hair. Grimes repeats his assurance until the kid turns around. “Argh!” Bloodied mouth open, she shuffles toward him. End scene.
To which my first response is, “How the hell did he survive the Zombiepocalypse this long?” The wise approach, in the event of a plague of undead with a taste for human flesh, is to assume everything that shuffles, including kids in bunny slippers or little old ladies, is a zombie.
The next scene begins with Grimes and his partner, uh (Googles)…Shane, sitting in the squad car, having the male version of an International Coffee moment. Shane is on a misogynist rant about women and light bulbs. He ends his rant by asking about Grimes’s wife (more Googling)…Lori. Grimes whines that Lori expressed frustration with their marriage in front of their son Carl (Oy, the kid’s name I remember). Grimes’s eyes tear up, and he moans that he can’t beee-lieve Lori would say that in front of their son. The way Grimes carries on, you’d think Lori had pulled down her panties and started pleasuring herself in front of Junior, rather than making an idle comment.
Shane, meanwhile, nods and says that maybe the problem is that Grimes isn’t listening to Lori; he’s too emotionally unavailable. At which point, you know Shane is screwing Grime’s wife.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve liked the series so far; it just isn’t as “Wow!” as I expected. Maybe I figure people should be smarter than they are. For example, Lori, Shane, Carl and several other survivors have taken refuge in a camp just outside of Atlanta. The women folk have immediately settled down to doing laundry, because “that’s how things are,” and the men are…one’s off hunting squirrels, but the rest aren’t doing much else. One is beating his wife and threatening the other women. When Shane–rightfully so–kicks the living crap out of wife beater, several of the men grumble that Shane is being brutal and that he should stay out of other men’s business.
Ah, it’s the end of the world and I’ll beat my wife if I want to….
Anyway, as expected, zombies find their little hideaway, and eat several characters. My husband and I shake our heads and observe that “They should have spent less time on laundry and more on setting up a defensible perimeter. It’s the end of the world. Ring around the collar is the least of your problems.”
But The Walking Dead so far hasn’t moved beyond “okay” because Rick Grimes is, in my husband’s words, “kinda blah.” He’s stoic, brave (often stupidly so), and possesses a total of two facial expressions–grim and grimmer. Fortunately, the rest of the cast, including the zombies makes up for his charisma deficit.
Honestly? Even the hillbilly racist’s brother, Daryl, an asshole who makes Newt Gingrich look like Prince Charming, is more likable than Grimes.
Not that Grimes is unlikable. He’s like a Ken doll. Girls never really liked the Ken doll. He hung around so that Barbie could say she had a boyfriend, but once G.I. Joe showed up, ole Ken ended up under the bed, collecting dust until the dog found him and ate his head.
You can’t blame Lori for finding herself a G.I. Joe stand-in.
