Mar 23 2012
Why we need The Walking Dead
Be forewarned: I’m probably not the first person to think of these things, but I still hope you’ll find it interesting.
The Walking Dead (or TWD) is my favorite show on tv, followed closely by Breaking Bad and Mad Men. As I watched the recent season finale, I wondered why it strikes such a cord with so many people. Maybe it’s because lately all of us have had to do things we never thought we would do in order to make ends meet and…to survive. Some of us have lost homes or cars (or both). Others have even lost loving relationships due to the hardships caused by the ongoing economic crisis. We all are in crisis. We all are facing a never-ending list of difficult choices. There’s no end in sight. Even those of us who are doing well have people we love who are suffering, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re starting to lose hope. We look back at our lives before 2008 with great nostalgia.
So, I’ve pretty much just described the plot of The Walking Dead, without the zombies. Of course, a good case could be made to support the premise that there are plenty of walkers (zombies) in our day to day lives (Wikipedia defines zombies as “mindless, animated corpses”): insert boss joke here. Just about the only real difference between TWD and life as we know it is that we’re stuck living this out, whereas the cast of TWD is able to stroll back to their trailers, wash off the dirt and fake blood, change clothes, and have their drivers whisk them away to luxurious accommodations. Well, that and the fact that on the show they are continually on high alert for imminent, sudden death in the form of being eaten alive by a “herd” of the undead. The only thing we have that compares is the lack of affordable health care that looms over us with ghoulish delight, waiting for our numbers to come up (while we’re in-between jobs and insurance). So, I guess we are worried sick about the means to acquire health, food, clothing, shelter, transportation and fuel. America is The Walking Dead Lite; which is why we love TWD so very very much.
