The Walking Dead 1x01 Review

[iaria]

Days Gone Bye

I don’t know if I will keep watching this series.

There were positives: it’s a zombie tv series and I’ve recently discovered a big love for zombies; it has good production values; the make-up is excellent and the zombies look great; the feel of this post-apocalyptic zombie world is well done.

But there were also some serious negatives as well, or rather there was one major negative that's kind of a deal breaker for me. The way that women are treated in this pilot, the casual sexism throughout, has left a really bad taste in my mouth.

When I heard about the series I was really excited and when I learned that it followed a guy waking up after the fact I mainly sighed and rolled my eyes. Of course, a white guy would be the main character. It made me feel a lot less gleeful about the series but it being centred on a white guy and his angst is not actually a deal breaker for me. If it was I wouldn’t be able to watch a lot more shows and movies. So I was less gleeful but still excited and this could still have been a new much loved new series for me.

But, god, the way women are portrayed, and how they are talked about and just how absolutely they are marginalised in this narrative made me mad. Perhaps I’m being sensitive – actually I probably am – but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Some of the things that bothered me wouldn’t have on their own it’s just that everything put together is just... yuck. I mean there is no non-zombie female character on the show until 50 minutes into the episode and then for only two scenes and with only a couple lines for each woman. (Okay, there was also the animal harm in the episode – that was a drawback as well but kind of expected.)

• How exactly did TPTB want the viewer to take the conversation between the two cops at the beginning? How were we supposed to see it? Because what I got out of it was ‘bitches are crazy, stupid and mean’ and... is that really where the show wants to go? I can’t imagine that that’s want they meant for that scene to say because why would they? But it’s what I got out of it and re-watching it I don’t see how else we’re supposed to see it. Perhaps we’re meant to see Shane as an asshole while Rick was just humouring him and didn’t agree. It’s most likely that I’m not their target audience – okay, I know I’m not, that would be males between 18 and 35 – and perhaps that is how men talk to each other, I don’t know, but I do know that I have no interest in watching a show where that’s how men talk about women.

- “Um, darling, maybe you and every other pair of boobs on this planet, just figure out that the light switch see goes both ways maybe we wouldn’t have so much global warming.” – Shane Seriously this scene almost made me give up on the show and only the zombies got me to continue. I don’t know what pisses me off more – Shane condensing every woman on the planet down to their secondary sexual organ or him blaming global warming on women – but let’s just say both. It did... let’s say amuse, me because of how certain guys I know often seem incapable of turning light switches off. It took the edge off the urge to reach through the screen and punch him in the face.

- “The difference between men and women? I would never say something that cruel to her. Certainly not in front of Carl.” – Rick Yes, clearly that is the big difference between men and women – women are so mean. Also Lori besides being passive-aggressive and mean to Rick is also a bad mother to their son. After all Rick would never say anything like that in front of Carl like she did.

• When Rick has his breakdown in his living-room the directing kind of took me out of the scene because I kept going ‘why does the director keep obscuring a part of his face with a wall?’ Bad camera work there.

• “I just didn’t have it in me. She’s the mother of my child.” – Morgan It just annoys me that they made it about her giving him a child and not about the fact that he couldn’t kill her because he loved her. We see how much he loves her so why couldn’t that have been enough?

• “My wife, the same thing... There I am packing survival gear and she’s grabbing photo albums.” – Morgan Oh, those silly women and their emotions while men are all practical and shit. Bite me, show. That said when quickly packing to run from a zombie apocalypse (or any apocalypse for that matter) I definitely would grab some photo albums as well.

• When doing a single fantasy element in the modern world (aka urban fantasy) – whether it is zombies or magic or mutant powers or vampires – you have to make the other parts as realistic as possible. Or at least for the best result you have to. I can buy the zombie apocalypse that this series is trying to sell but I can’t buy, say – Rick surviving unconscious/in a coma in his hospital room for months. I figured that a week at most had passed and while it bugged me a bit I was willing to hand-wave it, happily even. The fact that they showed the hospital bed up against the outside of his door was a nice touch and did make no one disturbing him more believable. But to learn that over a month has passed at the least... um, no. Morgan tells Rick “Gas lines been down, maybe for a month” which means it’s been over a month since it started. So take the months and then however long it takes for the gas lines to break down and even if it happened immediately and even if the zombie’s appeared the same day that Rick got shot (doubtful since we had the memory of Shane visiting) it’s still a month. A month of Rick lying in bed in the same position (bed sores), with no catheter that we saw (people need to pee and poop), with no new food drip which means he hadn’t eaten anything in a month (looking good considering that!) and I just find it too unbelievable. A positive bit of realism was Rick deafening himself when he shot the zombie in the tank.

• “I’m sorry this happened to you.” – Rick This scene made me like Rick. Him shooting his zombie co-worker because “I can’t leave him like this” was nice. But he went out of his way to return to the park and the ruined zombie he’d seen there (his very first) and put it out of its misery. He did it out of compassion, not of the moment but something he put effort into. His face when he kneeled down beside her and stared at her had so much empathy and sorrow in it and in that moment I could see a character that I could care for and like.

- How does a zombie become like that? Was she killed and then eaten by zombies and then was still brought back by the virus? Also if zombies eat human flesh why haven’t they eaten all the bodies lying around? Shouldn’t they be attracted to them? We see at the end of the episode that zombies do eat animals (poor horse), which is both good and bad.

• I thought the intercutting scenes of Rick killing the destroyed zombie in the park out of compassion and Morgan setting up but ultimately unable to kill his zombie wife was the end of the episode. I thought it played really well – it made me like Rick and feel so much for Morgan and his pain – but at the same time it was two guys killing/trying to kill two women for their own good. Being as they were zombies I can’t disagree but just that with there being no women in the episode and the casual sexism and it just made a really great scene uncomfortable for me.

• Morgan’s wife seemed different from the other zombies. She wasn’t missing skin or pieces and her face wasn’t covered in blood but that was the least of it. She seemed a lot more aware than the other zombies we see in the episode and her behaviour seemed a bit different as well. She wasn’t attracted to the house because of lights or noise and in fact she ignored a light/noise that should have attracted her away from the house (indicating that she either remembered that the house had some significance to her or that she knew there were people in the house), she turned the doorknob (indicating she knew that was the way into the house), and she looked at the peephole like she knew that’s where someone could see her from. Together that suggested to me that she has more awareness than the other zombies. This could be true or not but it would be a very different and interesting tact to take (that the zombies come in different types).

• This show, in the pilot at least, really likes to have their characters conforming to stereotypes – here with the two women being all ‘let’s put a sign to warn people’ and the two men being all ‘it’s about our survival fuck anyone else’.

• “I’ll go, give me a vehicle.” – Lori That moment really creeped me out actually. That she needed him to give her permission to take a vehicle and that he could say no to her and that was that. There were just layers there which were then confirmed with:

- “You can be pissed at me all you want it’s not going to change anything.” – Shane ... because he’s in charge of her life and her actions apparently. Thanks so much for giving her permission to be mad though!

- “I’m not putting you in danger, okay. I’m not doing it for anything. That make you feel like sometimes you want to slap me upside the head tell you what girl, you go right ahead.” – Shane Again pretty much with him making the choices for her and not only him telling her what she can and can’t do but giving her permission what to feel. It’s not her, as an adult, making choices it’s ‘him letting her’. Also: him being all magnanimous about it and giving her permission to hit him and calling her ‘girl’. Thanks, asshole. Everything about him adds up to controlling douchbag and if I keep watching this show I’ll be anxiously waiting for him to be eaten. If I don’t watch I may tune in when he does get eaten just so I can watch it.

- “You do it for him. That boy has been through too much and he is not losing his mother too.” – Shane The second instance of Lori being shown to be a ‘bad mother’ because she wasn’t only thinking of her son and apparently wanting to help other people (with probably minimal danger, she wouldn’t need to go into the city itself) is a horrible thing because she has a child and then she needs a man to remind her what should be most important to her at all times. Yes, her being there for her son including not taking unnecessary risks is important but the idea that being a mother is all she can be now does not work for me.

The way that he talks so much in this scene, telling her what she can do, and she actually only mutters (so quietly I had turn the volume up high in order to hear it) a short sentence was so creepy. Actually the way the scene is being played makes me wonder if the PTB are purposefully trying to show him as this horrible controlling asshole. It’ll just be so that Rick can come and save her, I’m guessing, but that’s still better than the show portraying Shane like this and expecting us to see nothing wrong with it. I mean the way he responds to her “I’m a good mom” by severely telling her to say it’s okay, then grinning with a little laugh when she nods, and is all condescendingly “That’s not hard” – they have to mean for us to see him as an asshole, right?

• Has Rick ever watched a zombie movie in his life? In the seventies the characters acting dumb in zombie movies was more understandable because they didn’t have a culture where ‘zombie’ was a well known term and were they could be found in any form of media. He should know better than to go into a city.

• I was far more worried about the horse than Rick, though I knew Rick would survive, and wasn’t pleased when he was killed off. Poor horse.

In conclusion this show needs: less sexism (none would be perfect), less stereotyping/gender issues, more female characters (preferably with agency), Shane to die (preferably eaten), and no more killing animals.