Beth’s Books: The Walking Dead Psychology

(Subtitled Psych of the Living Dead, edited by Travis Langley)

It’s been a while since I wrote about The Walking Dead, and with the midseason finale of Season 6 coming up, this seems like a good time!

Besides, I absolutely loved this book. It takes a serious look at the psychological aspects of the show, both why viewers watch and the toll the Zombie Apocalypse (or any other type of apocalypse) takes on survivors and affects their behaviors. Psychology has always been a casual hobby of mine, and of course, I am truly obsessed with the show, so this was right up my alley. The book is a collaborative effort of several Psychology professors and counselors, and they all offer interesting insights on varying aspects of the show.

So why do we watch? One of the authors posits that it is because we have a longing for a sense of community, deeper relationships, and connections. There are no cell phones or computers in the ZA. No television, no Internet, and none of the constant bombardment of stimuli that we are subjected to on a daily basis. The survivors have to rely on each other for everything and deep relationships are formed. When you place your life into the hands of others on a daily basis, forging such strong bonds is a major contribution to your survival.

There is also a strong sense of nostalgia for things lost. The survivors feel it as they make their way through the wasted land filled only with walkers; something as simple as the ice cubes in Andrea’s glass of lemonade at Woodbury are seen as a long-lost luxury. After Rick and Carl flee the prison and find refuge in an empty home, Carl looks at the video games in a kid’s room and the big screen TV with longing...then rips the cord off of the useless TV to use to secure the front door. The viewers feel it, too. Seeing abandoned homes and signs of the people who lived there, seeing rusted cars grown over with kudzu, seeing a world that has ended for the vast majority of human beings...how can you not feel a sense of longing for what has been lost? The premiere episode of the show is called “Days Gone Bye” for a good reason.

Another author believes that part of the show’s appeal to so many of us is that it causes us to reflect on existential questions such as the meaning of our lives and to what purpose we would continue in such a scenario. It may cause us to confront our fears and think about how we would react in the ZA. Would we retain our humanity? Would we grow hungry with power like the Governor, or would we do whatever it takes to protect our family, like Rick is trying (and not always succeeding) to do? The author draws an analogy between survival in the ZA and survival in the death camps of the Holocaust. It’s not a bad analogy because surviving both would take courage and the ability to confront the worst that humanity has to offer. How can anyone deal with such inhumanity (in the ZA, both from the walkers and from certain other survivors) and come through unscathed? It’s natural to question our own abilities to deal with such extreme circumstances.

As for the survivors’ response, they are all suffering in varying degrees from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They have all seen and done some incredibly horrible and brutal things and are under constant stress and constant fear. All of this can result in unpredictable behavior and bad decision-making, both of which can cost you your life or the lives of those who are looking to you for protection, resulting in further stress and survivor’s guilt. Many of the survivors have experienced psychotic breaks, such as Morgan after losing his son Duane, or Rick after Lori died. Michonne spent months by herself, talking to her dead boyfriend as if he were there. One of the big questions in the series has been, “Do you get to come back?” In other words, after all you’ve seen and done, do you get to survive with your humanity intact? It’s a question that is still being answered for many of our survivors.

The most interesting chapter to me was the one that considered Daryl Dixon’s transformation from angry redneck to reliable soldier, and even to transformative hero. The author looks at Daryl in the context of Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero arc,’ in which the character embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Daryl is compared to the classical hero Ulysses, who experiences hardships and tests in his travels and learns much about himself in the process. Daryl was an abused child, growing up in sad circumstances; he looks for Sophia with such dedication because he thinks about how he wished he could have been saved when he was a child. It has taken the ZA to make Daryl realize his potential as a human being with meaning to his life, and a valuable, trusted member of the group. As such, Daryl is a symbol of much-needed hope in the apocalyptic world. If Daryl can overcome what he did and grow into a position of trust and leadership, then there is hope for all of us. Daryl sets the bar high and challenges us to become our own “better angels.”

The book also does a few case studies of some of the characters to see if they fit the profile of a psychopath. Shane, the Governor, the Claimers, Negan, and others are examined using professional criteria.

The book concludes with the thought that zombies help us confront one of our biggest fears: our own mortality. We see that the zombies are simply bags of meat, without purpose or meaning other than finding their next meal (and hopefully it’s not us). We all have a desire to find meaning in our lives, to be more than another bag of meat. The book feels that The Walking Dead succeeds in showing the human struggle to find meaning in life, even knowing that our mortality is inevitable, and that our struggle matters.

So why do I love the show so much? Because it makes me think about all these things. Yes, you can say that it is “just a TV show,” but I’ve always felt that good TV can speak to us on a level that makes us address certain things in ourselves and also connects us with others who feel the same way. The best shows make you wonder how you would react in certain situations, whether it’s Walter White confronting a cancer diagnosis or Don Draper dealing with his past and the rapidly changing world around him. The Walking Dead makes us wonder what we would do in order to survive...or would we even want to? And why?

Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the show, comics, or novels.

It’s almost here

As my buddy Daryl there says, just ONE MORE DAY!

I am so psyched to have my absolute favorite show back tomorrow evening that I can hardly stand it!

We’ll be heading down to my Mom’s tomorrow afternoon for a visit and to wish her a happy birthday (which is coming up on Tuesday). She says she’ll stop and get a pizza on her way home from church, so YUM!

Then we’ll head back here to take care of a few housey things, and the countdown will begin.

I’ve got a couple of things planned. Last year’s season premiere zombie finger cookies didn’t turn out too well (I wish I’d taken a picture...they still tasted good, but they just flattened out and looked like looked like long flat slabs of cookie with an almond stuck on the end. Talk about a Pinterest Fail!) so this year I decided to do a tried and true treat: Slimeballs!

I haven’t made them for years, and I don’t think I’ve ever made them for Ken.

Slimeballs

2 packages Lime Jell-o (or one large package...heh...large package)
2 cups boiling water
1 cup Midori melon liqueur
1 cup vodka

Dissolve the Jell-o in the boiling water, and let it cool for a few minutes, but not so much that it starts to set. Add the booze and let it set. Serve with whipped cream.

I can tell you that it’s some tasty stuff, but really packs a punch! There’s always room for boozy Jell-o!  I got some red gel stuff to drip on it, too. Slimeballs don’t really look like zombie guts or anything, but they’re almost fluorescent green, and the red stuff on the whipped cream will look cool and bloody. Fun!

I also plan on wearing my I ♥ Daryl t-shirt that I got in Senoia at The Woodbury Shoppe.

Finally, I bought some new nail polish today, with several different colors (one is a kind of bright yellow) and a black “crackle” glaze. That’s that thing where you put it on top of another color, and it dries and looks cracked. I was showing Ken, and it resulted in this conversation:

Me: So you put this on top of another color, and it looks crackly.
Him: [nodding] Okay.
Me: I was thinking maybe green underneath? [Then I show him the yellow polish.]
Him: That yellow would look cool underneath the black, too.
Me: Yeah! It would look like pus!

So we’ve got green slimy stuff with bloody whipped cream and fingernails oozing pus. [clapping hands] All right! We’re good to go! I thought about making a couple of these, but I think we’re good with just the slimeballs.

BOOM!

The Touring Dead

As many of you know, we usually try to take short sidetrips on our way back from Florida; one year it was Asheville, NC to see Biltmore House, one year it was Memphis, one year it was Raleigh to visit our friend Sheria. Many of you also know that this year’s sidetrip was Senoia, GA.

Why would we want to visit a small town south of Atlanta? Because they’ve filmed a lot of “The Walking Dead” there, that’s why! Senoia is the town that served as the fictional Woodbury. We stayed in Newnan, and there were a couple of places there that were also used in filming. There were other small towns in the area with buildings and places used in locations.

During the 20 or so miles from Newnan to Senoia, we listened to the Walking Dead soundtrack CD, and it was actually a pretty cool accompaniment to the drive. It was easy to imagine the two-lane road littered with abandoned vehicles, or to picture zombies wandering through the trees and fields. I’ve got a good imagination that way, and that’s part of the fun. Ken put up with me, even when I waved my hands in the air and said, “YAY!” when we saw the “Senoia City Limits” sign. Fangirl was geeking out with no apologies!

As we pulled up into downtown and onto Main Street—which was the Main Street of the town of Woodbury in the show—I was all “Agghhh!” and “Ohmahgah!” and “We’re in Woodbury, honey!” We spent a little time checking out the storefronts and just wandering down Main Street. We stopped in the Georgia Mercantile Co., and checked out what they had to offer. This was serendipitous, because they had a tour going on in about an hour and a half, and Sunday is the only day they do it! We debated whether we wanted to spend the money on this little bus tour or buy a map of locations and try to find them ourselves. We decided to take the tour (AND we bought the map) because they might have access to places we couldn’t get into, as well as maybe some “insider” information. That is exactly how it turned out, so I’m glad we decided to go for it!

We had a little time to kill before the tour, so we checked out Maguire’s Pub right around the corner. Great beer selection, and we enjoyed the place so much we had lunch there the following day. Good food and good beverages...a nice place to hang out!

Anyway, the tour was well worth it. A couple of the places we got to see are private property, but they got us in there. The main guide, Dan, has been a zombie extra in all three seasons, seventeen times in all. He hasn’t been called yet for Season 4, but hopes he will be. He had lots of interesting information for us, although certainly no spoilers for S4. One of the things he said was that they have increasingly locked down security and potential sources of leaks. The extras used to be able to bring cell phones in, but they have to relinquish them before they get to the set now; they used to be told where the filming was happening and be able to drive themselves there, but now they get an email the night before and meet at a place where they are bused in. All very hush-hush as they try to keep any leaks from happening. Any extra who leaks information and is found out is permanently blacklisted from the show (and probably doesn’t do themselves any favors for any other gigs they might try to get).

As for zombie extras, they’re all required to be quite small. Dan himself was unusually tall for a zombie extra, he said, but he’s also skinny as a rail. I wondered why, and he said, “Because we’re supposed to look dead and emaciated.” Makes sense! But if you want to be a zombie extra, you have a better chance if you’re small and skinny.

I’m including a few pictures in this entry, but if you want to see all of them, you can check out my Facebook album of Walking Dead Locations. I made it public, so even if we aren’t friends on Facebook, you will be able to see it. Probably one of the coolest locations was the factory (still in operation) that contains the courtyard that served as Woodbury’s “zombie arena.” That was just such an awful scenario, and made even worse when Daryl and Merle were supposed to fight to the death there.

When we were there, I was talking to Dan, and although I can’t recall exactly what my question was, it turned into a little talk about how they film things. I said that I’m almost always able to suspend disbelief, so I still enjoy entertainment. He said that that’s one bad thing about working in it and seeing how it’s filmed: it almost spoils it for you when watching it. To the group, he talked about how so much of it has to do with angles and camera shots, making things look bigger than they really are. When they were clearing the prison, they used the same couple of short hallways and just filmed it from different angles, so it looked like they were rushing through this large maze of prison hallways, but it was just a couple of corners shot from different directions! He said that Chandler Riggs, who plays Carl Grimes, is going through puberty right now, so he’s getting to be a big kid. They keep making Rick’s sheriff hat bigger and bigger, so it still looks small on Carl. (For some reason, that one just made me chuckle.)

A few other tidbits he had for us:

• Zombie teeth look black and gross due to a mixture of chocolate syrup and mouthwash. You swirl that stuff around in your mouth and spit...instant zombie teeth!
  
• The longest day he’s had, no matter what show or movie he was working in, was on “The Walking Dead.” I believe he said it was during the filming of when Hershel’s farm gets overrun and the barn burns down. The temperature was down in the 20s, and he said he worked over 20 hours that day. They were all freezing, and the zombie extras were huddling together for warmth between takes, zipped up in Snuggies. There’s a mental image for you!
  
• Speaking of Hershel’s farm, it is a private residence near Atlanta, and fans are constantly trying to jump the fence and get pictures of it. Don’t do that, people. Not only is it rude and creepy, they are prosecuting people to the fullest extent of the law. You will be thrown in jail and prosecuted (same goes for trying to crash the studio set). The owners of the farm are extremely religious and had two rules for the cast and crew there: No cussing, and No zombies can touch the house. If you watch that episode again, you’ll see that the zombies never get into the house, although they apparently overran the house in the graphic novel. It was such a hard and fast rule that the owners’ daughter, who played a zombie, had to get out of makeup and get cleaned up before entering the house at the end of filming.
  
• He talked about Merle a bit, and we all kind of mourned Merle. It was a sad ending for him, and somewhat noble. He tried to do the right thing. Dan said that other than Dale, all of the characters who die seem to do something out of character before their demise. I’ll have to ponder that a bit as we watch it again, but that was certainly true with Merle. Milton went against the Governor, and Andrea was trying to bring the Prison Gang and the Woodbury Gang together...something to think about.
  
• Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes) and David Morrissey (the Governor) stay in character throughout the entire day of filming. They are both British, and once they get into the Southern accent, they don’t want to get out of it. Although many of the cast has input into their characters and somewhat into the storyline, Andrew Lincoln does a lot to direct some of the action...like where the zombies should approach, how they should die, and so forth.
  
• The initial cast signed up for five years. Obviously, not all of them have made it that far, and I suspect there may be a couple of hard deaths in Season 4. One of the first rules of horror films is “anyone can die at anytime,” and “The Walking Dead” has held true to that rule. No one is safe.
  
• Even more ominously, during a “death discussion” about the survivors, Dan said, “Oh, they all die. Robert Kirkman [the creator of the comic book] has said exactly that. They all die.”
  

So there you have it. They’re going to make you love these great characters (even the bad guys are fascinating) and then they’re going to kill them all. Even Daryl Dixon isn’t safe in the Zombie Apocalypse.

I enjoyed this experience completely, and would recommend it to any fan of the show, if you get the opportunity. I can honestly say that I have never been into a show as much as this one...and this is coming from a “Star Trek” fan!

Dead-A-Thon

I hope everyone has enjoyed their Fourth, and is still continuing to enjoy it!

We’ve been having a relaxing day at Nutwood, with a brief run up to the Ford dealer to drop off Ken’s Mustang to be worked on tomorrow. We wanted to be sure we get it in and serviced before we head to Florida in a week or so. Ken mowed the yard, I spent a little time out on the deck, and worked on getting stuff ready for dinner tonight.

But mostly I’ve been glued to AMC watching the weekend marathon of “The Walking Dead.” It started at 1 PM today, and will go through Sunday. All the episodes of all three seasons, plus interviews with cast and crew members. I really had not intended to watch these—we have both Season 1 and 2 on DVD—but once I started, I just couldn’t turn it off. Even Ken was glued to it for a while until he headed outside. I love seeing some of my favorite moments (The introduction of Daryl, anyone? Kicking a walker and yelling, “This filthy, disease-bearing, motherless, poxy bastard!” Love it!), as well as knowing how the characters develop. Some very sad moments, too, because I know what happens to a lot of these people.

Everything is almost ready to go for dinner, and although it’s overcast, I think the rain will hold off and let us get the ribs grilled. It kind of makes me laugh that we’ll be gnawing on barbecued ribs after watching “The Walking Dead.” nom nom nom They’re showing the first season again in black and white, so we won’t watch that (although that opening scene with Rick Grimes and the little girl zombie is awesome in B&W!), but in keeping with the zombie and rib-gnawing theme, tonight’s movie of choice is one of my favorite zombie movies, “Return of the Living Dead.” Split Dog! Yip! Yip! Yip! (No dogs were harmed in the making of this movie or in this blog entry.) "Send...more...paramedics...."

Do ya wanna party? It’s party time!

The excitement builds…under the dome

What has two thumbs and is excited about the premiere of this show tomorrow? THIS GAL!

Doesn’t that picture just break your heart? Aww.

We still have good times ahead this evening with a couple of T-bones and a couple of episodes of “The Sopranos” (no sports on tonight!), but I am super psyched about this show Monday night. I loved the book, and I think there is a lot of potential there for a fun and creepy series. (So does Stephen King. He has said that he never got to cannibalism in the book, but if the show continues long enough...gahhhh!) King isn’t one of the writers, but he does have input, and that’s a good thing. I can see him steering it in a very dark direction.

We’re both so interested in watching this that we agreed that we will watch it instead of the end of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. We’ll get to watch a couple of hours of the game, but then we’ll switch over to “Under the Dome.” (No, we don’t have a DVR, and have no plans to get one. Shut up.) This is going to be a summer series, and if it gets picked up for a second season, my concern is that it will be going up against “Bates Motel” on A&E, another of our favorites. But things can change, and “Bates Motel” usually plays the episode again immediately afterwards, so that might be a work-around. Fangirl will find a way! We did that with “The Walking Dead” for a while, but we got so hooked on the show that there was no way we were waiting till the later showing, especially once “The Talking Dead” expanded to an hour. I love it that cable shows are often willing to do a same-night repeat showing of the episode!

Anyway, I think this could be very good. Post-apocalypse stories are hot right now, because there is much depravity and creepiness to be mined there. The reason I love “The Walking Dead” so much is because it asks the question “How will YOU react in the post-apocalypse world? How will you keep it together?” Some go the dictator route (The Governor), some go the badass survivor route (Daryl Dixon), and some are a combination of the two (Rick Grimes). It is a fascinating study of the human psyche.

And you know...zombie heads goin’ all splodey! YEAH!

No zombies in “Under the Dome,” but there will be lots of shit goin’ down all the same. Power struggles, idiot politicians, jerks, liars, and ineffectual lollygaggers.

Hey! Kinda like far too many in our Congress!

So there you go. “Under the Dome” is a metaphor for our dysfunctional Congress. You heard it here first.

Well, that went better than expected!

Yesterday, we started hearing about some really bad weather coming our way. After an overcast morning, the sun came out in the afternoon, and I was even able to get out onto the deck and catch some rays—although it was really hot and humid, so after an hour, I was a hot, sweaty mess!

The sun meant an increase in the coming storm’s severity, though. As it moved in, I turned over to the local weather, and when they said there was rotation in the area, that’s when I decided to pack up and head downstairs. After reading about how awful the Oklahoma tornados were, I’m not fooling around. Ain’t nobody got time for that! I had already gotten the kitty carrier out and ready, so I pulled Sheeba out from under the bed (that’s where he goes to hide from thunder) and got him in his carrier, got my computer and phones, an extra beer, and dished up the eggplant parmigiana. I got settled in the Retro Lounge and I was ridin’ the storm out in style!

There was lightning, thunder, and rain (and it’s still going on), but the worst of the storm seemed to pass to the south of Nutwood. There were reports of high winds and tennis ball-sized hail; my niece lost power at her house; a brick building next to my friend Cassie’s grandmother’s house was hit by lightning and partially collapsed, but her grandmother and her house were okay! This storm had the potential to be a derecho, which is essentially an inland hurricane, with straight-line winds 70+ mph. We had one pass through here a couple of years ago, and although we had no major damage at Nutwood, there was plenty of damage in our area.

Ken was supposed to get back from California tonight, but due to the severe weather in the Chicago area, his flight from Houston to Chicago was canceled fairly early. So he’s hanging out in the Houston airport Marriott watching the Stanley Cup finals, and I’m watching them at Nutwood! Sheeba and I came through the storm just fine, although he’s a little wigged out and is currently hiding under the bed. We were riders on the storm. I hope it will pass through soon, and I’ll be sure to call my Mom tomorrow and make sure all is well, because it was worse in her area.

I made you the Daryl Dixon meme about the derecho because I also made a word. I told you about that yesterday, and I checked a moment ago, and it is published! I made Norman a word. Normans love words. haha

Have you reedused anyone lately? Have YOU been reedused?

Walk with me

Today I decided to get out and enjoy our property a little bit by taking a hike through the marsh. I hadn’t intended on going back into the woods, but I was having so much fun out there that I spent a while in the woods, too! A little background: we have 11 acres, part of it a marshy wetlands, which changes to woods a little farther back. Let’s get started! (Click on pictures to embiggenate.)

It’s important to wear wear a hat when walking around out here. Lots of ticks. I didn’t have any on me, but I just saw one on the outside wood trim. It was a warm, sunny day, and I was already starting to heat up as I made my way through the marsh back to the woods.

Because this is wetlands, there are some pretty squishy spots out here. Ken tries to keep a path mowed, and he’s put pallets and boards down to serve as a walkway in the squishiest spots. (It also helps to keep the mower from getting stuck!) I like how this leads to the woods. Looks kind of spooky, doesn’t it? Of course, I think everything looks spooky.

Once I got into the woods, I was glad I decided to do the full monty, so to speak. Later in the summer, the woods get pretty overgrown and tangled with foliage, and Ken usually has to slash through some of the stuff with a machete. [Feel free to play the Indiana Jones music in your head.] But this time of year, it’s easy to get through. The ground cover is just coming up, and you don’t have to wade through knee deep (at least for me), thick foliage. There were still lots of bare spots on the floor of the woods, and it seemed so wide open and clear. Although I looked, I didn’t see a single morel mushroom. Dammit! And it’s weird to see this huge boulder back there in the woods. It’s a reminder that this area leveled by a glacier…it’s flat, and lots of big rocks were deposited or turned up along the way. Ooo, what lies beneath…!

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Of course, I had a moment where I thought how creepy it would be to see a zombie come shuffling through the woods towards me. A Walking Dead fan never rests! It is very reminiscent of the Georgia woods where they’ve shot some of the episodes. I got lost in those north Georgia woods once, and it was a little unsettling. I was just taking a walk in the woods behind our house! My friend and I finally found a road and managed to get back home.

I managed to get turned around today, too. Hey, it’s me. I’m bad with directions. I didn’t get totally lost, because it’s hard to get lost on just 11 acres, and there are things not that far from our property. But I headed west to the edge of our property and saw the stake that marks it. Someone had built some sort of wooden structure, and I thought, “That better not be something like a fallen deer blind” (No hunting at Nutwood!), but as I got closer, I saw that our neighbors had a little path on their property, and had built a wooden bench at the end of the pathway! I thought that was pretty cool. Anyway, I went to head back, and I felt like I was going south, back towards our house, but I was actually heading east, because I soon saw the buildings of the place next to ours. I had another Walking Dead moment, because I thought, “I need Daryl Dixon to get me through these woods!” Haha! But I knew where I was then, and soon saw the green of the marsh through the trees ahead of me, and got back to the path through the marsh. It really is amazing how easy it is to get turned around and disoriented in woods like this. It gets worse as the foliage gets more lush and obscures notable landmarks like large rocks or fence posts.

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Speaking of notable, I was thrilled to find the old metal bed frame (kind of hard to see in these pictures...look closely). Neighbor Dave told us when we first moved in to look for it; apparently there was a cabin out in the woods in the past, and this little bed frame was still out there. A tree is growing up through it. When we moved in, it was maybe eight inches in diameter. See the tree, how big it’s grown! (Obscure Bobby Goldboro reference.)

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Our neighbors have boxes up for…I think bluebirds? Or maybe bats? I think bat boxes are usually higher. But it’s nice to see that they have “No Hunting” signs posted, too. We feel the same way.

 

After making a circle around the property, I came out on the other side of the yard into our back yard. (You can see what is left of the tree I worked on cleaning up earlier this week.) After a hard day of exploring in the woods (okay, it was maybe a couple of hours), it was nice to see our little oasis. Since I was feeling like a badass adventurer, I lifted some weights and punched a hole in the wall. Okay, I didn’t really do that second part.

Then I caught some rays and read Rolling Stone magazines.

The End.

Daryl Dixon: To arms! To arms!

It’s still too soon for me to write about what happened in Boston yesterday. I just...I can’t even...no words. I didn’t turn on the news today until this evening, and I’ve avoided most online articles about it. I’m trying hard to not let the rage and despair overwhelm me (Remember me writing about my intense emotions lately? Right.), and I know when I need to step back. A little time will restore my words, and I’ll write about it.

But not now. Instead, I’m just going to go total fangirl on you and write about something fun. Not the Stones this time, believe it or not!

Most people know that I’m a huge fan of “The Walking Dead.” I was hooked from the very first episode. Let me channel my Inner Stefon and say, “This show has everything. Zombies, katanas, crossbows, eyepatches, and a human plumb-bob.”

“What’s a human plumb-bob?”

“It’s that thing where a zombie dangles from a rope down a well and then gets torn in half and....”

Okay, you get the idea. I love the show. I get a little discussion thread going on Facebook every week after the show, and call it my Dead Thread. (I’m sure others have used the term, too. I don’t claim that it is original to me, although I had never seen it before.) We talk about what happened, what might happen, and what we hope will happen. It’s fun. I had never read the comics, so I have no expectations of what will be or what should be; it is impossible for me to be disappointed because the show did something different from the graphic novels.

One of the things that I love about the show is the way the characters evolve and change in response to “this sorrowful life.” Nothing is as it was; rules have changed or disappeared completely. It is not so much living as it is surviving, and sometimes, there are pretty dark decisions that have to be made. When the show started, I really dug the character of Shane. He obviously loved some people, but he took a real dark turn there—it happens in this world—and I was saddened by his necessary demise. It didn’t have to be that way, Shane, but you made your choice. This world does bad things to some people.

A more redemptive storyline has been that of Daryl Dixon, played by Norman Reedus. It just astounds me to see the way his character is evolving, and to learn more about him. Daryl is probably the breakout character on the show, with a legion of fans vowing to riot in the streets if they kill him off. We understand that no one is safe, but NOT DARYL. Do you hear me, WD writers? NOT DARYL. Anyway, it’s a fascinating character study: abused as a child, looking up to his older brother Merle but kind of despising him at the same time, a true loner yet still wanting and needing to be part of the group, loyal to a fault. Daryl never gave up on searching for Sophia...maybe because he identified with the lost child and always hoped that someone would save him when he was a child? I don’t know, but he has proven to be a complex and fascinating character, and Norman plays him perfectly.

I had never heard of Norman Reedus before this show, so I was interested to find out that he’s apparently a pretty cool person in his own right. Artist, sculptor, photographer, by all accounts a super nice guy and kind to his fans. And he has a cat...a black one! Sheeba approves! I had heard of the Boondock Saints movies but didn’t know he was in them and I’ve never seen them. I just got them and am looking forward to watching. Anyway, nice to find out that he’s a good guy in real life, and not a douche.

I read a lot of stuff about the show, including interviews with the cast. He said in one interview that the writers were planning on taking Daryl another way. They wanted him to start taking drugs after Merle was split from the group, and he said no, he didn’t want to play him that way. Daryl loved his big brother, but he didn’t want to be like him. He wanted to grow up and be the person that others could rely on. Good instincts, Norman, because it makes Daryl all the more compelling. We’re rooting for this guy to be okay, because he’s really trying to be a better person. I really just can’t say enough about how much I like this character.

He also seems to be a good sport about the numerous fan sites that have cropped up for Daryl and for himself. His arms are absolutely adored. There are a LOT of women who are crushing on him in a major way, and his Twitter feed can be hilarious, with everything from pleas for him to follow them to marriage proposals. Some take a more “subtle” route...a friend and I are still laughing about someone demanding that he fuck them in the face. I’m sure he’ll get right on that!

Yes, I’m a fangirl. I agree that he has nice arms, but what I really love is how he’s made the character into someone that is...well, I think I’d  have to say “beloved.” I don’t think I’ve ever felt so invested in a character, or so connected to a group of characters. “ER” might have been the closest one—I bawled like a baby when Anthony Edwards’ Dr. Greene died—but that doesn’t even come close to how I feel about these characters. I’ve gasped, I’ve yelled, I’ve cried, and I’ve sat there in horror with my hand over my mouth...not because of the creepy zombies, but because these characters that I’ve come to love are in danger. One of the most devastating moments of the past season for me was when Daryl found his brother...reanimated. I said, “Nooooo, oh Daryl, nooooo,” and cried like a little girl. Well-played, sir, well-played.

So...can you tell I’m going through withdrawals after the end of the season? October is a long way away.