This episode, “Save the Last One”, set me on some odd mental paths this week.
I thought about a house I’d passed the other day in East Falls, on my way to the rail station from work. I’d thought, “That would be a good house for the zombie uprising.”
East Falls is a hilly area as it is. This house, though, was on a little hill among the hills, with a steep staircase and a stone wall around it. Imminently defensible against the zombie hoards, so long as you have enough supplies.
The actual house I want, the one we looked at this summer and, despite it’s problems, I’d declared, “This is our house. I don’t want to look at any more”….well. That house isn’t in such a great position. It’s on flat land. And it’s next to a cemetery. But, I’m absolutely certain. That’s our house.
I thought about a book called Where There is No Doctor, which I had during my ten minutes of the Peace Corp twelve years ago. That book was like WebMD on paper, but there were only two outcomes: you went to the country doctor or you died where you were. It was a horrifying book to have. But, I know the symptoms of cholera inside and out now. (And I know I didn’t have it, BTW – it was giardia).
I thought, inexplicably, of my 6th grade boyfriend, Manny Rodriguez. Who wasn’t really my boyfriend – just a boy in my class who’d asked me to a school dance. The next day he called and asked if I wanted to go steady. Shocked, I stammered, “My mom needs me to help her,” and slammed down the phone. Then I started crying. For all my wants toward being a grown up, suddenly, I wanted to be a little girl for a few minutes longer. My mom, bless her, had said, “If you want, you can tell him I said ‘no’.” I told him she said no.
That’s the thing about The Walking Dead as a TV show and as a comic book: it makes me think of these things. These mundane, stupid things that make up our human lives. A house. A book. A 6th grader who’d invited me to a dance 23 years ago.
And then it shows how one decision can render all of that meaningless.
Shane. Oh, Shane. You started the ep with the most dramatic head shaving ever. For a few minutes, I thought, and even said to John, that the writers had made you the most sympathetic character in the show.
And then you had to do that to Otis.
I still get it. I still get that it’s really for Lori. But, I can also see that you’re on an irredeemable path. Otis is going to eat away at you.
That’s really the power of The Walking Dead. Everyone in it is so effing human. It’s easy to know what they’re going to feel because, in some way, we’ve all felt it. Even if we weren’t surrounded by an army of the undead, we know the feeling of disappinted ourselves and disappointing the ones we love.
Related Stuff:
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
