Lori Grimes: An Obituary

All right, so...

There's been this thing all along where fans of The Walking Dead (TV show version) have had intense negative feelings about Lori Grimes, as played by Sarah Wayne Callies. I myself am predisposed to like anybody Callies plays, because she was the interestingly neurotic, surprisingly strong and conflicted love interest on Prison Break, but I get that if you're going into it blind then you may very well be annoyed by Lori, because literally the first thing you hear is her husband Rick complaining about how he doesn't know what she wants, damn it, and she just won't tell him, because she thinks he should already know. To which Shane his partner laughs and shoots the "ladies, they're just like that" shit with him awhile, before Rick gets shot/comatose and then wakes up in hopital some months later, only to realize that the world has come to an end.

Rick looks for Lori and their son Carl (who also gets a lot of hate, mainly because he spent the entirety of Season Two with people telling him to "Stay in the house, Carl!", after which he'd promptly run off and be anywhere else). Eventually, he finds them. The good part is that they're with a group Shane runs; the bad part is that Lori, thinking Rick was dead, has done the not exactly laudatory but understandably practical thing of letting herself go along to get along when Shane, who's either always wanted her or just always wanted whatever his BFF Rick has, made a move on her. When Rick reappears, Lori goes back to him and Shane "agrees" not t mention it, but almost immediately starts regretting that call. In Season Two, we find out that Lori's pregnant, probably with Shane's child, and this becomes the motor which drives Shane's gradual decision to kill the man he still thinks of as his "brother" and take his stuff/family; Rick kills him instead, in front of Carl, and becomes the Ricktator, mainly on a platform of "I killed my best damn friend for you people!" I still think a threesome would have solved most of this, or at least softened it, but even AMC isn't willing to go that far, as yet, in terms of deviation from Robert Kirkman's original comic series.

Also in Season Two, people started hating Lori because she held on to old gender norms—she and Andrea once had a massive fight about why women should make things "normal" for their men, especially in times like these, which meant concentrating on food prep and laundry rather than, say. shooting zombies. This was particularly weird because Lori was entirely capable of killing zombies, given the chance. But no, she wasn't perfect, especially under pressure. She wasn't a good role model. The odd thing is, because Callies was playing her—projecting her usual secretive, flinty brand of intelligence, constantly tallying what she has with what she's lost and being frankly willing to probably sacrifice every other MF before she was willing to let any of it be directly jeopardized—I think she would have scorned to take that slot at all: She was just her, not a stand-in for every other woman in the world, or every notion of what makes for "good" or "bad" female behaviour. (Andrea, I've noticed, is now getting the lion's share of that action, probably because she's currently standing next to Michonne, who might as well be the Bride crossed with Pam Grier.) Yes, she used people, especially Rick and Shane, who she sometimes even played off against each other; yes, she wanted it all, especially Rick and Shane, even though I'll note she wasn't willing to lie to Shane in the ways that he required in order to go along with her plans. Always, with Lori, there was this sense of how honest she could allow herself to be at any given time, and I think she usually horribly miscalculated it—but she consistently thought of herself as "civilized", compared to the people around her. And in hindsight, that was her worst mistake.

At the beginning of Season Three, Lori was massively pregnant and things were as bad as they'd ever been. Rick opted to try and occupy a prison, which seemed like the safest possible place for miles around. It wasn't. The episode before last, Lori mentioned to Dr Herschel that she was sure she'd die in childbirth, and would do anything to make sure her baby didn't die too (because everybody's infected, so if the baby died then hey presto, baby zombie). Last episode, she managed to nurse Herschel, who'd been bitten and had his leg amputated battlefield-style, through his fever without him turning; she actually gave him mouth-to-mouth at one point, and got the barest of shoulder-pats from bruised Rick, who could barely stand to look at her. And this last episode...this last episode, Lori went into labour during a zombie attack, knew it was going bad, so she told her friend Maggie to cut along her old caesarian scar. Then she gave Carl a last pep-talk, and resigned herself, knowing one of them was going to have to shoot her afterwards. (If she hoped it wouldn't be Carl, BTW, she would've been disappointed.)

(People see Lori's childbirth death—presaged by conversations in which she revealed that Carl was born by c-section, under considerably better circumstances—as another narrative betrayal, another predictable trope. I, however, will point out that although Lori fought Andrea on her belief that people should be allowed to kill themselves if they want to (abnormal! Not good! Disturbs the men!), Lori is also the person who once said candidly to Rick that she couldn't see any future for all of them that didn't end horribly. Lori is, in fact, a person who considered suicide previously, and who knew that carrying the baby to term not only might but probably would end in her own death. That she opted to do it anyways looks, in hindsight, like a way to commit suicide and look “noble” doing it, as much as anything else. Complicated, like I said.)

One way or the other, what Lori did and said in those last few minutes—which I won't reproduce here, because I don't feel like weeping—was some amazing last-minute emotional intelligence, IMHO. It made up for a lot. But as I've stressed already, I loved Lori the whole time, because even if every other fan of this show thinks they're perfect, I damn well know I'm not. And I'm sick of "complicated" and "difficult" being somehow conflated with "evil", particularly if it comes attached to a fictional vagina and happens to be standing next to someone most fans think is cooler.

Rick, who didn't get to say goodbye, ended that episode looking as though he was going to puke up his guilt, literally rolling on the ground next to his shell-shocked son. So Carl is the functional grown-up at this moment, standing in as protector of his newborn little sister, and the dead are still outside, flocking; the Governor's maybe ten miles thataway, waiting to go off like a bomb. This is just the sort of show The Walking Dead is, which makes adding reflexive misogyny into the mix seem even more stupid than usual.

Frankly, it sort of surprises me that I find I care so much about this. In a way, it's good that I'm starting to see people saying: "Stupid show made me care about Lori Grimes..." But then I just wonder what was "wrong" with me, that I cared about her all along.

And then there's the whole phenomenon of fan-hate for TV wives in general. Like I noted on FB, Entertainment Weekly recently did an entire freakin' article about it. I don't think Carmela Soprano is "evil" to use money as the only way she has to penalize Tony Soprano's bad behaviour; I don't think Skyler White is "wrong" or "annoying" for recognizing that her husband Walter has either become or always was a functional sociopath incapable of telling the truth about anything not involving meth cooking. I can't think Betty Draper's spectacular fucked-up-titude is better or worse than Don Draper's, you know? I don't understand why I apparently should.

Nor do I understand why it's female fans, increasingly, who are telling me this received-wisdom crap. Steve points out that any one of these focal male characters, flipped, would be ten times as apparently negative in their female versions—but while I agree, I have to note that at least those characters would at least be active. The innate problem with the "wife" role, in anything, is that it's negative by default—literally supportive, and if you're not perceived as being "supportive" enough, you're a bitch from hell. It's the most thankless fucking role in the world. You get blamed for what you do and don't do, for what you allow and don't allow to be done. No man would ever allow himself to be stuck in that slot, any more than he would allow himself to not have a person like that standing next to him, for contrast. The shitty aftertaste of heteronormativity in mainstream media at work once again, I guess.

Over the weekend, I got unexpectedly complimented for my willingness to not disconnect with sources (specifically vis a vis Prometheus, I think), and replied: "Well, I guess it's true that as long as I feel I can get something out of a given story, I'll generally stay with the one who brung me." For my money, The Walking Dead hasn't done anything yet that's ever catapulted me out of my suspension of disbelief, and I also haven't succumbed to boredom when "nothing happens" for a couple of episodes, as some people did in Season Two. Then again, Season Three hasn't really had a lot of "nothing happened" episodes, thus far...

But here's the thing, overall: You definitely had to work, with Lori Grimes. And a lot of people just don't like that.

Says sovay: I suppose you could chalk it up to native contrariness, but I'm more inclined to think it's simply that you saw, in Lori, an interesting character and because that's a minority position in the face of mainstream judgment which sounds like it doesn't have much more than misogyny to back it up, unsurprisingly feel strongly about arguing.

I am fairly certain I've winnowed interesting characters or situations from source material that doesn't always match them. This is what Greer keeps referring to as my transformative vision: what she really means is that she doesn't think the original material is anywhere near as worthy as the way I see it, which is why I keep telling her that I can't strike sparks from a book or a film unless there's something to catch fire there in the first place. Which is kind of a different conversation, but probably related. There are ways in which this all goes back to the sympathetic character argument ("I just couldn't like them") and I never have any answer to that beyond, er, your mileage?

To which I reply: “Your mileage” is often the only sane answer, in these cases. That's my genuine opinion.

And leave it at that.

Fanfic on My Own Fic(tion)

Started entering and organizing the "Trap-Weed" prequel notes I took over WFC, finally. The result, thus far:

“Found somethin' for ye below-decks, Cap'n,” the bo'sun told him, with a wink. And thus, with little warning, Solomon Rusk's last great set of troubles began.

“Something” soon proved a man in rags, enchained, with a possessed saint's face and a cough that racked him stem to stern, shaking him like a high wind. He attempted to rise as Rusk pushed the door to, barely making his feet before falling back again, panting slightly. This creature's feverish eyes were the same shade as silver pennies bleached almost to pale green by tarnish; they so well caught the light, Rusk all but thought he might be able to see himself mirrored in them, if he only moved closer—and wanted to suddenly, the impulse deep-set, like a bone in the throat.

“You put me at a...disadvantage, sir,” the man managed, after two attempts at speech, both equal-exhausting. To which Rusk replied: “You'd seem to've done that yourself, already, given where I find ye.” Continuing, as the man arched a fine-cut brow. “We've searched this whole brig for cargo and found nothing, thus far, t' warrant our investment. Would you be its full extent, in terms of interest?”

“Having not seen the rest of this ship since they...brought me aboard, I...couldn't possibly say.”

“Well. And what am I t'do with you, exactly, if y'are?”

The man snorted, setting himself off once more. Then snapped back nonetheless, far too haughtily for any ordinary prisoner: “As you please, I'm sure! I obviously can't prevent it.”

A bit too sharp to count as showing proper respect, though since Rusk could only assume the poor bastard was in pain, he forgave it. Yet here the Captain felt his own eyebrows hike, fast as sparks striking from cold flint, and peered closer, suddenly aware how that shadow the man was trying to hide beneath his close-held blanket was, in fact, the rim of a collar—cold iron over puffed scar, with portions of it adhering yet to the sadly tormented skin below.

The man did not seem to notice; he was deep-engaged in trying not to cough again, pale face flush-blotched with sudden, indignitous scarlet. But he looked up against nonetheless, when Rusk told him: “You interest me, 'sir'.”

“I...do not mean to,” the man replied, apparently regaining some sense of caution, too late by far.

“No more you do, I'm certain, and yet—maybe I ain't wasted me men's time s'much after all in playing out this lark, now I recognize yer true nature. For any prize that comes wi' a man-witch already netted in its hold is one well worth the taking, in my estimation.”

Obviously quick-touched by Rusk's implication, the man perhaps wished to say more—opened his prim mouth to, at least, baring teeth like a cat, a harbinger of equal-sharp words to come. But even as passion undid his better judgement, sheer sickness overtook the rest; those pale eyes rolled up and he fell forwards, into Rusk's arms.

Frail, and slim, and steely. He smelled ill after his captivity, but Rusk wondered what lay under that. His cabin had a tub, liberated from some Moghul vessel and sold in the market-place on Veritay Island, back near where his kin had slave-holdings; to fill it with hot water would take more effort than simply sluicing the man with a bucket of brine, but it wasn't as though Rusk had so much to do he could entirely discard the notion of entertainment.

So: "Bo'sun," he called back, through the open door. "Them as takes the articles may come along; kill the rest. And make ready t' cast off sharpish, in good time, that the Bitch not get restless."

"Yes, Cap'n."

With that, Rusk hoisted his newest possession, and left--a bad choice, as it turned out, but he wasn't to know. Nor would that knowledge have stopped him, anyhow.

For we must do as our natures dictate, seeing we cannot do otherwise, he would think, later. And conjure up the bitter memory of a smile on lost lips, so ghostly now, he barely remembered what such an expression should feel like.