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handful_ofdustThere's much wailing and gnashing of teeth this morning all through The Walking Dead fandom because of something which happened last night on the mid-season finale: just at the very moment it seemed as though Beth Greene (Emily Kinney) was finally getting out of Grady Memorial hospital in Atlanta, another weird bottle community run by a battlefield sociopath, she made a last-minute decision which resulted in her own death, but also took said sociopath down with her and freed a kid she considered her friend. Now everyone is yelling about inherent narrative sexism, citing the previous deaths of Lori, Andrea and Lilly Chambler, all of which I personally consider debatable.
For example: Lori might or might not have died in childbirth anyhow, but she was the one who opted to go for a caesarian knowing it would probably kill her in order to see Judith into the world; people's objections to Andrea's death mainly stem from the fact that Andrea-in-the-comics is both awesome and still alive, but I'm not sure they were ever meant to be the same character, and her decision to spend at least part of her energy comforting a dying friend as well as trying to escape her chair is human, humane, admirable. It annoyed me at the time it happened that Lilly apparently wandered off and got killed by zombies immediately after killing the Governor, especially since it took place off-screen--Tara tells us about it--and there are at least two examples of mothers who've survived the deaths of their offspring without effectively killing themselves in our main cast (Carol and Michonne), but we also have the example of Jackie from Season One, who opted to stay and die at the CDC when it exploded. Sometimes, for whatever reason, people choose not to live on, and that is a valid notion, with agency attached.
TL;DR: The Walking Dead is a show where people die, often after lots of great character development. It's happened to guys I liked as well. So no, I don't think it was all about "manpain" for Daryl Dixon, let alone for Rick Grimes--there's a reason they showed every-damn-body reacting the Beth's death, and that the person who got the single biggest reaction was her sister Maggie, her closest remaining relative. I don't think it was a betrayal of Beth's arc, either: she got stronger and stronger, until she could become reckless with her own safety in the service of what she considered a just cause. Do I wish she'd stuck those scissors in Officer Dawn's neck instead of her shoulder? Hell yeah, but I think that's where the was aiming for. Sometimes shit happens.
In a large part, you could say the whole situation is far more either Tyreese's fault for not wanting to go with Rick's original sneak-in-and-kill-'em-all-real-quiet plan, or Rick's for running Officer Lamson down and then killing him because he annoyed him, since if they'd had even one more person to swap--broken back or not--then Dawn wouldn't have been able to claim she had the right to keep Noah, Beth's friend. But really, what depresses me more is that not one of the other "patients" trapped in Grady Memorial opted to leave with Team Rick, afterwards. They stayed, ensnared in this crap-ass bullshit wage slavery system, because they were more afraid of what was outside: walkers, plus people like Team Rick. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Still, this IS the zombpocalypse, bunkies. Things were never gonna work out like we wanted them to.
For example: Lori might or might not have died in childbirth anyhow, but she was the one who opted to go for a caesarian knowing it would probably kill her in order to see Judith into the world; people's objections to Andrea's death mainly stem from the fact that Andrea-in-the-comics is both awesome and still alive, but I'm not sure they were ever meant to be the same character, and her decision to spend at least part of her energy comforting a dying friend as well as trying to escape her chair is human, humane, admirable. It annoyed me at the time it happened that Lilly apparently wandered off and got killed by zombies immediately after killing the Governor, especially since it took place off-screen--Tara tells us about it--and there are at least two examples of mothers who've survived the deaths of their offspring without effectively killing themselves in our main cast (Carol and Michonne), but we also have the example of Jackie from Season One, who opted to stay and die at the CDC when it exploded. Sometimes, for whatever reason, people choose not to live on, and that is a valid notion, with agency attached.
TL;DR: The Walking Dead is a show where people die, often after lots of great character development. It's happened to guys I liked as well. So no, I don't think it was all about "manpain" for Daryl Dixon, let alone for Rick Grimes--there's a reason they showed every-damn-body reacting the Beth's death, and that the person who got the single biggest reaction was her sister Maggie, her closest remaining relative. I don't think it was a betrayal of Beth's arc, either: she got stronger and stronger, until she could become reckless with her own safety in the service of what she considered a just cause. Do I wish she'd stuck those scissors in Officer Dawn's neck instead of her shoulder? Hell yeah, but I think that's where the was aiming for. Sometimes shit happens.
In a large part, you could say the whole situation is far more either Tyreese's fault for not wanting to go with Rick's original sneak-in-and-kill-'em-all-real-quiet plan, or Rick's for running Officer Lamson down and then killing him because he annoyed him, since if they'd had even one more person to swap--broken back or not--then Dawn wouldn't have been able to claim she had the right to keep Noah, Beth's friend. But really, what depresses me more is that not one of the other "patients" trapped in Grady Memorial opted to leave with Team Rick, afterwards. They stayed, ensnared in this crap-ass bullshit wage slavery system, because they were more afraid of what was outside: walkers, plus people like Team Rick. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Still, this IS the zombpocalypse, bunkies. Things were never gonna work out like we wanted them to.
