a few thoughts on ‘The Walking Dead’: “Wildfire”

Hey, I finally didn’t hate an episode of this show. I actually kinda liked it, in fact. Here we have, finally, some genuine emotional realism to how people are coping -- or not coping, really -- with the world going to hell around them. Laurie Holden refusing to leave her dead sister’s side, for instance, and then being the one to put the bullet through her zombified brain... that was all emotionally plausible and nicely performed by the actress. I have a real fondness for Jeffrey DeMunn as an actor, and I loved his little bit about how the sisters were the only real human connection he’d had since his wife died. It’s a shame, however, that we never really got to see them interacting as characters prior to this in some way that could have let us see that. I feel like he’s been mostly wasted on this show so far.

Nice stuff, too, with the guy who was bit and was hiding it, and the arguments that erupted over how the rest of the survivors should deal with him. In these bits, at last, came a sense of the show acknowledging that yes, some people are assholes and those assholes aren’t suddenly going to turn nice just because the apocalypse arrived, but without seeming to condone or at least gleefully revel in the assholes being assholes. I mean, there was some nuance, finally, some shades of gray in everything, not cartoonish black-and-white-ness. The sheriff’s wife telling the sheriff that he and the deputy were both a little right and both a little wrong in their actions leading up to the walked attack was just perfect: because there’s no real way to know what the best thing to do is in a situation like this, with no precedent.