![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardCaught up on last week's Walking Dead in preparation for tonight's season finale. Gosh, Rick and Shane's manpain interests me NOT AT ALL. Also, I am relatively certain that this is the first time when I have ever used the word "manpain," so that's saying something.
However, this show has some really, really gorgeous moments -- I didn't realize the music was done by Bear McCreary before, randomly, I don't know why! Andrea and Amy at the beginning was just heartbreaking; I was sitting as far away from my computer as I could manage, and tense as anything during that scene; it was telegraphed, but it was gorgeous. That road montage was also lovely, one of the show's really beautiful, really brilliant moments.
My initial reaction to CDC dude was, "Oh look, another white guy with manpain," (look, I didn't even know I had these tension points, but apparently!), but the framing of his introduction was really good -- the camera panning back when he was at his computer screen, that was lovely. On the other hand, his sudden interruption/introduction was really abrupt, which kind of threw me for a moment. I might have been less surprised if they'd introduced him at the beginning of an episode, the way they did Desmond in Lost S2. The shot at the end, with the doors of the CDC opening and Our Heroes framed by light, was lovely.
My biggest bone of contention with this show is, as always, the underuse of the female characters. I brought this up to my roommate -- "I want to see women with guns!" -- and she looked at me and went, "But they don't have enough guns, that's why they went to the city." "Sure, but they could have made one of the characters a female cop or something." "Yeah, they could have," she said, and gave me crazy eyes. The show's made a definite point of actually having characters of color, which is nice (last episode was such a shocker; I thought I'd walked into someone's zombie fanfic AU, it was that unexpected in mainstream media), but I really wish that they'd had a woman as one of the main action heroes, or really, defined in any other role besides mother, wife, or sister. I have never, ever wanted to genderswitch one of the main characters in a show as badly as I want to do this one. I would have loved to see Shane as a woman, or Rick as a woman. My general comment whenever a new character is introduced is, "Could have been a woman!" My roommate is sort of sick of these comments. (Sure, The Walking Dead is based off source material: I give you BSG as evidence that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that you can't genderswitch a main character.) It would have been so cool if Rick or Shane had been a woman and we'd had canon lesbians, although it's more likely that they probably would have genderswapped Lori, too, in that case. Which, you know, let's have a guy in an unconventional role! It would be awesome. Obviously it is now too late to hope. Perhaps they shall write in a kickass woman cop or soldier or something in the second season.
...gods, there could be so much beautiful tension of Rick or Shane was a woman. Really. Andrea's lovely, it's hard to get a read on Lori because the show makes very little effort to present her as anything other than Rick's wife or Shane's lover or the mothering one, and I don't even know the other women's names. (Part of the reason for that, however, comes from the fact that it's really hard for me to catch a character's name, though.) I mean, Darryl's more or less resigned to taking orders from Rick, although he bucks the authority sometimes, but can you imagine him having to orders from a woman? Or Darryl trying to wrap his head around the fact that Lori's missing spouse is actually a woman? Or Rick trying to interact with a woman he considers might be on equal authority as him? And girl!Shane and Lori having an affair? Rick having to deal with that knowledge? (Not that that particular reveal has come yet. I still predict that Rick is going to find out and Shane is going to die nobly saving his life.)
I'm a little distraught by how often my remark of, "I really wish they'd made one of the main characters a woman," is dismissed as being ~craaaaaazeeeeee. Dude, even on the getting ratings from the male 18-35 demographic level, women in uniform with guns shooting zombies are sexy, yes? Or at least one would think. *sniff*
ETA: My roommate points out that if Shane was a woman, the network would probably be going with the psycho lesbian trope, so there's that caveat. But on the other hand, I think that if they'd written the character as female, she'd be written differently than how they've written Shane right now. Rick, however, would still make a lovely woman.
However, this show has some really, really gorgeous moments -- I didn't realize the music was done by Bear McCreary before, randomly, I don't know why! Andrea and Amy at the beginning was just heartbreaking; I was sitting as far away from my computer as I could manage, and tense as anything during that scene; it was telegraphed, but it was gorgeous. That road montage was also lovely, one of the show's really beautiful, really brilliant moments.
My initial reaction to CDC dude was, "Oh look, another white guy with manpain," (look, I didn't even know I had these tension points, but apparently!), but the framing of his introduction was really good -- the camera panning back when he was at his computer screen, that was lovely. On the other hand, his sudden interruption/introduction was really abrupt, which kind of threw me for a moment. I might have been less surprised if they'd introduced him at the beginning of an episode, the way they did Desmond in Lost S2. The shot at the end, with the doors of the CDC opening and Our Heroes framed by light, was lovely.
My biggest bone of contention with this show is, as always, the underuse of the female characters. I brought this up to my roommate -- "I want to see women with guns!" -- and she looked at me and went, "But they don't have enough guns, that's why they went to the city." "Sure, but they could have made one of the characters a female cop or something." "Yeah, they could have," she said, and gave me crazy eyes. The show's made a definite point of actually having characters of color, which is nice (last episode was such a shocker; I thought I'd walked into someone's zombie fanfic AU, it was that unexpected in mainstream media), but I really wish that they'd had a woman as one of the main action heroes, or really, defined in any other role besides mother, wife, or sister. I have never, ever wanted to genderswitch one of the main characters in a show as badly as I want to do this one. I would have loved to see Shane as a woman, or Rick as a woman. My general comment whenever a new character is introduced is, "Could have been a woman!" My roommate is sort of sick of these comments. (Sure, The Walking Dead is based off source material: I give you BSG as evidence that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that you can't genderswitch a main character.) It would have been so cool if Rick or Shane had been a woman and we'd had canon lesbians, although it's more likely that they probably would have genderswapped Lori, too, in that case. Which, you know, let's have a guy in an unconventional role! It would be awesome. Obviously it is now too late to hope. Perhaps they shall write in a kickass woman cop or soldier or something in the second season.
...gods, there could be so much beautiful tension of Rick or Shane was a woman. Really. Andrea's lovely, it's hard to get a read on Lori because the show makes very little effort to present her as anything other than Rick's wife or Shane's lover or the mothering one, and I don't even know the other women's names. (Part of the reason for that, however, comes from the fact that it's really hard for me to catch a character's name, though.) I mean, Darryl's more or less resigned to taking orders from Rick, although he bucks the authority sometimes, but can you imagine him having to orders from a woman? Or Darryl trying to wrap his head around the fact that Lori's missing spouse is actually a woman? Or Rick trying to interact with a woman he considers might be on equal authority as him? And girl!Shane and Lori having an affair? Rick having to deal with that knowledge? (Not that that particular reveal has come yet. I still predict that Rick is going to find out and Shane is going to die nobly saving his life.)
I'm a little distraught by how often my remark of, "I really wish they'd made one of the main characters a woman," is dismissed as being ~craaaaaazeeeeee. Dude, even on the getting ratings from the male 18-35 demographic level, women in uniform with guns shooting zombies are sexy, yes? Or at least one would think. *sniff*
ETA: My roommate points out that if Shane was a woman, the network would probably be going with the psycho lesbian trope, so there's that caveat. But on the other hand, I think that if they'd written the character as female, she'd be written differently than how they've written Shane right now. Rick, however, would still make a lovely woman.