Terminus

OK, Walking Dead, I am done with you.  You jumped the shark Sunday night.

Nine-year-old blond girl murders her seven-year-old blond sister.

Ergo, forty-five-year-old woman murders nine-year-old blond girl.

Really?

Really?

Yes, you’ve been desensitizing me to extreme violence for three years now.  Yes, I know they’re “undead,” but how many times can one see a human being’s skull punctured and shattered by bullets, knives, hammers, boots and not be affected on some level, even a subconscious one? 

How long can we wallow in man’s inhumanity to man with no glimpse of hope or transcendence before we are incapable of feeling hope or seeking transcendence?

Over four seasons, forty-plus episodes, forty or fifty characters have come and gone, and only once or twice do we see one – one! – character thumb a Bible verse.  No one prays.  No one calls on Jesus Christ.  No one calls on God.

It’s long been a pet theory of mine that Walking Dead is basically a show about hell.  All the characters have died and wind up in hell without a memory of their past earthly life, and are now paying for their willing sins.  There is no morality in their world save for a utilitarian, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest might-makes-right type. 

But as I become firmly entrenched in middle age, with, perhaps, more years behind me than ahead of me, I become convinced, stronger and stronger every day, that one has to make best use of one’s hours remaining.  It’s not necessarily a religious argument.  It’s a purely practical one.  You gotta guard what enters into your mind, what passes through those gates of eyes and ears, because, like food you ingest and your body uses to build itself up, that stuff entering your mind becomes a part of you.  Consciously, subconsciously, whatever.  Consider this very, very profound thought: You can’t unsee something.

So, Walking Dead, though you initially provided some thrills, some interesting characters, some food-for-thought, you’ve jumped the shark with the endless and incessant gore porn, nihilism, and shock for shock’s sake. 

Murdering a nine-year-old girl.

Goodbye.