Talking Big

It presents itself to us as an epic. We know this from the trailer & from the reputation of the video game. We’re going to see a journey (backpacks filled) of heroes, and the fate of all humanity dangles. We are situated in the enclosed space of the Quarantine Zone (QZ) in Boston. Here we have a sense of what can happen. This is against the open space of possibility beyond the wall where few have lately been (it’s punishable by death to go) and where we have not yet seen what might happen. We’ve seen the zombies of twenty years ago. But there are whispers. Threats worse than zombies. Cannibals? Slavers? One of the unknowns is the shape of the future. Recall the devastation of “Revelations,” the mid-season finale of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica. I’d put less trust in hope.

Have we been trained to expect a Negan (or at least a Governor or a Gregory) to get some of the best lines and linger as a main villain? The Walking Dead presented numerous moral dilemmas that involved mercy and the best way to build leadership for a society. How will this show match that depth? In this new pilot, we’re shown Ellie acting with an abundance of agency (but a lack of context) when she stabs the border soldier who is likely to let them off via negotiation. She may be overly motivated by the imminent red signal (we viewers know it’s coming) of the device that detects her fungal zombie infection. She had the greater leverage of surprise that such a young person would have a weapon and aggressively use it. Likewise, Joel’s violent beating of the man with whom he’d had a working black market relationship is revenge for the man’s abuse of his own leverage.

There are possibilities here. A good start.

Also:

Time. Watches. Clocks. Alarm clocks. Oven timers. The time to full infection chart in hours. “Your watch is broken.” The watch. His watch.