Are you ready to pay the high cost of staying alive? Are you ready for the next episode of the Z-Realm podcast? Are you ready for some
football?
AMC's The Walking Dead has returned for the second half of season 5 with episode 9 "
What Happened and What's Going On". This was a real downer of an episode, with big changes coming to the cast and big tears coming from our faces. We say goodbye to a fan-favorite who goes out with a heroic flourish and a vicious battle. We remember other fallen cast members and wonder about what is to come. Let us know what you thought of the show and of the episode by sending email to
mail@z-realm.com or by posting a message on our
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In addition to referencing the stuff Tyrese has experienced after the zombie apocalypse, the hallucinated radio broadcasts seem to be very strongly based on BBC reporting about the genocide in Rwanda, among similar events. (I wasn't the only one to pick up on that, this thread on the Reddit community for the show has some very interesting discussion.) The traumatized survivors of that genocide are also referred to locally as the walking dead, and radio, in addition to being a medium for international reporting, was used to incite hatred and violence:
ReplyDelete‘I listened to RTLMC’, said a survivor, ‘because if you were mentioned over the airways, you were sure to be carted off a short time later by the interahamwe. You knew you had to change your address at once.”
I wonder whether Tyrese's father's habit of listening to the radio came from being in proximity to some event where keeping the radio on had more direct implications for survival, something more than just a general belief that it was important to stay aware of terrible things happening elsewhere in the world. Race has some impact on how that's framed, too. At least, I feel like it wouldn't have the same connotations if Rick (for example) told a similar story.
The show does a lot of exploring how the objectives of preserving one's humanity and preserving one's life can be pitted against eachother (e.g. the denizens of Terminus, how people can become "survival animals"). But this episode does a lot of looking at the common ground.
It was a strong episode. I was a bit of a wreck at the end of it.