The Boob Tube Review: The Walking Dead, Season 2, Ep. 10

In the Boob Tube Review, we discuss the television we've been watching. There are usually plenty of spoilers, so beware:

Well, that was unpleasant. I literally grimaced the entire episode. I couldn't even properly enjoy Shane and Rick punching each other. All the yelling and Rick and Shane fighting over who protects Lori and boy-sheriff better is just so damn exhausting. Especially when it's the same fight week in and week out. Everybody is still alive so just fucking relax, find something new to fight about, like Lori did this week.

Apparently it's not just the writers who are misogynistic d-bags who think women are just for birthin' and brow-furrowin' but first-lady Lori, too. She was all up in Andrea's grill for keeping watch because of zombies instead of helping her and the other walking uterus' wash Rick's shirts.

I dunno... This seems a little far-fetched, no? Like with Hershel relieved of the status of resident fanatic they needed someone else to fill his big ol' galoshes so the writers just put the cast's head-shots up on a wall and threw a dart. Either that or it's going to come out that the farm house is somehow a portal back to the 1850s and if you spend too much time back there with the widow Otis and the spawn of Hershel you're bound to adopt some of their archaic ideas.

Passing off the sexism on the show as something that is now bred by the woman characters is not going to convince me that the writers haven't pulled some deeply misogynistic shit. It's a "see they want to do laundry and clean and cook and never leave the farm house" type deal. Except, you're writing them that way, geniuses! This move with Lori reeks of covering their own asses while trying to make her into a villain. We saw it last week with that Lady MacBeth scene at the end when she whispered to Rick about Shane. That would work as a Lady M type thing except for the fact that Shane is dangerous. He does see her as 'his'. He tried to rape her for fuck's sake. There is no treachery afoot where Lori is concerned, she is acting for the good of the entire group not to mention herself and her kid. That scene made me like her more than I ever have before. The writers have shown already that they can't handle gender issues (*cough* Lori's "abortion" *cough*) so they should really just move on and start writing the women characters as people.

I will say that Lori and Andrea's conversation did raise some questions for me about their laundry situation. Like why do they need an extra person to help with it? Aren't five laundresses enough for the group? And what laundry are they doing anyway? Is it always linens? Maybe it's time to switch to paper napkins in that case? And everyone is always wearing the same ratty clothes. Do they have an afternoon where they all strip down and wear some of Otis' old overalls while the women get sudsy with their unmentionables? Where are all of Otis' overalls?

Also, is there something that I missed where the teenager threatened everyone (i.e. Lori and boy-sheriff) and so that's why he can't just stay with them? Because I get that they couldn't go letting the other dudes shack up with them, I mean I saw True Blood, that one guy is bad news Cajun accent or not, but abandoning a peach-fuzzed-out tween (who went to school with Maggie, whaaa?) alone on one of the levels of Left 4 Dead seems more cruel than the situation calls for. Especially when there are actually walkers straggling about. Not to mention jamming him in the trunk, what is this Jawbreaker? (Hey-o!) Not that the kid wasn't better off than listening to Rick go full Hershel and prattle about long winters.

I will say that the two shots of the zombie lopping through the endless field was particularly poignant and I wish that the show was more like that – a tense mediation on life and balance and survival, not about chest beating and pissing contests over the most unsatisfying female character known to what's left of humankind.

And then to top off the 40 minutes of shit-sundae, we got served another pro-life, "women can't have agency over themselves" cherry on top. Another day, another suicide watch over someone who shockingly doesn't find the zombie apocalypse the kind of place she wants to continue living in. No shit. Not to mention if you're having to live with this sorry crew and their Groundhog Day-like dedication to the same infuriating argument argument. Guys, you're all pretty good at protecting Lori. Put them away now. Man, I'd open a vein too, Beth. I was halfway there just watching this episode.

Did like that one zombie's sweater, though. – Alex Snider

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