Why One Week of Television Almost Made me Change Professions: The Shocking Deaths of The Walking Dead, Scandal, & The Good Wife

I’m only now recovering from the television programming that ran from March 16^th to March 23^rd and even now I’m not quite sure I can articulate how much the three episodes of my favorite television programs unnerved me.  If you’re not caught up to at least those dates, do not read on [SPOILERS]. 

A weekly dose of death is somewhat expected on The Walking Dead.  And violence is not exactly uncommon on Scandal.  But The Good Wife is usually pretty tame in that regard.  If I had to pick shows off my DVR queue that I think are pretty safe (and not prone to launch me into a deep depression), Good Wife usually ranks near the top.  Not so much last week.  At the end of the March 23^rd episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” the show killed off one of its main characters, Will Gardner (Josh Charles).  For those following the behind-the-scenes gossip (and I was not one those people), this might have been less shocking as Charles was one of the only actors who had not been secured into a six-year contract – his contract expired this season.  But regardless, the finality of his exit was unexpected, after all he’s the “Gardner” of Lockhart/Gardner (the firm that originated as the prime focus of the show) and he’s a third of the love triangle that drives one of the major subplots of the show.  As someone who studies narrative arches on television shows, in retrospect, this shocking episode was deliberately set up for by the episode that preceded it where Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) reminisced on her re-entry into law and, hence, her relationship with Will.  The scenes leading up to his shocking death further set up for his departure.  Although they had been sworn enemies for most of the season, Alicia and Will arrived at a sort of truce and she went out of her way to show professional courtesy to him when the father of his murder victim (the one who would ultimately kill him) was seeking a second opinion on the case.  In their last exchange, Alicia called him the better attorney and he agreed with a smile, to which she retorted that he was the more humble too.  The comic banter and friendly exchange resurrected the old image of the two of them and gave viewers one last glimpse of the couple’s chemistry – the sexual tension and friendship that drove the show for so many seasons.  And then they killed him.   Besides for being sad at the loss of a character I really enjoyed, I’m sad because I think without the prerequisite “will they/won’t they” storyline that was Alicia and Will, the show may be off the air within two seasons… but time will tell. 

The March 20^th episode of Scandal wasn’t as shocking.  The “death” had come at the end of the prior week only we didn’t know which of the relatively important minor characters was going to be written off the show.  (Although since the “shot” took place off camera I’m sure many viewers were hoping we weren’t actually going to experience a death but rather the good ole’ televisual fake out).   In “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” viewers learn that the character who dies was James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky), Cyrus’s husband and the President’s Press Secretary.  I have so much to say about this episode and the way in which this show might be a Post-post-9/11 in the ways in which it blatantly critiques the extremes the United States will go to in the name of homeland security (or in this case, the perseverance of “The Republic”).  So I’m going to save most of that for another post.  But what I will say was while this episode didn’t shock me, it depressed me.  Of the three depressing episodes full of death and darkness, this was the one that actually brought me to tears.  The episode built slowly around the mourning of Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry).  As the plot unfolded in its normal fast pace, Cyrus was slowly remembering his relationship with James and his struggles to come to terms first with his own sexuality and later with his public acknowledgment of his partnership.  Just as viewers get to witness Cyrus’s first moment of acceptance – in which he finally grants James’s wish to attend a presidential ball – happily dancing with him despite unaccepting onlookers – this happy narrative moment is juxtaposed with Cyrus’s emotional unraveling.  Until this point he had dealt with James’s death as he does almost everything, with business-like precision and nerves of steel.  But on the podium in front of the media, he crumples and it was his explosion into tears that sparked my own. 

While these episodes were sad, The Walking Dead episode, “The Grove,” which preceded them in the week, was downright disturbing. This season has been an anomaly of sorts.  At the heart of each season has been a temporary moment of utopia featuring a safe haven where the survivors formed a community of sorts:  first on the outskirts of Atlanta in the camp, then on the farm, and then in the prison.  When the prison was breeched at the end of season three, the group was fragmented and this season has instead showed oddly paired survivors each trying to survive in much smaller groups.  Despite being a rather glum season, the show has still given viewers these brief moments of community building:  Rick, Carl, and Michonne setting up house together; Beth and Daryl drinking moonshine together on the porch of a house they would soon torch; etc.  These were always fleeting.  The momentary happiness and safety the characters found was always shattered (by walkers or scavengers) and soon enough they were all on their pilgrimage again.  The episode in question, however, highlighted this practice of teasing viewers with a safe haven only to destroy it like none other has to date. 

In “The Grove,” Carol, Tyreese, Lizzie, Mika, and baby Judith eventually find temporary shelter in a little country house protected by a wire fence.  It is almost tranquil.  They bake pecans, sit by a fire, and Mika plays with a toy doll she has found on the property.  Tyreese and Carol even contemplate staying for a while.  Of course, like most viewers, I had no doubt this happy little household was bound to be rocked by a tragedy. The foreshadowing was thick:  Mika was going to die.  This was first hinted at when Carol was talking about her deceased daughter, Sophia, who “had not had a mean bone in her body.”  The parallels to Mika were obvious but they would be reinforced when Carol would say this exact statement again to Tyreese when expressing his worry about the two girls (that Mika was too weak to survive in such a world and that Lizzie just didn’t understand it – as seen in many scenes in the episode where she fed zombies, attempted to play tag with them, and cried at their demise).  I was preparing myself for what I thought would happen:  Lizzie’s inability to view the walkers as not human would lead to a dangerous situation where her sister would die.  And the show did a nice fake out, giving us just this.  She caused a situation, zombies attacked, but the group prevailed (and Lizzie even picked up a gun and shot them).  This scene was like the magician’s artistry of misdirection.

Not long after this Carol and Tyreese return from the woods to find Lizzie holding a bloody knife over her sister’s dead body.  As they look on at horror, she tells them that it’s all right because she didn’t damage her head.  She has killed Mika to prove that she can come back to life and still be herself.  Lizzie then admits that she was just about to do the same to Judith.  Everything that happens next is equally disturbing.  Carol is forced to stab Mika in the brain so she will not turn, Tyreese protectively keeps Judith away from Lizzie, and the two eventually discuss what to do next.  It is Carol who, again, makes the hard decision for the greater good.  She says that Lizzie cannot be under the same roof as the baby; moreover, she cannot be around people.  Ultimately Carol must lead Lizzie out to the pasture and ask her to look at the beautiful flowers as she fires a bullet through her head.  Unsurprisingly, the house then loses its appeal as the horrible deaths of the young girls has tainted it.  The episode closes with Carol, Tyreese, and Judith again on the road.

After all of these episodes I had a discussion with a colleague of mine in which we debated about whether television’s reversal of the “thou shall not kill your main characters” rule had suddenly become overdone – if TV shows were now just killing characters for the shock factor and the ability to advertise their next episode as a “must watch” or “the most shocking episode ever.”  While I think this is largely the case, there might be more to it in the case of The Walking Dead. 

Many have criticized the dark swing occurring in television programming.  However, others have claimed that dark shows like The Walking Dead and Dexter are new narrative spaces where we are posing important questions about human nature and ethics.  They are our modern day morality plays.  Dystopian narratives set in post-apocalyptic environments usually do just this, so The Walking Dead is not an exception.  However, the fact that so many of the storylines concerning ethical choices rests upon a main female character is interesting. 

In an earlier post, I noted that I thought the show might be policing Carol’s gender performance, punishing her for acting in more “masculine” ways.  I think I need to revisit that argument not long after making it.   After all, she doesn’t get punished at the close of the episode when she admits to Tyreese that she was the one that killed his love interest, Karen, and David in her attempt to protect the group at large.  The show may very well be critiquing gender roles or suggesting that in post-apocalyptic settings they have no place and meaning.  In this episode although Carol is again cast in a motherly role (both in caring for the Samuel sisters and Judith, and in briefly discussing her daughter), but she is also shown doing what is thought to be impossible (by any human, let alone a “mother” figure):  killing a child.

Some have asked whether the show has now gone too far and I actually don’t think so.  I don’t think that this was episode was just meant to have shock value.  I think, as is true of the season at large, it is asking us to think consider the answer to some pretty dark questions:  what would you do to survive in such grim circumstances; what would you do to protect those you love in such a world; and is there really any definitive moral conclusions as to which behaviors and choices are “wrong” and “right” in such conditions? 

I’ve put off returning to all three of these shows since these dark moments and tonight I’ll finally pick up my DVR remotes and dive back in, knowing that it can’t get any darker than it did in mid-March.  Or can it?