The Walking Dead: “30 Days Without An Accident”

Season 4; Episode 1

They have built a new Garden of Eden!  There is a barnyard in the prison yard, there is a fence to keep them out, they go trawling for supplies…all seems good…but it is a new season, so bad things have to happen.

I am not entirely sure what it is that brings me back to the fourth season of the show.  Zombies, cool, over a series, it is working pretty well.  The idea that main characters get bit at seemingly random times, all that plays in. 

But the piece that really gets me is how they portray real people in extraordinary circumstances.  I want to play out one bit tonight.  SPOILER ALERT!!! DON’T READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED!!

Beth, not a primary fighter, the younger daughter, little sister, the one who sang songs to keep up the spirits last season, she has a suitor.  His name is Zach.  And they have an “aw shucks” moment before Zach heads out with the supply party.  “Aren’t you going say goodbye?”  And she answers, “No.”

And then he gets bit, a couple of times, ending rather badly.  When Darryl brings the news back to Beth, her reaction was one of cautious indifference.  She was glad she didn’t say good bye, because she hates good byes.  And she casually changes the sign that said “30 days without an accident” back to zero.

That is why I like this series.  Hers was not a healthy reaction.  One mourns someone when you lose them, it is human nature.  It is how we recover from the shock and trauma.  The mourning process or the grieving process works well when we are able to, for ourselves, complete what was left incomplete when we lost something important in our lives. 

She is so calm.  And I’ve seen people who have been calm like that in the face of tragedy.  But the very nature of the show, the circumstances that they have set up, that are so extreme that it is somehow ‘the new normal’ for her to act this way.  The extreme of the situation that make her reaction a ‘healthy’ one, that contrasts with our ‘old normal’.

As a pastor, I’ve met people with the ‘Beth-face’ in the face of personal tragic circumstances.  And I don’t want to provoke anguish, but I know how important grieving is.  I know the necessity of completing that work to be able to live fully once again.  And you have to get them to talk about it.

Let them tell you the stories, press for the stories, even if they are being shared by a smiling face.  Because we are hard wired to recover by a grieving process.  That process is a gift from God so that we do not get stuck in the gloom of despair.

And I sit here, and rehash the episode in my mind, and wonder why Beth’s reaction provoked me.  And that is what good art is supposed to do.  Welcome season 4!