Watching people watch The Walking Dead is fun.
I just got hooked on the spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, because we binge watched it in our NYC hotel room after a long, tiring day, and I got caught up on what had previously been a boring series to me.
So Sunday night Arnie and watched the latest episode and after the “commercial” at the beginning, we were both like:
“Yeah, and…?”
This fake “commercial” for a prepper/militia kit/way of life was a spot-on montage of Waco/Oklahoma/Clinton footage, and an equally accurate Glenn Beck style product pitch.
A smart, super-economical way to orient viewers to the family’s new location.
As with the new X-Files‘ “Alex Jones” character, I really couldn’t tell whether or not the producers were taking the absolute piss or whether or not they were at least trying to be even-handed and even a little sympathetic to these “red state” characters.
Maybe it’s the evolution of the “twist” in shows like Law & Order, whereby they make the bad guy, say, a JEWISH terrorist because THAT would be “provocative” (not really…)
Maybe that tv trope has played out and the new “twist” is:
“Yeah, we’ve primed you your whole life to reflexively hate people like this, so now we’re gonna make you, er, maybe not hate them so much!”
(The real) Twin Peaks actually did this very well.
We’ll see…
You’d think by now that Walking Dead fans would know better than to diss the rednecks.
