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Hope for the Living in The Walking Dead

A SYTYCB entry

This week’s Entertainment Weekly features the upcoming new season of The Walking Dead on the cover (or FOUR different covers to be exact). I am eagerly anticipating the premiere and have high hopes for what will happen in one of TV’s most surprising hit series. I am excited to see the plot develop, especially with the subtraction of chauvinistic Shane and the addition of a badass female character, Michonne.

Season 2 had a slow, slow, crawling pace, and focused on the group’s attempt at rebuilding a normal life on Hershel’s farm. Aside from a severe lack of zombie action, the more unsettling part of their colonization was the return of all too familiar gender roles. We all witnessed Lori hounding Andrea for not wanting to help out with household chores and her resentment upon Andrea’s decision to take a “male” role,  but can’t we all relate to a post-apocalyptic desire to do more than laundry?  When the group convened to make a democratic decision, a few female characters literally gave up their right to vote and deferred the decision to the men. And although their world may hold a higher stake at new human life, Lori was judged by many men around her for contemplating abortion.

Despite some faux pas in the gender role arena, there is lots of promise for The Walking Dead. The show is based on a comic book that has plenty of female characters with empowering ...

Breaking the Bad News

A SYTYCB entry

With the start of the latest season of AMC’s stellar series Breaking Bad, I continue to enjoy the meth producing adventures of Walt and Jesse. However, their male dominated business is getting more and more tiresome. So many of the great stories of ascending drug lords portrayed women as trophy wives, but they usually demonstrated a complexity, be it through complications of drug abuse or the moral dichotomy of a quick ascension to money and power. While they brush this surface in Breaking Bad, the women are even less complicated and interesting than the old stereotype of the mobster wife.

Skyler, Walt’s wife and main female character has always been tough to relate to. Since finding out what her ...

A SYTYCB entry

With the start of the latest season of AMC’s stellar series Breaking Bad, I continue to enjoy the meth producing adventures of Walt and Jesse. However, their male dominated business is getting more and more ...