By S.E. Trotter
If there’s anything more fun than watching a zombie show, it’s analyzing a zombie show. Such is the premise behind AMC’s The Talking Dead, a one-hour show that airs after new episodes of The Walking Dead.
Host Chris Hardwick spends the hour interviewing cast members, producers, writers, and fans, and dissecting the show.
My husband is a big fan. I don’t mean he likes the show that much, though he likes it just fine. No, what I mean is that he likes that the show exists. He likes that Chris Hardwick exists, and that Chris Hardwick spends an hour analyzing the nuances of each episode because it means that he—my husband—does not have to.
Let’s just say that when it comes to evaluating films and TV shows, my husband and I have different approaches. More importantly, different speeds.
Upon leaving a movie theater:
Me: I loved how the movie used color to signify the themes. Words, words, words . . . red jacket . . . words, words, words . . . shades of blue.
Him: Uh-huh.
Me: And it was really smart, the way they didn’t give the audience the cliché, expected ending. . . Words, words, words. More ambiguous. Words, words. Like real life.
Him: Uh-huh.
Me: And the soundtrack! Words, words! That Grace Potter song!
Him: Yeah. That’s a cover of a Bill Withers song.
Me: Really? Cool. Words, words, words x 1,000. What did you think?
Him: I don’t know. I need to process it.
And so I wait. Impatiently. When I ask a few minutes later if he is ready to give an opinion, if he has finished processing, he tells me this: “You can’t force it. You have to let it bubble up.”
Bubble up.
I have spent nearly twenty years with this man. That’s nearly twenty years waiting for the bubble up.
To be fair, my husband has plenty of interesting insights to offer. Eventually. But I don’t want them the next morning when we’re in the kitchen making coffee. If we have just finished watching something, I want them right now.
Enter Chris Hardwick and The Talking Dead.
Like millions of others, I am a fan of The Walking Dead. And there is nothing I want more after watching an episode than to analyze it. When a character makes a bold move to attack a herd of walkers is it brave? Suicidal? Both? Was the episode’s take on the future of mankind hopeful? Fatalistic? MUST. DISCUSS.
True, I am not a participant on The Talking Dead, so it’s not exactly a conversation. But the show tends to cover many of the topics I would want to discuss. It satisfies my Siskel & Ebert compulsion.
This is not hyperbole. When I was twelve, my heroes were Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. And, really, that probably explains all one needs to know about my junior high years.
I actually used to take notes on their show At the Movies. I would grab a spiral notepad and pencil and sit down on the carpet in front of the TV set (the big, square, piece-of-furniture kind with the fake wood paneling). What was it Gene Siskel just said about the masterful way that Debra Winger ate a piece of lettuce in that scene in Terms of Endearment? Better write it down.
On my closet door, I would tape Siskel’s reviews, which used to run in the Chicago Tribune. They would find a home somewhere amidst my posters of E.T. and Indiana Jones, and pictures of Rob Lowe and Duran Duran.
Decades later, waiting for the bubble up, I have often found myself channeling Steve Buscemi in Fargo, telling his taciturn partner, “That’s a fountain of conversation, man. That’s a geyser.” Chris Hardwick helps me channel Steve Buscemi less frequently. And channeling Steve Buscemi less frequently is always a good thing. (At least for, you know, a mid-dish-aged mother of three. No offense, Mr. Buscemi).
Plus, if I have found myself vexed at my husband’s reticence, it is fair to say he has found my impatient demand for WORDS just as aggravating. So, The Talking Dead is a win-win. Now if my husband could only convince Hardwick to tackle a few other dreaded items on his list—scrape the basement walls, clean the gutters, paint the den—we might make it another twenty.