Obsessed with z nation making the doctor of their group a druggie therapist that got stuck in an air vent with a zombie and, having no weapon on hand, elected to just hotbox with it
I like how this scene is completely absurd and played for laughs but then we get one of the first hints that zombies retain some part of who they were and some semblance of memory and then in the exact same episode while this is happening we get the flashback to when 10K had to kill his father and 10K is like “I killed it. Not him,” and it’s like so this silly scene of Doc hotboxing a zombie actually creates this moment of overwhelming emotional pain because at the same time as 10K is angrily insisting his dad was gone the moment he turned zombie as the viewer we learn there is humanity in the zombies and 10K killed his dad for real not as a zombie.
And then 10K is just getting more and more broken as he has to maintain his facade of belief that zombies are anathema to humanity, like he hates zombies and he has to hate them with a passion to keep believing they aren’t human, because otherwise what has he done? With vowing to kill 10,000 zombies, if those zombies are just broken people, what does that make him?
So yeah Z Nation really funny goofy absurd show smoking pot with zombies and then just ripping your heart into a shreds.
And a kinder, worse show would have like drawn a line under it, called attention to it, had some random characters like “I hope 10k can let go of all his zombie anger” or some bullshit, but not Z Nation, no they’re just like gonna leave these two things right here without comment and let you think about it for a minute.
hello first of all I love you second of all how dare you, third of all, you are 100% correct that another kinder, worse show might’ve ham-fisted the incoming trauma by drawing it to everyone’s attention, and I am here to say that some other show aside from that might’ve swung the complete opposite direction, too.
A less kind, worse show would have killed Doc to hide that info from the group as long as possible. Hell this one pretends to, and you know, when Doc stumbled out of that air shaft covered in blood and ash and looking like a Z? I believed it. Because that’s what zombie shows normally do. That’s what apocalypse shows do. They give you the gentle characters at the start, they give you the ones that make surviving worthwhile, the ones that can make the others smile, and they strip them out one by one, because this is an apocalypse. I resigned myself to that fate when I saw him, because that’s the norm.
And then Warren takes the shot and Doc stumbles and calls “What the hell, Warren!” and when I say I choked on that relief I am not joking, I couldn’t breathe the first time I saw that scene and everyone broke into smiles and Doc began joking with them again. I trusted this show because of that moment. I trusted this show because practically up front they showed that they weren’t going to kill the fun, the hope, the heart.
They’re just going to let me rip my own heart out over the things they leave lying around where I can find them and think about them for a minute.
And you touched on it but I’m gonna put my grubby little paws on this to expand:
And then 10K is just getting more and more broken as he has to maintain his facade of belief that zombies are anathema to humanity, like he hates zombies and he has to hate them with a passion to keep believing they aren’t human, because otherwise what has he done? With vowing to kill 10,000 zombies, if those zombies are just broken people, what does that make him?
I don’t know what season you were on when you wrote this, if you’d watched all the way through, but here on the other side of 5 I have… so many feelings and thoughts about this, not the least of which are that 10K literally became a Blend in season 3; he had to experience first hand the zombies changing their behavior because of what he was.
The other thing is like…. S4 Lucy??? Here’s the kid of someone 10K ostensibly hates, a guy that keeps bringing to light this idea that zombies are not just mindless monsters, and his kid literally insists, over and over, that the zombies around them still remember themselves from before. They have names. That episode where they’re trapped in that building being made to solve puzzles to clear it, and she gets a zombie to come help them escape? They’re just angry and confused, and they calm down when someone can speak to them. GOD that’s gotta fuck him up. No wonder he never got close to her.
And then Season 5?? With the Talkers? The first time they are on the road and hear a Z say “no!” just before they kill it? When they reach the sanctuary and the dead are people again. Five years, it took them five years to go from hotboxing w/ a zombie to voting on the rights of the undead to participate in society, and he’s there the whole way, with his past riding in his wake.
