Sometimes when you're experiencing any form of entertainment, you experience something that instantly reminds you of another form of entertainment. They can be similar types, for example when you hear Hans Zimmer's haunting
music from Interstellar, you might recall an amped up version of Philip Glass's haunting
music from Koyaanisqatsi. Or fundamentally different types, like when the imagery from an episode of
Game of Thrones recalls
imagery from the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering (or vice versa). But other times, the similarities go beyond just imagery, penetrating deep down to the subject matter itself. For example, when I (finally) watched the season finale for Season 4 of
The Walking Dead last night, one of the early climactic moments of the show brought to mind a specific Magic card, a black card, from the Mirrodin block. I don't like to give away spoilers, but it's been more than seven months since the episode (entitled "A") first aired on AMC, so I have no qualms about giving away the card I'm talking about. I even went through the trouble of using MTG Cardsmith to create an alternate art reprint that could easily go into a
Walking Dead themed expansion set (marketing hint).
I've said it before and I'll say it again (probably): The scene where Rick zombies-up and tears the throat out of his would-be
Deliverance-esque assaulter with his fucken teeth was one of the more satisfying moments in the series so far. It was not only the pure gore factor, though that was not unimpressive, but also the philosophical and tactical implications of using the strategy. We've seen countless walkers take out humans by biting them in the throat, so it obviously works, even with decayed teeth and undead jaw muscles. But it requires you to abandon your humanity, to become like your common enemy in order to best destroy a fellow living creature.
The parallel to the Magic card Go for the Throat (if not to its vampiric
art by David Rapoza), in that it doesn't work against artifact creatures, is shocking: not that constructs or golems exist in the
Walking Dead universe, but if they did, Rick would never have been able to effectively execute the same move against them. Come to think of it, the move wouldn't have worked on a walker either. Or a dragon or a hydra or an elephant, which are just some of the standard creature types that a Go for the Throat reprint would be able to target. So maybe the card is a little overpowered when taken out of context of the show, but the flavor is just too spot on to ignore.
Another reason that scene is so powerful is because it tells the story of how Rick, a high level series regular (to use a Dungeons and Dragons term) was able to transform a situation where he was on his knees, at gunpoint and surrounded, to an absolute bloodbath in his team's favor. Rick ends the season in a similar way to how he started that scene: trapped inside a train car, surrounded by armed foes. But this time his team's a little bit bigger and he is fully in control of his confidence that this show cannot exist without him. As someone who is about to dive into Season 5, however possible, I hope that Rick's confidence extends not just to his survival, but also to the entertainment value of his existence. Because we've seen first hand what can happen to the pace of this show when all the regulars are bound up together in an enclosed space. And this time the group doesn't even have
their weapons to help them.
At least Cutty and Carol are still on the loose, so we'll have a B Story to cut back to. Or maybe they'll pull a Book 4 of
A Song of Ice and Fire (only nine years late on that one) and leave out half the characters entirely. Who can know? All I can say is that I'm especially excited for this new season of
Walking Dead, not only to find out what happens, but because Ozzy Man is doing episode reviews on YouTube, and it was only his brilliant comedy dub
Eddie Stark: Australian Dad that got me through a long and arduous baseball postseason.
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