This is his opinion, not mine.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015...s-but-that-death-was-real/?mod=trending_now_2
Sorry, ‘Walking Dead’ Fans, But That Death Was Real
By PAUL VIGNA
We need to talk.
Look, “
Walking Dead” fans, I get it. Nobody wants to think that Glenn Rhee, the pizza-delivery guy who turned out to be one of the hardiest survivors of the zombie apocalypse, is dead. Glenn fought off a walker while tied up on a chair in the Governor’s dungeon, for goodness’ sake. Glenn saved people, starting with a man he didn’t even know – Rick Grimes – continuing through Tara after the prison attack, and going all the way through to Nicholas, a man who actively tried to kill him. Glenn is the heart of the Grimes clan.
But, my friends, you need to accept this: Glenn is dead. There is simply no credible way he survived
the events of Sunday night’s episode: trapped in an alley surrounded by hundreds of walkers. No ammo. No police riot gear. No help. No exit. No nothing. Look, we all loved Glenn. We respected him, we admired him, we felt about him much the same way Maggie did.
But right now, too many of you are stuck on stage one of the Kubler-Ross model: denial. You’ve seen Glenn’s death with your own eyes. It was bloody, it was graphic. He was torn to shreds. But you refuse to believe it. That’s denial. For you, Kubler-Ross right now looks something like this:
Glenn can’t die! (
Denial)
How could they kill off Glenn? Damn writers! (
Anger)
Maybe he crawled under the dumpster. (
Bargaining)
I can’t watch this show anymore. (
Depression)
Poor Maggie. (
Acceptance)
Regardless of the absolute impossibility that Glenn singlehandedly survived an onslaught of hundreds of flesh-craving zombies, the Internet is buzzing with theories about how he may indeed have survived an onslaught of hundreds of flesh-craving zombies. There are two main tenets to this desperate attempt to remain in stage three: one about the events in that alley, and the other about some cryptic, tea-leaf reading type stuff on the aftershow, “The Talking Dead.”
This is what happened to Glenn in that alley, and the sooner you get to stage five on this the better you’ll feel: He and Nicholas were cornered in an alley by hundreds of walkers. They climbed onto a dumpster. Nicholas shot himself in the head, his body tumbled forward and carried both of them to the ground, where they are beset by biters. Glenn is eaten alive, and dies. There is absolutely nothing in that sequence to suggest that Glenn somehow survived.
This is what happened on “The Talking Dead”: Steven Yeun, the actor who played Glenn, was not there. This is unusual in that it’s become something of a tradition for prominent actors to appear on the show when their characters are killed off. A representatives for Yeun said he wasn’t available for comment. Not only wasn’t Yeun there, nobody from the show was there. Moreover, host Chris Hardwick read a message from showrunner Scott Gimple that cryptically said “in some way we will see Glenn again.”
This is what people are thinking: The blood and guts we saw in the alley did not belong to Glenn, but to Nicholas, whose body fell on top of Glenn’s. The angle from which we see Glenn on the ground is low and tilted. It’s not an overhead shot, and it’s a close-up of Glenn’s face. Whatever torso is producing that blood and entrails, the deniers argue, is not clearly Glenn’s torso.
So, stage-one folks are positing, Glenn was watching
Nicholas’s body get torn to shreds. This leaves open the possibility that somehow, Glenn managed to crawl out from under his comrade’s shredded body and somehow find safety. Some are positing that he crawled away and under the dumpster. Maybe he got so covered in blood himself that he was able to go unnoticed, like so long ago in Atlanta. The fact that Gimple said Glenn would be seen again is bolstering this line of thinking.
Only, it can’t possibly be true.
Even if those walkers are tearing apart Nicholas’s body, is it really plausible that Nicholas’s body so perfectly covered Glenn’s that not one of the dozens of walkers in the immediate vicinity bit or scratched Glenn? And that he then somehow crawled out from under that unnoticed? And crawled to safety under a four-foot-by-five-foot dumpster? Without a single bite or scratch? That isn’t just a cliffhanger. It’s a logic destroyer.
It wasn’t a noble death, it wasn’t a heroic death. He wasn’t surrounded by loved ones, he didn’t get to say goodbye. There was aria, no strings, no angelic choir to carry him off. It didn’t come in the finale. Or the midseason finale. Or at any “regular,” expected point in the storyline. It was nasty, brutal and short. But he is dead.
Glenn’s surviving in that alley is not only improbable, it is impossible. The body getting torn apart is clearly Glenn’s body. Moreover, Gimple’s carefully worded statement promised that we would see Glenn again
in some way. Not that we’d see Glenn again, but some form of Glenn.
Maybe it will be as a ghost, like Lori. Or in a fevered hallucination, like Beth and the Governor, Martin, and the girls when Tyreese was dying. Or in a flashback. Or maybe through a pregnancy, like Shane (yes, we went there). But he did not say we will see Glenn again, in the flesh, so to speak.
Beyond all that, though, here is the biggest reason why Glenn must be dead: The show’s integrity. Part of what makes “The Walking Dead” so good is that the writers don’t run the proverbial car off the cliff and then a minute later show you that the hero jumped out at the last minute when nobody was looking.
That integrity is what makes a fictitious show about imaginary monsters feel so real. They may bring a character to the verge of death – think Rick outside the prison fence during the Governor’s first attack. But if a character gets saved, the save makes sense.
If, in two weeks, we see Glenn crawl out from under that dumpster, covered in Nick’s blood, and walk out of that alley, Gimple will have made a good number of fans happy. But he will have destroyed the show’s integrity, and we frankly think that is something that he and creator Robert Kirkman and everybody else involved in it understands. People die in the zombie apocalypse. You can’t write around that forever.
So, sorry to be such a bummer, but Glenn’s gone, and the sooner you come to accept that, the sooner we can all move on. Do it for Maggie. She’s going to need all the help she can get.