Hey if you haven't watched Season 3 yet and care about spoilers then you should avoid reading this.
So is there a quota that the writers of The Walking Dead have to adhere to or something? At first I thought it was a coincidence, but after last night's mid-season finale, I'm thoroughly convinced that there can only be one African American male in the cast at one time. Let's go back to the death of T-Dog where in the same episode we meet Oscar, Big Tiny, and Andrew. At this point I'm like "Cool. Nice to see they are diversifying up a bit," and then BOOM! Big Tiny gets cut down by Tomas and Rick leaves Andrew for dead all in the course of an episode.
So the count stays at one again until Andrew comes out of nowhere and tries to exact vengeance. This time he is killed by Oscar, who shows his allegiance to the group in killing his former comrade (whatever other conclusions you might want to draw from that feel free and for a couple of episodes the count remains at 1.)
Now do I want to believe that in some place the writers of the show sat down and said "this is how much minority representation we can have in the show to fit our audience?" of course not. However, when we get introduced to Tyreese the very same episode that Oscar gets killed I can't help but be just a little bit skeptical.
Now I am not sure exactly where the survivors are geographically in the show at this point, but it's a well known fact that Atlanta is in the top 5 of African American populations in the United States with the current percentage at 54%. Georgia itself totals out at about 31%, which is significantly lower, but still ranked 3rd in the nation behind New York and...Florida (just below Georgia non-Americans). The point I'm making? Non accurate statistics of survivor levels...or racist zombies.
What is the danger with having more African American men on the show?! Is it purely coincidence or is this an intentional move by the writers to keep a "status quo" and not have zero representation but ensure it's limited? These are all questions I ask, and ones I doubt Chris Hardwick will pose.
Twitter: @MickJoest Email: MickJoest@Geektyrant.com