Mike and Suzanne Talk ‘The Walking Dead’

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “I kind of mentioned it briefly, and that is Lennie James and Melissa McBride have this love-hate going on.  Morgan continues to say things that, to me, are statements about being pro-life.  No, you don’t have to kill.  No, that’s not right.  We shouldn’t do that.  He’s also injected into that a discussion about when a war is just and when a war is not just, or when an attack is just and when an attack is not just.  The situation that the Alexandrians find themselves in was brought about by what?  An ill-advised attack upon the Saviors’ compound.  They thought it was the only one.” Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Here’s host of The Suzanne Option, Suzanne Sherman, who wants to talk about The Walking Dead stuff with me on a Monday morning.  It’s only what, 5:30 Mountain Time?  It’s 5:30 Suzanne Option time.

Suzanne Sherman:  Well, my cat wanted out, and then I hear this talk of The Walking Dead, so I thought: I am so chiming in on this one.

Mike:  Okay.  So you’re a fan?

Sherman:  Oh, absolutely.  It took me a while, though.  I didn’t start watching until probably the fifth season.  My good friend Robin was here for Thanksgiving the year before last, and all they did was drone on and on about that show.  And I finally started watching and I was hooked immediately.  And I got to tell people, if you’re not watching the show, like you just mentioned, the parallels are just, all of them, they’re right there.  The zombies are really superfluous.  If you pay attention, it really is an image of society and what can happen.

Mike:  It’s a replica.

Sherman:  Yes.

Mike:  It’s an exact replica of our society and our government.  There’s so much commentary going on in there, Suzanne.  The point is made in almost every episode that we’re a bunch of whining, carping little babies suffering our first-world problems as indignities, not realizing or refusing to admit how well we actually – we have it made and how much we have it made.

Sherman:  You know, the interesting thing is, if you think about it, what part of society that we have today do you not see in that show, at least in – not in any number of – it might be the rare one or two.  You don’t see the millennial-type protester whiny crybabies.  They’re all gone.

Mike:  They’re gone.  They’re dead.  They wouldn’t survive.  They have had whiny millennial protesters, and they always get eaten by the zombies.

Sherman:  They’re the first to die.  Interestingly, this whole gun registration issue which we saw last issue wasn’t really a registration.  It was just something as innocent as an inventory for their own benefit.  This wasn’t even something to keep track by a superior authority.  This was something that people did on their own that was then used to their disadvantage by somebody, by Negan and his goons, which is what we see now.  We have a bunch of goons putting their boots on our throat.

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Mike:  And you had the same goons taxing us.  The respect or whatever you wish, the homage that is owed to Negan is an allegory or metaphor for taxes.  They are confiscated against the people’s will.  They don’t want to give them up.  Also, what has the rule of Negan basically done, Suzanne?  It’s driven people into compounds.  It’s driven them into little balkanized societies.  You had the one society that was discovered at the beginning of the season that’s all women.  How did it become all women?  The metaphor of that cannot be lost.  The men sacrificed themselves in war against Negan and his goons to save their daughters and wives and sisters.  There’s no men in this village, but they’ve got some weapons, don’t they?

Sherman:  They have been so far, I think, the fiercest of the defenders of their own compound.

Mike:  To the point where you can’t know where the compound is.  No one can know where it is.  That’s the point.  I still think that that comes back into play at some point in the near future.  It’s a spoiler alert, so I don’t want to get into last night’s episode.  Did you watch it?

Sherman:  Yeah.

Mike:  Don’t give away the ending.  Why do you think Rick was smiling?  Let me see if you and Candace were on the same page.  Why was Rick smiling?

Sherman:  He found an ally.

Mike:  That’s exactly what Mrs. Church said.  That’s what she said.  She said: He thinks he’s got an ally.  And now he’s not worried about King Leo or whatever his name is.  It’s a fantastic show, folks.  Look, there’s gore and there’s violence.  There’s all the things that make our modern world despicable and disgusting.  At the heart of the matter – this is what I wrote about today, Suzanne.  What are they really trying to do in Alexandria?  What have they been trying to do since Rick woke up in the hospital?  Restore the order.

Sherman:  Yes, restore the order.  And we saw Rick crumble a little bit having faced such extreme evil, but he’s getting his mojo back.  Interestingly, Scott Morefield is a friend of mine, by the way.

Mike:  Is he?

Sherman:  Yeah.  When I covered for Mark, he joined in with me one day.  I’ve actually talked to him and he’s coming on my show.  We’re going to do an episode about his article.  So you’re kind of stealing my thunder, but I’m still going to roll with it.

Mike:  You should, absolutely.

Sherman:  Brion McClanahan did a podcast on The Walking Dead, too.  I thought that was kind of –

Mike:  I’m going to tell you one more thing that I discovered and that I’ve been telling Mrs. Church.  I kind of mentioned it briefly, and that is Lennie James and Melissa McBride have this love-hate going on.  Morgan continues to say things that, to me, are statements about being pro-life.  No, you don’t have to kill.  No, that’s not right.  We shouldn’t do that.  He’s also injected into that a discussion about when a war is just and when a war is not just, or when an attack is just and when an attack is not just.  The situation that the Alexandrians find themselves in was brought about by what?  An ill-advised attack upon the Saviors’ compound.  They thought it was the only one.

Sherman:  They were doing fine till they did that.

Mike:  They struck preemptively.  They showed no mercy.  They gave the enemy no quarter.  It was definitely a commentary on an unjust action.

Sherman:  The Saviors became ISIS.

Mike:  Exactly.  That’s right.  And then Negan became ISIS.  I didn’t like that whole storyline when they decided that they were going to go do that.

Sherman:  They got a little full of themselves, didn’t they?

Mike:  They sure did.

Sherman:  Here’s the interesting thing, too.  Remember now, Morgan admitted that he did – this isn’t a spoiler because we know this happened.  He did admit that he killed to save Carol.  So, yes, you can be pro-life, but you can also know that there is a time and a place where killing is absolutely not only justified but necessary and mandatory.

Mike:  When Morgan was talking about that, I was thinking of my buddy, Brother Alexis Bugnolo and the Ordo Militaris.  You’ve got to imagine, Brother Alexis is a Franciscan friar.  It could be eight degrees – he would come to your compound in his tattered cassock, his cincture around his waist, and his sandals with no socks.  He’d walk into snow with sandals with no socks.  Brother Alexis, as you know – this idea that has been sown into the modern world, how the Christian is supposed to approach life and death, especially when it’s a matter of life and death when ISIS or Al-Qaeda or whoever is murdering Christians by the thousands.  If you’re standing on the street – he gave the example of the priest that was killed, Father Hamel in France.  He goes: If you were standing outside the church and you saw this gang of four Muslims, Islamics coming at you with weapons and bats and they were chanting, “Allahu Akbar.  Allahu Akbar,” and they were making a beeline for you and threatening your life, you don’t try to convert them; you put a bullet between their eyes.

Sherman:  Exactly.  Unfortunately in France you can’t really do that because they’re disarmed here.  I’ll tell you what, out here in Park City, Utah, we have – there was a Vietnam-era veteran.  We had a plan.  He had the door and we had a code.  If I heard that word, I drew and we’d deal with the situation.   Have a plan.  They didn’t have that option then.

Mike:  And when Morgan had to kill, he had to because he had to defend.  If he didn’t kill, then there would have been a taking of life.  Folks, if you’re not watching the show – [mocking] “I don’t watch cable television.  It’s probably got all kinds of trash.”  Yeah, it does.  I think, though, in these instances, you gain more than you lose.  You suffer through the parts that you might disagree with.  Last night, Suzanne – I’ll just go one more thing here.  The director of that episode resisted the temptation to lip lock the two gay guys and instead chose –

Sherman:  I was waiting.  Weren’t you?

Mike:  I was waiting.  I was going to turn it off and say: That’s it, I’m done.  I’m gone.

Sherman:  Don’t do it.

Mike:  Mrs. Church is sitting there going like – both of us are going like: Don’t do it, don’t do it.  She resisted the temptation to do that and instead, what did she do?  She placed the home of the gay guy in the position that he’s valuable to community, not because of his homosexuality but because he’s a good shot.  They get more right than they get wrong.  I just have to wonder about these guys that create it.  There’s an artist that draws it, and there’s a guy that writes the stories, I think, the two guys that are responsible for the show.  One more thing.  I really liked this part.  We are always told in the modern world that bigger is better, that we need to have new things, and that the things that you’ve already accomplished and conquered, that’s yesterday.  We need to go accomplish and conquer something else.  To my knowledge, there haven’t been any big-headed contract disputes on the show.  It seems as though everyone that works on it likes working on it.  They keep coming back, unless they get written out or killed.

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Sherman:  I think Glenn’s contract expired.  That’s why he got a – his head met with Lucille.  I guess that was behind the –

Mike:  I was told from someone that’s read the entire book series that he should have died back in the day.  Did they actually keep –

Sherman:  That’s what I heard, too.  I don’t really follow the behind-the-scenes stuff.  I just kind of watch the story.

Mike:  Right.

Sherman:  Yeah.  There’s just so many lessons to be learned from a lot of these post-apocalyptic stories.  There’s another one that a good friend of mine, Rick Barrett, told me about, Jericho.  I don’t know if you’ve seen that one.

Mike:  Every episode of it.

Sherman:  Yes, me, too.  If you don’t like zombies, then watch something like Jericho.  That one I thought was fantastic.  That’s something else I’m going to talk about on my show also.  Just the scenarios that you’re faced with when society collapses, they’re all in that show.  It’s a fantastic series.

Mike:  Starring Major Dad.  Jericho, you can get that on Netflix.  I saw every episode of it.  Suzanne, I gotta go.  I’m glad you called, though.  Thank you.

Sherman:  Me, too.

Mike:  Tell Scott I said hi.  He needs to come on my show.

Sherman:  Well, I get him first.

Mike:  You get him first.  I’ll take seconds.

Sherman:  He’s fantastic.  I’ll let him know we had this discussion.

Mike:  Fantastic.  Talk later.

Sherman:  Bye.

End Mike Church Show Transcript