I've been thinking a lot about The Walking Dead recently, and not just because it a damn good TV series. I'm really enjoying the sub-story of the two former law enforcement partners. In many ways, it reminds me of an adventuring party after the party goes their separate ways.
Here's the deal: partners in law enforcement, are for the most part, a forced marriage of sorts. If you are lucky you may choose your partner, but many times it's the luck of the draw as to who you will be working with, day in day out, for months or years. This is the person that you have to rely on to risk their life for you without hesitation, and you for them.
It can be a very intense relationship, coming before family and friends in many cases. You will learn how they think, how they will react. Yet, for the most part, the only common interest shared, the only bond, is The Job.
It's pretty much the same for adventuring parties. Throw a bunch of strangers together into constant danger, where the only way to survive is to trust your fellows to risk their lives for yours... it just more like an arranged family then marriage. The bond is The Party.
I've made three honest to god, true friends in my numerous years in law enforcement... and not one of them was a partner of mine. Heck, the only times I see my old partners these days seems to be at funerals.
All of which is why I am truly enjoying the interaction between the two former partners in The Walking Dead, as it's as real a portrayal of any I've seen in movies and TV shows over the years.
(The Job, a very short lived TV series starring comedian Dennis Leary, is the closest I've seen to an authentic police oriented show. Brooklyn South also came very close - close enough that when I watched it on DVD recently I found myself feeling very sympathetic for the Desk Sgt ;)
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Picturing Solo History
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There are many gamers who will tell you that it was *Vampire the Masquerade*
that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1990s. There are many
gamers ...
1 hour ago
Great show, though I am still befuddled that survivors in the south are so short on weaponry! And that's not even considering all those tanks and .50 caliber machine guns they keep passing by!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I grew up in the Deep South (the redneck part of Florida) and now live in southern West Virginia, and there would be no shortage of guns and ammunition in a random cross-section of the population. Not stockpiles, but a LOT of folks hunt in the South and the fly-over states.
ReplyDeleteOf course, all the ammo might be expended in the early battles over the pharmacies.
I wonder about those tanks, too. They run on diesel, right? Seems like they'd be the ideal vehicle with which to flatten geeks.
ReplyDeleteI, too, enjoy the relationship between Rick and Shane. God stuff all around.
There are a lot of guns in the South, but its seems moreso in the rural areas (and they're supposed to be just outside Atlanta. Here in the Research Triangle (North Carolina), there isn't much hunting or weaponry - at least not compared to the countryside.
ReplyDeletePS: I thought Cop Rock was the most realistic portrayal of life in law enforcement.
ReplyDelete;)
Cop Rock was so epic. One of the biggest WTF moments in pop culture history.
ReplyDeleteMy question is why the ammo shortage for the hand guns? Without trying I've accumulated over 500 rounds total between 9mm and .38 cal just from my range qualifications over the years.
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