The Walking Dead: Always Accountable; Rarely Accessible

There so much to say about this week’s The Walking Dead from Daryl’s convenient incompetence to the return of everybody’s favorite party questions to the OMG-did-I-just-hear-what-I-thought-I-heard teaser (Note: Closed Captions are a nerd’s fourth best friend), but, as AMC has no chill in the mid-season non-episode department, I’m not particularly interested in any of that. Instead: representation. We all know how important representation is. I, and most PoCs who watch the show, know that AMC confuses brown skin with red shirts. But, and this may be the only time I ever write this with sincerity, at least we’re on the show (albeit maaaaad briefly). There’s a few kinds of people that aren’t at all and I’ve been wanting to see them since the show started: This week, I saw one.

Let me be honest; I didn’t actually see her until I saw the cooler in the bag that Darryl stole back: “Insulin: Must be Kept Cool.” Okay, here’s a person (I rewatched the ep and still don’t know her name) I’ve been waiting for. Here’s a person with an atypically functioning body. Here’s a person I understand, so I sat up like a meerkat that heard a predator.   “Shhhh, Tom, Is that a jackal?” or “How Nicoles in the wild say ‘Are you tryna offer up someone who might be relatable?'”   It seems relevant to note at this point that I love (in my own special Vulcan way) a lot of people who for a variety of reasons have bodies that can be considered atypical. Are you (not really) trying (hard enough) to…