Rick's To-Do List (And Season 4 Death Predictions)

When Season Three of the The Walking Dead ended, I planned to write a Blog Post about all of the things Rick Grimes should do to make the prison more safe.  My hope was that season four of the Walking Dead would center on the attempts to rebuild a civilization.  It seemed to have a lot of interesting possibilities.  About a month later I read the novel World War Z, by Max Brooks.  This book (but not the Brad Pitt film of the same name) dealt with the issues that interest me in a much more intelligent way than I could have hoped from TWD. So my curiosity was sated.

And eventually we saw the Comic-Con preview of Season Four.  I was surprised by how much the preview showed in terms of story points.  The preview showed that the Survivors have taken steps to resume some agriculture and are educating the kids that came over from Mayberry.  It's also evident that things will go very badly and the Prison will have to be abandoned.  Probably the right thing for the story.  I'm sure the season will be very entertaining.  But here are a few stray thoughts on what I want to see from Rick in tonight's debut.

1.  Marshall the resources (especially weapons) of Woodbury.  This is job one. Get the gungs, get the food, get the solar panels, vehicles, etc.

2.  Integrate the Woodbury survivors.  The season finale implied that the Woodbury survivors were all children or elderly people.  But there are at least two characters that could be of great import.  One is the doctor.  I think they should at least explain what happened to her, because she (and her equipment) would be so valuable to the survivors.  The other is the visibly pregnant woman that we saw in the first Woodbury episode.  I don't know how much infant formula they have been able to scavenge but it a possible wet nurse for Little Ass Kicker would be invaluable.

3.  Repair and improve the prison.  Clear more cell blocks.  Fix the breach that Tyrese's group came in through last season.  Try to rebuild the guard tower.

4.  Walker Defenses.  Learn from the governor and build some Zombie pits.  Make it a daily routine to clear them.

5.   Nature.  My biggest nitpik with TWD so far is the near-absence of conflict between wildlife and humans.  We are now two years removed from the zombie apocalypse.  Bears, wild cats, wolves would be reasserting their natural dominance of the ecosystem.  The preview hints at some scenes involving animals being fed to Walker to get them near the prison.  That's a promising starting point but I want to see the survivors being threatened by some of the non-human predatory species.

6.  The Big Picture.  What I most loved about World War Z is that it was written as an oral history, looking back at the war from a secure and peaceful future.  This removed suspense and let in a real breadth of subject matters-politics, military strategy, religion, cultural differences and prejudices, etc.  TWD will never be that, because it's a TV show that runs on the tension of the struggle to survive.  Last season I hoped that Milton would have something interesting to say about what the long-term issues facing Rick and the group would be.  But that doesn't really make television.  Nevertheless, the scale of the problem is pretty amazing.  There are 900 million people that live in the new world.  That means about 899 million zombies to take care of, more or less.  So the only plausible way this crisis ends is if the zombies ever start to "die".  Maybe that will come in a later season but I get the impression that AMC knows it needs to milk this series for as long as possible.  So I don't expect a zombie cure.  That means lots of zombie kills for years to come.

Death Predictions.

Season 3 of the The Walking Dead was made great by the gutsy decision to kill two original characters early on. Such deaths are the emotional currency of the series.  We know from the preview that at least 12 people die in the prison.  Most of them are probably red shirts from Woodbury.  But there will be important death as the season goes along.  Here are some thoughts.

Likely to Die:

1. The Governor.  Probably in episode 8, to make the half-season meaningful.  Chances of dying this season: 99%.

2.  Maggie and/or Glenn.  Their engagement was one of the few sweet moments of a grim season three.  I think they will pay a price for it.  My hunch is that Maggie is more likely to die than Glenn, but I wouldn't rule out both of them dying, perhaps together.  Maybe one will turn and then bite the other.  Chances of dying this season: Maggie 70%, Glenn 60%.

3.  Carl.  Well the season has to end on a big note.  And Carl is Rick's last tie to the world before the apocalypse.  His death is the ace in the hole of the series creators.  They may not want to play it yet, but I wouldn't be shocked.  (51%)

4.  Sasha' character could also be on a dangerous arc.  I think Tyrese will be around for the long haul so they might write a story about the death of his sister to give his character some depth.  60%

5.  DeAngelo Barskdale's new character has Red Shirt written all over him.  70%.

Reasonable Death Candidates.
Someone of noticeable value will have to die early.  Hershel or Carol would seem to be good candidates but I think they both have some potential left as characters.  I mean Carol has to sleep with Darry at some point, right?  Hershel: 40%, Carol 35%.

Unlikely to Die.  Judith, Beth,

Bullet Proof.
Rick, because he's the protagonist.  Darryl, because he draws so many female fans to the show and Michonne because she is the ultimate fantasy of the 14 year old boys that this show is intended to entertain.

I am nearly 40.  But it entertains me too.

My Favorite Mariano Rivera Memory

On June 6, 2003 the New York Yankees played at Wrigley Field since the 1938 World Series.  I attended that game and had seats about ten rows behind the Yankees bullpen.  I was seated behind a boy who was about seven years old.  During the early innings, the boy walked down to the Yankees bullpen with a disposable camera.  Mariano River noticed him and stopped to smile for him and said hello.

When he got back to his seat, the boy's father handed him a ball and told him to go ask Mariano for an autograph.  When he got up there, Mo politely declined.  "I can't during the game.  It's not allowed.  But I'll sign it after the game."  The boy was disappointed but his dad did a good job of explaining it all to him.

As the game progressed, the Yankees took the lead and Mariano wound up having to pitch the top of the ninth inning.  Mariano got the Cubs out for the save.  As the game ended, the Yankees bench emptied and everyone lined up for high-fives.  Then all the Yankees started to head back into the dugout.  At this point, the dad tried to explain to his son that Mr. Rivera didn't know he would be pitching when the game ended. So he probably won't be coming back out to sign the ball.

But I soon noticed that Mariano was not walking in the same direction as the other Yankees.  He turned out towards right field, back toward the bullpen.  His lanky frame walked all the way back out to the bullpen at a calm, casual pace.

When he got out there, he pointed to the point and gestured for him to come down.  He signed his ball, smiled and turned away back towards the dugout.  A few other people started shoving things in his face to sign, but he demurred.  A few cursed him for not signing their stuff.  But Mo didn't seem to mind.  He just kept walking at that same deliberate speed.

A grown up can never appreciate an athlete in quite the same way a child does.  So no one will ever replace Don Mattingly as my favorite Yankee.  But this story is why Mariano Rivera is my favorite Yankee of this generation.

Breaking Bad, What Do We Know

This was written about an hour and half before the premier of the penultimate Breaking Bad episode.  If you're not caught up, then this contains spoilers.  And you have bad taste.


There are only two episodes left of Breaking Bad.  For the past several months I have been under the assumption that the last episode will begin, more or less, where the cold opening of the season premiere opened, at a Denny's on Walt's 52nd birthday.

So with only one episode to get us to that point.  Let's consider what we know, and what has to happen to get us there.

What We Know From the First Cold Open.

1. About 3 more months have to pass.  In the first episode of season one, Skyler is about 7 months pregnant.  Last week, the Amber Alert described Holly White as 18 months old.  That means about 21 months have passed since Walt's 50th birthday, which was the day the show started.  

2.   Walt is still sick but he is not on chemo.  His hair has grown back and he has a pretty full beard.  He coughs and pops some pills in the Dennny's bathroom.

3.  He still has some significant money.  He pays what must be 10 to 20K for the machine gun in his trunk.  He also leaves $100 for Lucy as a tip on his free breakfast.  The tip is fairly ostentatious.

4. Walt doesn't seem to plan on being around very long.  He tells the gun dealer that the gun will never "leave town".  He is not worried, particularly, about getting caught.  He has a fake ID and has changed his appearance but leaving the $100 tip is the kind of thing that could get him remembered.  

5.  He has a very big machine gun.

What We Know From the Second Cold Open.

1.  The home is abandoned and has been vandalized.  Kids ride skate boards in the pool and there is some kind of police warning up on the house.  The home has been stripped bare.  No furniture and not much trash.  There is a visible gash in the kitchen floor, like someone was trying to dig for money (or meth).  The name Heisenburg is written in large letters on the living room floor.

2.  He goes back for the ricin.  So he must be expecting a need to poison someone.  Either he thinks the gun will not be sufficient for all of his murdering needs or he thinks ricin will make a good suicide alternative, should he find himself pinned down.  

3.  Some specific memory makes him wince in the bed room mirror.  I'm not sure what that might be, but it's very noticeable and dramatic.  Before re-watching it I thought maybe he was thinking of last week's knife fight with Schyler.  But he's in a different room.  Not sure what this one means but Gilligan is pretty famous for not putting anything on the screen that doesn't have some plot purpose.

4.  There is no sign of Walt's family.  Sure they would have likely been relocated by the DEA after the craziness, but it certainly seems ominous.  

So What Has to Happen Tonight.

So we know that Walt makes it successfully away to his new life as Mr. Lambert, in New Hampshire. Tonight's episode is called The Granite State, which suggests that we'll be seeing Walt's new life in upper New England.  But I suspect that tonight's episode will have more to do with Jesse, Lydia, the Nazis and Schyler.  Something has to happen to give Walt an incentive to throw away his live up North and to come back for revenge.  Some thoughts.

1.  He's dying, so he might not have much to leave behind.

2.  He's spending a little freely, so that might suggest that he's given up the hope of getting the money to Schyler and the kids.  Maybe they are just under police protection, but it certainly seems possible that they are dead.

3.  He has to have a reason to want revenge.  I know he's been through a lot but he can't really feel too burned by the Nazis.  Sure they killed Hank but Walt is smart enough to realize that they were left with little choice once Walt called them to that spot.  

So who is the source of Walt's need for revenge?  When last we saw Walt, he was assenting to Jesse being tortured and even twisted the knife personally by telling him the truth about Jane.  So it seems unlikely that he's coming back to avenge the torture (or death) of Jesse Pinkman.  It's also a little hard to imagine why the Nazis would kill Schyler or the kids at this point.  They are no threat to them, and they have $70 million dollars and a blossoming fortune maker as Meth Dealers to the Czech Republic.  

Here's my best theory.  Jesse acts up or escapes.  So the Nazis kill Brock and/or his mother.  This news gets back to Walt, and he realizes that he is responsible for that kid being killed.  That's the one thing he can't forgive himself for.  So he loads up the Volvo and drives out west stopping only for gas.  Thirty hours later, he's breaking his bacon into the number 52.

The best thing about this prediction is that I am almost certainly wrong.  Breaking Bad is not as important as the Wire or as emotionally engaging as the Sopranos'.  But it is superb story telling, that may push the bounds with some implausible developments but never plays cheap with the emotions of the audience.  I can't wait to see how it all ends.

Happy to Update This Map.

Two months ago I posted a similar map showing the status of Marriage Equality.  But that map was inaccurate in one important respect.  Until about 12 hours ago, zero state had true marriage equality.  A same-sex couple married in New York or Iowa were not entitled to federal benefits, such as the right to collect spousal social security benefits.  And military couples could only get additional Basic Allowance for Housing money if their spouse was of the opposite gender.

So, now when I say equal....I mean equal.  And that's a great thing.  Marriage equality now exists in 13 states, plus the District of Columbia.  That adds up to 161 electoral votes and 30% of the American people. The seven states that have some legal recognition of gay relationships cover an additional 70 Electoral Votes.   More than forty percent of Americans now live in states that have at least some form of legal recognition of gay relationships.

The larger point of my previous post was just how closely the Marriage Equality map tracks the Electoral College map.  Writing today, that's even more clear.  With California and Minnesota brought into the fold, we now have 13 States plus the District of Columbia (Blue in the above map) with true Marriage Equality.  Seven other states provide for either Civil Unions or Domestic Partnerships (Green) that provide at least some, but not all of the benefits of marriage.  Today's opinion stopped short of doing, as some hoped it would, of elevating these relationships to full marital status.  And then 30 states offer no legal recognition of same-sex relationships (Red).

All 21 jurisdictions that recognize gay relationships voted for Barack Obama in 2012.  All twenty four states that voted for Mitt Romney do not recognize gay relationships.  The President's best results in a non-recognition states were Michigan (54%) and New Mexico (53%). The other states that the President carried but do not have legal recognition of gay marriage (PA, VA, OH and FL),  gave him less than 52% .Every state where he got under 50% do not recognize gay marriage.

This correlation is even more pronounced when you sort the states by the margin of difference for the Presidential election.  Barack carried all 21 Recognition states by more than five percent of the vote.  Barack Obama's 15 best states all recognize gay relationships and 11 of them have Marriage Equality.  Every state where President Obama's got more than 54.2% of the vote, recognize gay relationships.

This correlation seems to indicate that Marriage Equality's best changes for growth are in the states that have recognition but not equality.  Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada and Oregon seem the most likely places to achieve marriage equality next.  But beyond those few states, the road ahead may be tough.  New Jersey, and to a lesser degree Wisconsin,  should be prime candidates but they both currently have Republican governors with national political ambitions.

Among the non-recognition states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico may get there, but I don't think it will be in the next year or two.  Beyond that, we may see a slow gradual process whereby Red or at least Purple states embrace marriage equality over a generation, if not longer.  Or maybe, sometime sooner than that, the issue will be before a Supreme Court with a different ideological bent than currently constituted, and the right to be married will be federally recognized.

For now, we have marriage equality in one state for every stripe on the flag. Now, onto the stars.

Look Familiar? The Politics of Marriage Equality

Yesterday the school of my college years became the 11th state to extend marriage rights to gay couples.  Delaware follows Rhode Island who became the 10th state just a week before.  Both Minnesota and Illinois are half-way there, having marriage equality bills that were passed by one chamber and await certain signature by the respective governors if the other chamber passes it.

So we could soon have marriage equality in as many states as there are stripes on our flag.  But the road to one for every star will probably take a while.

California will probably have marriage equality after the Supreme Court rules on Proposition 8 next month.  Nevada has also taken steps towards legalizing gay marriage, but the prospects there are (forgive me) dicier, because the issue wold have to be put to voters, and that can't happen until 2016.  (Oregon will vote on the issue next year.

So I started thinking about where we stand on this issue.  And it occurred to me that with the District of Columbia, we may soon have 16 jurisdictions that allow gay couples to marry.  All of them voted for President Obama's re-election.  So did all the other states that allow gay civil unions but haven't been mentioned yet. (CO, HI, NJ, WI)

So I made this map to show the breakdown of the states by political leanings.  We now have 21 states (including DC) that have completed or taken significant steps toward legalizing gay marriage.  They are all blue.  There are 7 blue states that have not.  It seems to me that the 6 blue states are going to be the next places for equality proponents to advance the cause.  (New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia and Florida, in rough likelihood of them coming around on the issue).

All 24 Romney states limit marriage to heterosexual couples.  Will any of them budge before these last few blue hold outs?  My guess is now.  And in about 4 years, we might have a map that exactly matches the electoral college division.

Deep Blue-Marriage Equality States

Pale Blue-States with Civil Unions or Where Marriage Equality Legislation Has Passed One Chamber

Yellow-Obama states that have not moved toward equality

Red-Romney States

Thoughts on Oscar

Best Picture.  I saw six of the nine nominees.  I doubt that Amour, Les Miserables or Life of Pi is going to win, so I won't trouble myself over missing these three.  Of the remaining six, I liked them in this order.

1. Lincoln.  I was so ambivalent about this movie.  I adore Abraham Lincoln but I have grown very tired of Spielberg's aesthetic and need to be nice.  But he took some chances with this movie, and I liked it very much.  I also am going to go against the consensus and predict that it will win this category because....

2. Zero Dark 30.  I was mildly disappointed by this movie for the opposite reason that Argo irked me.  I think that Catherine Bigelow felt overly constrained by the need to get the details right, and that made for less than cinematic movie making.  But she's a great talent and this is still a very strong film.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the reaction of various political camps.  Last fall it was assumed that this movie would be a thinly veiled campaign flick for the President.  They wisely delayed the release to avoid that controversy.  But the President is barely mentioned in this movie; the most political thing about the movie is the honest depiction of the torture that our interrogators put subjected suspected terrorists too in the early part of this decade.  The reaction of the right-wingers is particularly interesting.  They like to point out that these "enhanced interrogation" techniques preceded the capture of Bin Laden but they haven't quite embraced this movie as a sop to their sensibilities precisely because it shows that (back to English) torture in an accurate and honest way.  And no one, not even Dick Cheney, can bring himself to run around saying that we should be proud of having treated people like that.  (And of course it must be emphasized that torture led to many dead ends and distractions that might have delayed the eventual killing of bin-Laden by a number of years.)


3. Argo.  I perfectly fine, adequate, entertaining movie that will probably be most remembered for the liberties that it took with history.  I think the only reason this movie is considered the favorite is that it's written around the idea that people from Hollywood once behaved bravely and produced a minor miracle.  Maybe that's enough to get it over the top but the fact that Ben Afleck was not nominated for Best Director makes me suspect that support for the movie is weaker than believed.

4. Djano Unchained.  Difficult to watch. I swayed back and forth during the movie between admiring Tarrantino for not pulling any punches in depicting how brutal the institution of slavery was and feeling queasy that he was using this violence in an exploitative way. And the 3rd act is way too long.

5. Silver Linings Playbook.  Cute and mildly ambitious for the genre but doesn't quite deliver.

6. Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Heavy handed and kind of dull.

Best Actor.  Daniel Day-Lewis will win and he deserves too.  Denzel was terrific in a pretty mediocre film.  Bradley Cooper stepped up his game.  Did not see Hugh Jackman sing or Jaquin Phoenix in the Master but if there's going to be an upset here, I think it would be Phoenix.

Best Actress:  Jessica Chastain was very good in Zero Dark 30 so I'm rooting for her but I think it might go to  Emmanual Riva for Amour, a film that I have not seen.

Best Supporting Actor:  Quite a field. All 5 nominees have won before, in either the lead or supporting category.  I think Alan Arkin deserves it among the nominees I saw but I'm once again thinking that there could be an upset from the Master.  I also wouldn't rule out Robert Deniro because it's been a long time since he's won and Silver Linings seems to have been very popular with the Academy.  Tommy Lee Jones is the betting favorite and I enjoyed his performance but it wasn't much of a stretch for him to play a curmudgeon.  Christopher Waltz was fine but he wasn't even the best supporting actor in his movie.  That would be Samuel L. Jackson, who was robbed of a nomination this year and probably should have won the whole thing.

Best Supporting Actress:  I didn't see Les Mis but I know Oscar bait when I see it and Anne Hathaway has all the makings of a trooper.  She will win.  Helen Hunt gave the best performance that I saw in this category.  (I have no literally no memory of Bradley Cooper's mom in Silver Linings but I guess she impressed someone.)  The lifetime achievement Oscar should go to Amy Adam's agent.  Year in and year out she plays mediocre parts in movies way better than her performance and yet she's been nominated for 4 Oscars in 8 years.  Remarkable.

Best Director: Spielberg

The Ron Wood

@ronalddavidwood Would you rather fight a horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?
— Frank Venis (@spiderstumbled) February 19, 2013

It's the little things in life.  Earlier today I sent a tweet to Ron Wood, and he made it a "favorite".  That's high praise and worthy of such a lofty subject.