“Michonne, you’re gone..these are words that Rick should choke upon, my Michonne…

In the absence of “Homeland,” currently waiting for Claire Danes to get back in shape after becoming a mom, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is the best ethics show on TV. Apocalypse ethics is instructive and fascinating, because it addresses ethical problems as they were originally considered, before laws, before enforcement methods, and before organized morality. The objective is survival and continuation of the tribe and the species, without abandoning all semblance of humanity.

Yesterday’s episode built to an ethical dilemma of major consequence; naturally, some reviewers thought this was boring. Rick, the former sheriff leading the (mostly) good guys through the zombie-filled wilderness that was once the United States, is trying to protect the group’s refuge, an abandoned prison, from the imminent attack of a larger, better-armed commune run by a deranged psycho who calls himself “the Governor.” A former member of Rick’s group who now consorts (cough!) with the Governor (and who has been rightly condemned as an idiot for doing so, since she either knows or should know that he has the basic instincts of Vlad the Impaler), attempts a mediation to avoid bloodshed, and Rick and the Governor meet to parley. Continue reading →