Favorite Characters: Rick Macy (In the Flesh)

Even though Ricky is only on a few episodes of In the Flesh (even for a series with only nine episodes total, his arc is very short-lived,) his character is still so rich.  He’s deeply flawed but sympathetic in such a rueful way – short as it is, I love his time on the show (Rick-related spoilers.)

Rick doesn’t appear until the second episode, but his presence is felt before that.  For both Kieren and the Macys, Rick is a sort of spector hanging over the entire first season.  His parents have spent four years mourning him after his death in combat in Afghanistan, celebrating ghostly birthdays with his picture on the mantle.  Meanwhile, Kieren blames himself that Rick felt he had to join the army in the first place, and Kieren’s depression and misplaced guilt after Rick’s death led to Kieren’s suicide.  Even without taking PDS into account, it’s a big deal when episode 1 ends with the news that Rick is coming home.

But of course, this is In the Flesh, and so PDS has to come into it.  Rick, the war hero who died in combat, rose from the grave and has spent much of the past four years as exactly the sort of “rabid” that his dad Bill has been fighting against.  This is right around the time that people with PDS are just starting to come home from the treatment center, and PDS folks in Roarton are in hiding for good reason; in the pilot, Bill spearheads a raid on one of Kieren’s neighbors, dragging a woman with PDS out into the street and shooting her in cold blood.  This is the environment, this is the family, that the undead Rick comes home to.

But something’s broken in Bill.  His loathing toward undead “rotters” collides with his love for Rick, and the two feelings can’t reconcile.  He sees Rick in his flesh-toned makeup and colored contacts and goes into complete denial that Rick has PDS.  Despite the jagged-looking scars running down his son’s face held together with surgical staples, despite knowing that Rick died four years ago, he can’t accept it.  He pretends that everything is normal, but not in a “he’s still Rick, no matter what” way.  This is in an unhealthy “nothing has changed, you are definitely 100% living” way.  He takes Rick to the pub, glaring daggers at anyone who suggests that anything is different about Rick and pouring drinks down him even though Rick’s undead body can’t digest anymore and trying to do otherwise makes him sick.  He praises his hero son in the same breath that he condemns the rotter “abominations” who’ve come back to town and urges Rick to go on patrol with him to search for rabids in the woods (and, upon finding some, his aim is not to get them sent to the treatment center.)

And Rick, breaking my heart, goes along with it.  Just like he did when he was alive, joining the army to prove his “manliness” after Bill got freaked about Rick and Kieren being too close, he lets his dad’s prejudices dictate who he is, which absolutely keeps him from finding peace with who he is now.  He physically can’t act like nothing’s changed, but Bill’s attitudes force him to try, anyway, to the detriment of his own physical and mental well-being.  That shot of Rick looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, covering the scarred half of his face with one hand and trying to smile, just kills me.  In his limited time on the show, Rick is caught between Bill and Kieren, who are both battling for his soul.  Bill is trying to make him what he can never be again, and Kieren is trying to help him acknowledge who he is.  You know which side you want to win out, but even as you root for Rick to go with Kieren, you know Bill won’t let things lie.