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.

Favorite Characters: Simon Monroe (In the Flesh)

Handling the Undead Liberation Army stuff in series 2 (especially when it involves major characters) requires a great deal of care, and overall, I think In the Flesh addresses it in a thoughtful way.  It really looks at the parallels between a terrorist organization and a cult, not shying away from the horrible acts but also examining why someone with PDS would be drawn to a group like the ULA.  This aspect of the show is always at its most interesting as it relates to Simon (series 2 spoilers.)

It’s hard to nail down Simon early on, which is as it should be.  In series 1, we see the shrouded figure of the Undead Prophet preaching undead supremacy on the Internet, and the second season opens with a Blue Oblivion attack on public transit.  Everything we’ve seen of the ULA suggests very bad news.  When Amy brings Simon back to Roarton with her and goes around calling herself one of “the redeemed,” we have every reason to be worried.

But are Simon and his ideas dangerous, or aren’t they?  The answer is yes and no.  There are clear red flags:  he keeps Blue Oblivion at the bungalow, he’s preparing his followers for the Second Rising, and he does think he and other people with PDS are ascended in a way that the living aren’t.  However, not everything he believes is bad.  He encourages people with PDS (including Kieren) not to be ashamed of who they are and not to hide their true faces.  He stands up against having their rights stripped away and is appalled to see the squalid conditions in which a pair of untreated rabids are kept at the local hospital, waiting to be shipped to the treatment center.  And even though he has a hidden agenda in asking his followers to share their Rising stories (he’s trying to identify the First Risen,) it’s still valuable to get people to come to terms with that part of themselves and talk about what they experienced in their untreated state.

Of course, it can easily be argued that the good parts of Simon’s ideology just make it even more dangerous, because they lure people into a false sense of trust/safety and prime them to accept the more extreme stuff.  It might also be said something good could emerge from the ULA, discarding the hateful elements and keeping the salvageable aspects to create something new.  The show doesn’t ultimately come down on either side where the ULA is concerned, but Simon at least is shown to be possible of redemption.  It’s hard, because he came to the Undead Prophet when he was very lost and destroyed by guilt.  He’d spent months in the treatment center undergoing torturous experiments in a desperate attempt to be “cured,” he learned that he killed his mom in his untreated state – oh my god, how tragic can you get? – and he was living on the streets, alone in the world, and hating himself.  In the face of all that awfulness, the ULA was this shining thread of hope, a place where people like him were accepted and he was taught that he wasn’t a monster.  It’s no wonder he was pulled in so thoroughly, and it’s also understandable that it takes him a long time to reject the darker side of the ULA. 

I discussed Kieren and Simon’s relationship in a previous post, but Simon’s realization of what the Undead Prophet wants to do to Kieren (who Simon believes is the First Risen) is just brutal and raw.  As weird as it is to sympathize with a cult disciple who’s been told to prepare himself to bring a sacrificial lamb to slaughter, I absolutely feel for Simon in that moment and root for him to finally let the scales drop and see what he’s allowed himself to become, to understand that he can demand self-worth without having to buy it in blood.

Relationship Spotlight: Rick Macy & Kieren Walker (In the Flesh)

Oh good gracious, Kieren and Rick.  In the Flesh hooked me by the end of the pilot, but it owned me by the end of the first season, and Kieren and Rick were a huge part of that.  Looking deeper at this really compelling, massively complicated relationship (major spoilers for series 1.)

In a way, as Kieren navigates figuring out himself as a young partially-deceased man in series 1, he sees two paths laid out for him by fellow PDS folk Amy (embracing her undeadness) and Rick (going along with his dad’s full-on denial that Rick is undead.)  Kieren himself falls somewhere in the middle, not sure how to reconcile what’s become of him with how he still feels.  If Amy is encouraging Kieren toward a new life, Rick is inviting him back into an old one, but it’s a life where neither of them fit anymore, not like they used to.  They’re still themselves, of course, but they also are people with PDS, and denying that fact won’t change it.

Strangely enough, it’s this pull from Rick that really helps Kieren move forward in coming to terms with his PDS.  With Amy, Kieren tends to dig in his heels and urge caution, warning her not to rock the boat, but when he sees how Rick acquiesces to his dad’s anti-PDS rhetoric and violence, it shakes Kieren out of his hesistancy.  It makes him stop and go, “Wait – this is really messed up.”  He still cares for Rick, enormously so, and in his horror at Rick being caught up in something so conducive to self-loathing, it helps Kieren say, not just “stand up for who you are,” but “stand up for who we are.”  In trying to save Rick from his dad’s toxicity, Kieren finds a bit of peace for himself as well.

You get the sense that this whole thing is a repeat of when they were alive.  We don’t have too many details on Kieren and Rick’s past relationship.  We know that they were close, that Rick’s dad freaked out after Kieren “made [Rick] a mix CD,” that Rick joined the army essentially to prove he wasn’t a sissy, and that Rick’s death in Afghanistan sunk Kieren into a depression that ended in his suicide.  We know Kieren blamed himself for Rick’s death, which further influenced his decision to end his own life (side note – I likee the conversation between Rick and Kieren about how the latter died, and how shocked Rick is by it.  How he simply can’t believe that Kieren could have killed himself in his grief over Rick, how he’d been so sure that Kieren was going to “make it out” by leaving Roarton for art school, that Kieren would’ve been better off without him.) 

It’s a similar pattern, with Rick’s desire to placate his dad’s prejudices wreaking havoc on his personal well-being and Kieren getting caught in the wake of it, but while Rick is falling into old habits, Kieren sees the writing on the wall.  He doesn’t want to go down that road again.  He’s more assertive, and he begs Rick to be so too, for his own sake as well as Kieren’s.  And though, thanks to Rick’s horrific wreck of a dad, it still ends in tragedy, both boys are stronger in their own parts.  Under Kieren’s influence, Rick stops lying about himself, and in the devastating aftermath, with Rick murdered by his own father and dumped outside Kieren’s house, Kieren is shattered but keeps on going.  He confronts Rick’s dad and throws the contemptible thing he’s just done back in his face, and even as his heartbreak overwhelms him, he makes a conscious choice to “stay” this time, to lean on his family and friends rather than collapse into his depression and be consumed by it.

Relationship Spotlight: Simon Monroe & Kieren Walker (In the Flesh)

(Season 2 spoilers.)

This is quite possibly one of the most complicated romantic relationships I’ve ever seen on TV, and I really appreciate seeing such rich conflict in a story about a same-sex couple.  While there are exceptions, when same-sex couples come up against roadblocks on TV, it’s often specifically about their sexuality, frequently depicting a new relationship alongside a coming-out narrative or a storyline about external bigotry.  Not that these stories can’t be compelling and well-done, of course (Emily and Naomi’s story in the third season of Skins is absolutely gorgeous,) it’s good to see variety in the kinds of stories that are told, and Kieren and Simon’s problems have nothing to do with orientation.

Really, every relationship Kieren has in the show is about facilitating his journey in accepting his PDS.  This makes sense – when you’re undead and (relatively) newly-medicated to manage that condition, when your society views you as a monster and hates you for the things you did in your untreated state, that’s what’s going to be on your mind most of the time.  And so, everyone Kieren encounters offers a slightly different lens through which to understand his PDS.  He can be encouraged by them or push back against them, but it’s all about that road to acceptance, and dishy Irishman or not, Simon is no exception.

As one of the disciples of the Undead Prophet who’s come to Roarton to identify the First Risen, Simon has a totally different perspective on PDS than Kieren.  At this point in the series, Kieren has learned to live in his own skin, but he’s still internalized the idea that PDS is something wrong with him, something to disguise so the living don’t get too uncomfortable.  Simon, who preaches undead superiority, is deeply disappointed in Kieren when they first meet, despite being drawn to him.  He makes pointed comments about Kieren’s flesh-tone makeup and colored contacts, shaking his head at Kieren for being ashamed of who he is.  It’s true that Kieren has a way to go in terms of self-love, but as someone who never loses sight of his culpability for his actions during the Rising, he also can’t get behind the idea that people with PDS are “ascended.”

So their initial interactions are mostly ideological, with Kieren arguing with Simon that he’s not denying who he is but at the same time feeling stirred by Simon’s message of self-acceptance.  And in the midst of all that, they’re also attracted to each other, with each getting continually pulled in by the other.  It’s a really fascinating mess of interpersonal back-and-forth and inner conflict; Kieren’s dealings with Simon have him doubting what he thinks of himself, and Simon’s longing for Kieren has him doubting what he believes.  It’s a big deal when Simon puts on his makeup and contacts to go to tea with Kieren’s family, just like it’s hugely important that Kieren wants Simon present when he’s finally ready to remove his own makeup.

It all comes to a dizzying head of love, religion, and politics when Simon discovers that Kieren appears to be the First Risen.  It’s with awe in his voice that he relays what he’s found to the Undead Prophet, (“he’s beautiful,”) but the rug is sickly yanked out from under him when he learns of the the Prophet’s intention:  the First Risen is to be sacrificed in order to bring on a second Rising, and the Prophet expects Simon to be the one to do it. 

I mean, wow.  How’s that for drama?  Everything Simon feels for Kieren colliding with everything he believes, the teachings that essentially saved him after he left the treatment center now telling him he has to kill the boy he cares for.  This is what people mean when they talk about someone “warring inside themselves.”  Holy crap.  Watching Simon wrestle with these two immense forces in his mind in an experience that leaves you wrung-out, but it’s also a genuine dramatic pleasure to see him tear down the sky of all he’s built up for the sake of Kieren.  I’ll say it again:  wow.

On In the Flesh’s Zombie Apocalypse

I’ve already written about the characters, relationships, and social discrimination aspects of In the Flesh.  Today, I’m putting the aside the drama and metaphor to focus on the supernatural backdrop.  I obviously adore In the Flesh as a drama, but it also really works for me as a zombie story and, since virtually nothing works for me as a zombie story, that’s saying something.

First off, I’m so thankful that In the Flesh’s undeadness is not spread through bites.  Instead, the PDS population is entirely composed of people who died in the year before the Rising.  This works better, both for the show’s allegorical elements – a finite number of people with PDS is a clearly-defined minority population, instead of an exponentially-growing slew of monsters overrunning the world – and for my zombie discomfort.  The infection angle is what really freaks me out in a leave-all-the-lights-on-and-double-check-the-locks way, so for whatever reason, I can handle Kieren killing people in his untreated state much better than I can handle him turning them.  This also dovetails nicely into the theme of rampant misinformation about PDS.  It isn’t spread through the bites, but many people think it is, earning the undead reputations as both murderers and carriers.  Based on the movies, people just assume they get how it works.  And by the way, I love that they know about zombies from movies – far too often, characters in zombie movies are genre-oblivious.  You’d think they’d never heard the concept before, let alone seen Night of the Living Dead, and it takes them forever to figure out the thing with the bites.

Even without the undead people, there are lots of little touches to remind you that this is post-post-apocalyptic England.  There’s the obvious, sidewalk memorials and “Have you seen my missing loved one?” posters, the quarantine/warning signs at the graveyard and the “Beware Rotters” graffiti on walls.  The Rising has recently joined the history curriculum at school, and the doctors who first treated PDS are the newest heroes of science.  Some details are so subtle I’m not sure if they’re intentional or I’m just fanwanking. Despite being explicitly set in the present, the show’s technology is way outdated for 2013; Kieren’s family has a landline and one shared desktop in the living room, and I can’t recall anyone with a cell phone.  This seems wildly out-of-place, until you remember that this world has spent the past four years, not creating new tablets, apps, and phones, but clawing its way back from a zombie apocalypse.  Plenty of our advances wouldn’t exist for them, and while we’d progressed beyond desktops and landlines when the Rising started in 2009, I imagine there a lot of looting, along with trading expensive toys for food or weapons.  With society just getting back on its feet and everyone preoccupied with the PDS issue, there probably isn’t much 2009-or-later technology back on the market yet.  Plus, since the series is set in a small village, I suppose they have limited supply lines and, once again, essentials are the likely priority.  So, it makes sense to me that people would be using the old technology that was gathering dust in 2009 and didn’t catch looters’ eyes during the Rising.

I love that PDS folk, when they’re wearing their makeup, look like they’re wearing makeup.  It’s not a matter of looking “undead” or “normal” – it’s clearly “undead” or “undead but trying to look normal.”  Kieren’s made-up complexion doesn’t look the least bit natural, which highlights the societal importance of trying to “pass” and the psychological effect of its futility.  I’m sure it would have been easier for the makeup department not to make the distinction, but I really appreciate that they did.  And, on a last note of zombie realism, I love that Kieren totally runs like he’s dead, all stiff and unnatural.  I always notice it, and it’s always a terrific detail.