5. They've Found Something for T-Dog to Do
Its an unfortunate Hollywood cliché, but the ethnic minority character always seems to die first. So when I first started watching the Walking Dead, I naturally feared for T-Dogs safety. I felt a sense of inevitability when the group confronted those OAP-sheltering gangsters. When the zombies attacked the camp, I thought hed be amongst the bodies. After the farm was overrun, I thought hed kick it. Yet I shouldnt have worried- T-Dog is nigh-on indestructible. Im pretty sure that come the end of the world (well, the second end of the world) itll be just T-Dog and the cockroaches. But this is just a back-handed compliment, as it highlights another problem. As a character, T-Dog just constantly treads water- he doesnt represent anything, so theres no point killing him off. Shanes plight was tragic because he represented moral corruptibility, the sense that a good man can be brought low by impossible situations. Sophia was an embodiment of innocence, her death highlighting of the cruelty of the TWDs world. But T-Dog? T-Dog was a non-entity; he didnt represent anything, and thus his narrative suffered- nothing was at stake. But series 3 could be T-Dogs time, entirely because of one man; Merle Dixon. Merle represents the one interesting thing T-Dog ever did. Because of T-Dog, everyones favourite awful human being remained handcuffed to the roof of a walker-infested shopping centre, facing certain doom if not for the timely intervention of a rusty hacksaw. Now hes back, as formidable as ever, with a frickin
knife-club(!) where the stump used to be. And hes
totally pissed at T-Dog. If that isnt plotline gold, I dont know what is.