9. Tyreese Isn't Going The Same Way As T-Dog And Oscar Any Time Soon
Poor, poor T-Dog. Existing as the butt of Walking Dead's under-developed character jokes, everyone's favourite Christian group bus-driver always sauntered about in the background, never giving us reasons to reconsider exactly what the showrunners thought of him. He always threatened to be more than the sum of his (barely-sighted) parts and the show-runners never gave his own plotline, save for standing there and looking scowly. Yet when the writers finally chose to do something with him, it pandered to a terribly out-dated trope killing the black guy first to raise tension, rather than throw him a characterisation bone. He went out in a tragic way (they later found him picked clean) but weirdly, they then offed the only other black guy in the cast in the TV-original Oscar in double-quick time. He seemed a pretty cool bloke, and the whole character of an honourable prisoner was worthy of exploration. Yet ridiculously, Oscar didn't get any characterisation, nor the opportunity to trundle along in the background like Tyreese. No, he was shot in Woodbury, merely a sacrifice to show Rick's continuing mental instability. As I'm sure many people were yelling what the hell, show? The one-black-guy policy was then made more awkward by Tyreese rocking up at the prison soon after, but honestly, this time I'm pretty excited. Tyreese is a fan favourite from the comics, and Kirkman, Moore and Adlard turned him into something compelling. To my mind, he's going to be the new Michonne, but without all the strange moping. He's protected by fan-love, so if they do decide to T-Dog/Oscar him out of the show, there's going to be hell to pay, and a whole lot of dramatic potential lost. So come season 4, expect to see this weirdly racist trend dropped for more melee punch-outs and bad shooting from Rick's burly counterpart, and that sounds cool to me. I mean, just look at when he basically beats a crowd of zombies to death in the trailer. Doesn't that look awesome? Bonus point The Wire's Larry Gillard Jr.'s joining the show's main cast on the prison side of things for this season. He plays former army medic Bob Stookey, so if he shows up and Tyreese stays alive, you'll know the writers finally got over this odd behaviour.