Quote:
Originally Posted by HardlinkSells
always been curious.
|
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollyw...-investigation
Late last night, in accordance with New Media for the Modern Showrunner Handbook guidelines, The Walking Dead executive producer Glen Mazzara took to Twitter to interact with fans of the series he inherited halfway through its tumultuous second season. While he did respond to queries — like, "Michonne is the most unrealistic character from the comics, why choose to bring her in?" and, "Which of the survivors from S2 would u want to party with?" (Answers: they have a good storyline for her; Maggie) — he notably dodged one inquisition, which, in fairness, perhaps could have been posed in a more clinical fashion to better communicate its unquestionable import: Do zombies poop?
Still, dodge he did. While it's certainly possible he didn't answer because the question has never come up for debate during lulls in marathon writers' room sessions either devising new ways for Carl to be placed in mortal peril or considering more canonical debates over the function of the undead gastrointestinal system* (why not knock out both by having the kid stumble upon a zombie hiding in an outhouse?), it felt like maybe Mazzara was just avoiding opening that particular can of undigested worms.
[*Remember when they cut open that zombie's stomach to search for Sophia's remains? The show's characters apparently believe an undead GI tract still works. Hmmm. And: Is it instructive that tracker Daryl chose to dig around in the zombie's body cavity looking for masticated chunks of the little girl rather than scour the nearby ground for extant piles of flesh-flecked zom-turds? Hmmmmm.]
So what's the answer? A brief office discussion yielded no satisfying conclusion; some thought that a zombie's constant search for "sustenance" implies that their "eating" constitutes a bodily function identical to that of their living human incarnation, and their "food" must be handled in the same way, thus: They "shit." (Though whether this elimination is actually digested matter or merely raw material traveling through whatever is left of a zombie's gastrointestinal system was not explored; is this just splitting hairs, or a crucial distinction? The "necrobiological process vs. simple gravity question" might be a separate debate entirely.) Others think zombies "chew" more than "eat," just gnashing away at any available flesh with no concern for any "nutrition" the incidental "feast" may provide, not unlike a ravenous birthday party of 10 furiously searching for the bottom of an Olive Garden Never Ending Pasta Bowl. With no definitive answer forthcoming, we turned to the Internet, which, unsurprisingly, finds itself yearning for closure of the very same existential question: