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Is The Walking Dead’s Negan a Psychopath?

With the seventh season of The Walking Dead approaching there’s one name on every fan’s lips…Negan. Love or hate him, there’s no doubt he’s going to make a serious impact (no pun intended) on the post-apocalyptic world. He’s charming enough to amass a large group of followers, brutal enough to keep numerous communities under his thumb, and smart enough to lure Rick and his crew into a deadly trap. Given these characteristics and his seeming delight in cruelty it’s understandable that one of the more frequent labels thrown at him is psychopath.

The question is: Is that an appropriate label for the leader of The Saviors?

If we look at a key tool in diagnosing psychopaths – the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) – and compare Negan’s behavior (in the show and comics) we might find our answer…

(Note: Going forward there will be spoilers for the comic…Possibly the show.)

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Fear the Walking Dead “Date of Death”: Sometimes Children Are Just Terrible

Fear the Walking Dead’s “Date of Death” picks up a short while after the final scene of the last episode, with Travis now at the gates of the hotel along with a small crowd of other trying to get in.  On whole the rest of the episode is mainly a giant flashback that focuses on how Travis ended up there alone and why Chris is the worst.

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Fear the Walking Dead “Pillar of Salt”: Kismet or The Bermuda Triangle?

Certain episodes are climatic episodes – ones you’ll be talking about for days, weeks – and others are more building-block episodes – ones that get you to the climaxes…Fear the Walking Dead’s “Pillar of Salt” is the latter.  It is all about loosely stitching the fractured Abigail crew together and building towards whatever major events are coming next.

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Fear the Walking Dead “Pablo and Jessica”: Sex, Drugs, & Lost Loved Ones

More than anything Fear the Walking Dead’s “Pablo and Jessica” focuses on how characters react after the loss of loved ones.  Even the opening scene speaks to this as Madison takes a page out of her “lost” son’s playbook in killing and gutting an Infected, then covering herself and Strand in the blood to escape the overrun hotel bar.  Once outside they find their truck gone; Strand presumes Alicia and Ofelia fled, forcing Madison to again face the possibility of losing someone she loves.  Something she stubbornly refuses to do as she insists that, unlike Nick, Alicia wouldn’t just leave, and is relieved to be proven correct when she finds Alicia (along with Elena and Hector) banging on the other side of one of spa’s doors.

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Subversion Magic in Stranger Things

Over and over I saw articles discussing the wonderful manner in which Stranger Things subverted the “bad-boyfriend” stereotype with its character, Steve Harrington.  Steve starts as the typical 80s jock who’s kind of a jerk, but still cute and popular enough for sweet and brainy Nancy to turn her back on what she cares about – good grades, doing the right thing, her best friend, Barb – in order to be with him.  As the show progresses Steve seems to increasingly play into his archetype until…he doesn’t.  Until he stands up to his nasty friends and helps both Nancy and his romantic rival, Jonathan, fight off the Demogorgon at risk to his own safety.

…But “Bad-Boyfriend” Steve isn’t the only stereotype subverted.  In truth, the magic of the show lies, in no small part, in all the archetypes and tropes it sets up and then slowly tears apart across the episodes.

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Fear the Walking Dead “Do Not Disturb”: A Friend in Need

The opening scene of Fear the Walking Dead’s “Do Not Disturb” is a flashback to the wedding the hotel had before the world fell apart.  As the bride and her father dance he collapses, dies, then comes back to bite his daughter in the face as she tries to give him mouth-to-mouth.  After that the hotel manager promptly locks the entire wedding party and their guests in the ballroom.  …Thanks show writers, I needed another reason to instinctually dislike weddings.

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Fear the Walking Dead “Los Muertos”: Cults & Turn-Down Service

The latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead is “Los Muertos”  – Spanish for “The Dead” – and it kicks off with just that…the dead.  Specifically, a man feeding himself to a pack of them guarding La Colonia while the rest of the community chants and Nick looks on with the man’s daughter.  It’s pretty clear, just from that alone, that Nick’s found himself in yet another undead-loving cult.  This one may be more dangerous than Cecilia and her fellow house-staff, however, because this one is an entire, functioning, town of filled with the devoted.

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Fear the Walking Dead “Grotesque”: Traumatic Trip to Tijuana

 

Remember when everyone on Fear the Walking Dead was stuck on a boat and pirates were trying to take all their stuff?  Or they were all in a villa run by a crazed housekeeper who believed the undead were just the next step in living?  Yeah…those good times are pretty clearly over.  Everyone’s splintered and if the mid-season premiere is any indication, their lives are going to be a series of terrible experiences from now on.

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Stranger Things Trauma

There are easily a thousand amazing things in the Netflix series Stranger Things, from the literary and film references to the scientific concepts behind the “Upside Down”.  The music is classic 80s’, the tone wonderfully nostalgic, and the story a great mix of humor, drama, and tense, sci-fy, horror.  The characters are classic 80s’ cliches, but also deep, complex, creations with unique personalities, distinct faults, and, in certain cases, possible psychological disorders…specifically PTSD.  Two specific characters on the show exhibit symptoms even prior to having to battle a Demogorgon — Eleven (aka El) and Chief Hopper (aka Hop).

— Please note there will be many, many, spoilers for the show coming up. —

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