‘Kingdom’ on Netflix Episode 4 Recap: To ‘TWD’ or Not to ‘TWD’

Kingdom is the anti–Walking Dead. Kind of.

Is it a show based on the widespread (if waning) cultural appeal of zombies? Yes, obviously. And even if its direct antecedent is Game of Thrones‘ pseudohistorical fantasy, it’s not like the Netflix algorithm is unaware that TWD is still one of the most popular shows on TV.

But for the most part, the similarities end there, for one very important reason: On Kingdom, risking your life to save the weak and vulnerable is the best thing you can do, in many ways the only thing that separates the humans from the monsters. On The Walking Dead and its spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, risking your life to save the weak and vulnerable is the worst thing you can do, because it invites monsters—both living and dead—into your midst every time.

As I’ve written here before:

The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead send the message to a society in the throes of endless war, openly nativist and racist politics, and mass gun psychosis that the only way to ensure the survival of you and your loved ones is to act with maximum brutality at all times. It’s not that I’m saying these shows are turning people into killers; on the contrary, everyone involved knows damn well that this is decadent nonsense since virtually no one watching will ever be in the personal position to do anything like what Travis Manawa and Madison Clark are made to do. But the same is true of the NRA or Donald Trump or Ben Carson, who for political and financial profit fuel the paranoid, masturbatory murder fantasies of a country full of shut-ins terrified of the unwashed, undead masses flowing over the border, out of the ghettoes, and into Main Street USA. Ideologically, Rick Grimes and George Zimmerman are just a zombie apart.

I was wrong about one thing: There are plenty of opportunities to brutalize the others in our midst, provided you join the Proud Boys or ICE. But the illusion that anyone these people are related to are at any actual risk of harm from the people they attack is just that, an illusion. TWD primes the pump for it. It’s the fascism, stupid.

Compare that to this episode of Kingdom. Prince Lee Chang, his bodyguard Mu-yeong, physician Seo-bi, mystery man Yeong-Sin, even the ill-fated minor character Chief Scholar Kim Sun: All of them rush in to dangerous situations with little hope of escape in order to protect the people in their charge, and the show’s narrative economy largely rewards them, since all of them live to see the next episode. (I’m not optimistic about the Chief Scholar, but he’s still breathing when leave him.) I’m not saying good deeds must always result in good outcomes, far from it. I’m saying if I’m going to watch a show about an apocalyptic scenario, I at least want to rest assured that the filmmakers don’t think you’re a rube for feeling solidarity with other human beings than the ones in your in-group.

Speaking of which, look what happens to the looking-out-for-number-one crowd. The magistrate and army captain who skipped town on a boat rather than aid the peasants who are supposed to be their responsibility wind up trapped in the water with one of the zombies, brought aboard in a fancy box by an old aristocrat who couldn’t bear the thought of her precious fancy son sharing the same bonfires as the corpses of the hoi polloi. Owned!

And there’s dissension in the ranks among the biggest of the bad guys, too. When Lord Cho, the head of the hated Haewon Cho Clan and secret power behind the throne, decides to show the nation’s top scholars the zombified king and then execute them for treason, he does this without consulting with, and against the express orders of, his daughter the queen, who technically outranks him. She seems to come around to the wisdom of his open war against the most influential scholars in the land when she sees he has received her brother’s decapitated head, recovered from his battle with Prince Chang by some poor unfortunate footsoldier who gets murked after the delivery in a literal kill-the-messenger scenario. Still, if I were her I wouldn’t like the way Daddy Dearest is talking about the importance of having a son to claim the throne. What happens if the little bundle of dynastic joy is a girl? I wouldn’t want to find out.

The final thing to consider in the case for Kingdom against the defendant The Walking Dead is the way it pulls from other, more uplifting and humanistic sources—specifically The Lord of the Rings. The show has hardly tried to hide the influence: There have been beacon-lighting sequences like (if less spectacular than) the famous one from The Return of the King. There was a reading from a spookily unfinished journal like the one Gandalf finds in the Mines of Moria back in the pilot. This episode is full of zombies emerging from every nook and cranny like goblins, and people running through the woods with enemies in hot pursuit, and arrows falling like rain through the fog of war—standbys of Peter Jackson’s opus. It’s also full of good guys either charging toward the enemy or looking around to watch people they care about die in slow motion like too many LotR characters and moments to count.

But, goddammit, they’re still killing kids in this thing. And I just…I just don’t think the material quite justifies the extremity.

It’s not as bad in this episode as it was in the last, certainly. The guilt felt by Chang—not just about his failure to protect the peasants or the way his presence has brought danger upon them but the way his entire social class has constructed a society so grotesquely unequal that thousands of people are too poor to have ever even seen meat before, much less eaten it—is a major theme now, whereas last episode it was sandwiched in between comic relief and gore. Seo-bi and Yeong-sin are also thinking and feeling very deeply about the suffering the people around them are experiencing. And again, the “screw you, I got mine” crowd are always portrayed as being terrible to the point where it’s almost funny.

But I’ve listened to multiple little girls scream in terror about their impending death, and I’ve seen an adorable kid lie dead with an arrow in her back from a government soldier and then get gently laid to rest by the woman she spent about one day viewing as the replacement for the mother she watched eat her sister alive. And for what? A six-episode Netflix zombie thriller? Doesn’t The Walking Dead abuse serious tragedy for cheap sentiment in much the same way? You can count apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic stories that put the suffering of children at the center and deal with it in a worthwhile way on two hands, maybe. Could Kingdom possibly be headed anywhere worth that journey?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Kingdom Episode 4 on Netflix