Ripping Good Yarns: The Problem with the Children

A young Carl Grimes, played by talented young actor Chandler Riggs, is standing next to his mother, Lori Grimes, played by Sarah Wayne Callies, in a scene from early in the series, when he was around 10.

Carl Grimes now.  As you can see, the boy is now a young man.  I know, with  my son, 13 year old Benjamin, having gone through similar growth spurts.  When he was 10, he was only about half his mother's height.  Now he is taller than me.

The problem with children on dramas that take place over shorter periods of time is that they grow faster than the time that passes on the series.  Carl has gone from a small boy to grown teenager. Normal growth spurts for a young man over four years.  The Walking Dead, in the period that Carl has aged four years, has probably passed no more than a few months to a year.

Carl is such a central character to the Walking Dead mythos, that he gets a pass and they deal with it as best they can.  But I'm sure the producers realize that having a whole passel of young kids, growing faster than the show's chronology, was going to be a problem.  Which may help explain why every kid from the beginning of the season is now gone, except for Carl and the infant, Judith.  Infants are easy to trade out for other infants and/or toddlers early on.  If the show lasts many more seasons, it does not bode well for Judith.  Most likely, her character would "disappear" for awhile, and then come back older.

We have a very talented local actress, Kennedy Brice, who appeared in the first half of The Walking Dead's current season.  She is pictured here standing behind the girls with the gun.  When the prison was lost, and the characters scattered, it was unclear where her and the boy pictured went.  It was implied that a character named Beth may have found their remains by a train track, when she saw a child's shoe.  It is unclear, but given their secondary character, probably the only clue we'll ever get.  If Kennedy reappears as Molly, I will be very surprised.  Who knows?  Maybe in a few years when she's a teenager, she'll reappear.

The Game of Thrones has similar problems.  The Stark children are growing like weeds.  Sansa is taller now than most of the cast.  Arya has to have her chest strapped down.  Expect to see very little of the youngest child, Rickon, for awhile.  And so it goes.

On some shows that take place in real time, they often lose patience with young children, and they may be jumped in age dramatically after coming back for a hiatus.  Daytime soap operas are notorious for sending young children off to boarding school, and having them come back a few months later as much as a decade older.  Even a primetime sitcom like Modern Family, rushed the aging of Mitchell and Cameron's adopted daughter, Lily.  One season she could barely crawl, and the next she was a talkative school-age girl.

There was a lot of concern about the Harry Potter series, that the children age in time with the series.  Fortunately, with the them doing the movies at one a year, instead of Hollywood's usual three to four year gap, and the fact that each novel takes  place over a school year, the aging fit, and made it an interesting part of the movie series.

Children can be an important part of serial storytelling, but they do present a challenge.  One day she's sweet Hannah Montana, and the next she's swinging naked on a wrecking ball.

Here's to Carl!  He might be aging quickly, but, you know, sometimes the Zombie apocalypse can do that to ya!