• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 3, 2014

Spoiler alert: Beth Greene was not a real person.

But plenty of people are mourning her death as if she was -- a testament to the kind of connection people are making to fictional characters on TV these days.

Beth was a young woman seen on “The Walking Dead” who was shot to death by a policewoman last Sunday on the show -- a finale of sorts that marked the midpoint of the AMC show’s fifth season (it’s now on hiatus until next year). Beth (played by Emily Kinney) had been on the show since Season Two (2011-12).

Ever since her demise, a national wave of mourning has set in on social media. “Beth wasn’t killed by a brainless zombie. Beth wasn’t killed by a heartless cop. Beth was killed by brainless, heartless TV writers!” read one impassioned message posted on Twitter --  hashtag: #BethGreeneDeservedBetter.

A protest of some sort was also being organized, with Beth Greene fans posting the address of the “Walking Dead” production offices in Georgia and urging other fans to write to the producers to complain about the way they killed off Beth.

Of course, protesting a character’s death after the fact serves little purpose, even on a show such as “The Walking Dead,” which is about dead people coming back to life. Beth Greene was shot in the head, which makes it impossible for her to come back to life as a zombie (which her fans probably wouldn’t want to see anyway). 

At such times, I always marvel at the passion of these people -- passion that seems so much more dramatic than in the era before the Internet. Back then, we had the proverbial water cooler, where office workers were said to congregate to talk about TV shows they watched the night before (although, I have to be honest -- I never actually observed this phenomenon).

For the sake of office decorum, these conversations -- whether at a water cooler or in a break room -- were certainly not as boisterous or emotional (if not unglued) as the “conversations” people have on social media about TV shows. Moreover, an office worker would risk dismissal if he or she spent as much time around a water cooler talking about a TV show as today’s Twitterers seem to waste carrying on about their TV shows.

Personally, I almost never form close bonds with TV characters. I’m more interested in how the character’s death fits into a show’s ongoing storyline. I’m no expert on Beth Greene in particular, but in general, the writers and producers of “The Walking Dead” are correct in killing off the show’s major characters every now and again. The world they are depicting is simply too perilous.  It just wouldn’t be believable if the show’s core group all survived through every single pitched battle with marauding zombies (or rival factions) that we’ve seen in five seasons. So RIP, Beth Greene.

Meanwhile, the deaths of major characters are mounting up on another show, “Sons of Anarchy” on FX -- which has its series finale next week. Last night, three characters were killed off -- Juice  (Theo Rossi), the former SOA member who was stabbed to death in jail; Wayne Unser (Dayton Callie), the former sheriff of Charming who has been a more or less sympathetic ally for this motorcycle gang; and Gemma (Katey Sagal), the gang matriarch whose treachery led to so much bloodshed this season.

Of the three, only the death of Unser was unexpected. He was shot to death by Jax Teller, president of the Sons of Anarchy, because Unser stood in the way of Jax’s climactic confrontation with Gemma, who happens to be Jax’s mother, and who Jax killed a few minutes later.  

Unser was one of the few good guys on this show, but Jax has been so trigger-happy this season that it wasn’t that surprising that he would suddenly drill Unser. As for Gemma and Juice, their deaths were pretty much inevitable. One big reason: This show is almost over, which means it doesn’t really matter who survives or dies at this point -- especially since these people aren’t real, right?