It’s been a season of hashtag-friendly character deaths on The Walking Dead; #Bobecue, #BethDeath, #TyreecesPieces and #NoahFuture. But no loss is more tragic than #RickShave. Rick Grimes’ beard is one of the longest-surviving characters on the show and – even more than Karl who went through puberty – we have watched him grow on TV. He was the only character keeping Rick sane. After losing his beard, Rick seems incapable of ending a sentence without threatening someone’s life. So in lieu of a blog about the season finale, which for an episode set in one street with no major character deaths can be summed up by Nelson Muntz’s review of Naked Lunch (‘I can think of at least two things wrong with that title’), here’s a rundown of the best bearded moments in TV, starting with Rick:
Rick shaves his beard – The Walking Dead – Season 5
As a bearded man myself, I know well the eerie feeling of shaving and not recognizing the man underneath. Here The Walking Dead takes this to proportions of body horror. Afforded the luxuries of running water and private bathrooms, Rick can now part with the beard that has faithfully accompanied him through the zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, he’s been hiding his moral decay behind that cake-catcher and is no longer the same person beneath. Rather than removing a mask, he’s revealing one. Without looking like Charles Manson, Rick starts to get really insecure about expressing his murderous insanity and massively overcompensates with blood-soaked demonstrations in public and recreating scenes from Romeo & Juliet with passing zombies.
Jack is back with a beard – 24 – Seasons 2 and 6
Where’s the balm?!
When Jack cracks, he grows a beard. It’s our only visual clue that a man who tortures and fakes his death for a living has finally gone off the deep end. But it also acts as a protective seal – grouting if you will – for Jack’s madness. After Jack shaved his widow-grief beard at the beginning of Season 2, he immediately went about severing a paedophile’s head with a hacksaw. An hour after removing his Chinese-torture beard in Season 6, a nuclear bomb went off. Jack remaining clean-shaven after he faked his death was how we knew he wasn’t really serious about giving up work. Well, that and going into hiding mere miles from L.A.
It’s Harrison Ford in there – The Fugitive – Movie
Ok, it’s a movie but it’s based on a TV series but that should be justification enough for what remains one of the most incredible uses of facial hair in screen history. For a third of the movie, Harrison Ford and the star promise of action therein have been hiding behind what looks like mouldy Weetabix on the actor’s face. As convicted murderer Dr. Richard Kimble goes on the run, he stops off at a hospital to engage in a morning routine beloved of all medical practitioners; stealing water and breakfast from a dying old man. He adds milk to his Weetabix and it quickly dissolves, leaving Ford free to jump off viaducts and fight disabled people.
Strike beards – Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien – 2007/8
Before…and way before!
During the writers’ strike of 2007-8, late-night chat show hosts David Letterman and Conan O’Brien came out in sympathy with their colleagues by growing ‘strike beards’ throughout the picket. Of course, this assumes that being on strike makes any difference to writers’ shaving routines, which is nonsense, and the sizeable increase in meta-comedy was already enough to demonstrate to viewers that there was a writers’ strike going on. While Conan mutated into a Seinfeld-era Bryan Cranston, Letterman slipped back through time posing first as a Civil War general and then Piltdown man along the way. Otherwise, it gave us a rare glimpse into what late-night television would look like following the apocalypse.
Hiatus beards – Everyone on a show where they have to be clean-shaven – Off-season
Bearded Hamm!
When you can’t scratch, that’s when you want to scratch. Well, apparently, if you’re an actor on a seasonal TV show, when your face is scratch-free all you’re thinking about is having something scratchy on your face. In those few months between filming seasons, TV actors choose to celebrate their temporary freedom from the yoke of shooting schedules by doing fuck-all with their faces. But it doesn’t make as much sense as it first seems. I’m sure the actors still go out during the day even though they’re not shooting, and wear clothes even though they don’t have to be in costume.
Watching TV with Americans 