I love you, Chris Hardwick, but I'd also kind of love it if you gave Community star Yvette Nicole Brown your Talking Dead hosting duties -- at least for a few episodes. The actress and Walking Dead fan hosted the series' New York Comic Con panel on Saturday — a duty Hardwick usually handles — and she blew his usual performance out of the zombie-remains-riddled water.
And if you think about it, Hardwick's been pulling overtime, anyway. After wonderfully hosting Talking Bad all summer long, don't we think Hardwick should at least rest up a bit? The man works really, really ridiculously hard, people. Plus, while he's hilarious and insightful, Brown could bring a whole other entirely appealing element: unabashed, giddy super-fandom. Sure, she's got Community, but the show has been downgraded to a half-season, and her co-star Joel McHale hosts The Soup once a week and he's managing to balance both jobs just fine.
During the NYCC panel Brown handled the requisite Con panel questions while bubbly demeanor aligned her with the 3,000 fans who'd sacrificed their entire Comic Con Saturday to wait in line and stake out a spot in the main hall so that they might glimpse the cast that makes their hearts skip a beat. Brown gushed about Darol (the possibility of Daryl and Carol getting together), Richonne (the even more interesting prospect of Rick and Michonne getting together), and her own potentially dangerous obsession with Daryl, and by proxy Norman Reedus. "We're all doing it," she said as she outed herself for her own overzealous reaction to sharing the stage with The Walking Dead crew.
And while Harwick was once in Brown's shoes — he asked original TWD showrunner Frank Darabont to kill him and make him a zombie during the first ever Walking Dead Con panel at San Diego Comic-Con — he's now part of the club. He's an insider. It would be incredible to change up the pace and share in Brown's unbridled delight each week knowing that she's not quite one of the gang. Though she's so lovely, I'm sure she'd be part of the crew in absolutely no time.
But it's so much more than her candor; she's on top of her Walking Dead game. Brown may not have been hosting her own show about The Walking Dead for an entire season, but she does not miss a beat. During the NYCC panel, Brown oscillated adeptly between gleeful outbursts and spot-on questions and commentary. She embodied the way those of us crazy enough to wait seven hours for an hour-long panel and a few sneak peek footage clips feel about the show. We need this woman to host Talking Dead, if not for us, for the sheer fact that she clearly adores this show with every fiber of her being.
Again, this is no slight to Hardwick who's already starting the season out strong after that shocking Season 4 opener on Sunday night. Just don't forget that The Walking Dead is the highest rated cable show among women as of Season 3 and that allowing a hilarious, warm, shrewd fan like Brown (who just so happens to be a lady, too) to host could help represent the show's audience just as well as Harwick does. Just ask the loads of women raising their voices and arms for every single member of The Walking Dead cast at this weekend's NYCC. And that enthusiasm, for the record, extended to the reveal of Brown as the evening's host. The fact is: people love this hilarious lady.
While it may sound like it, I'm not exactly angling for Harwick to lose his job. I'm just saying if he needed a break, or a couple of weeks on hiatus (wink, wink), or even a season to rest up, we've got a seriously strong candidate in Ms. Yvette Nicole Brown.
