Having brothers and sisters seeing the relationship between the siblings on the show is interesting to me. There are healthy relationships and bad ones but there are sibling ties there.
Andrea/Amy
I can kind of identify with this one. Andrea is significantly older than Amy, my sister is older than me (I won’t say how much because she does read my blog now and then and I’d like to live a little longer I tell her age and she might go all Merle Dixon on me lol!). Andrea is never around when Amy is growing up. My sister joined the Air Force so she wasn’t around either, but that didn’t mean that there was no relationship there. We were sisters. When we were kids I was a brat, I admit it but I was the baby and being the baby gives you ‘brat rights’.
Andrea and Amy obviously have developed a healthy sibling relationship as adults, we see this during the time they spend together. Andrea is an affectionate big sister and openly demonstrates that. When Amy is bitten Andrea is devastated to lose her sister, but she is Amy’s sister. She is the one to put Amy down for this reason. She is going to do what she can for her little sister because she wants to be the one to make it right for Amy.
Merle/Daryl
While Andrea and Amy have a healthy sibling relationship, this one is the relationship from hell. Sibling rivalry does not apply here, abuse does. Merle is violent and abusive, an absolute waste of oxygen. When they leave Merle on the roof and Daryl finds out he reacts by going off the deep end. That is because this is how he has learned to react, his anger is the only emotion he really knows how to show. Everything else has probably been beaten into a pulp a long time ago, this is a normal response to him.
Merle probably got the hell beat out of him by bigger stronger daddy dearest, and he in turn beats the hell out of weaker smaller little brother Daryl. It’s not a sibling relationship, it’s a pecking order and Daryl is at the bottom of the pecking order. When Merle disappears we see Daryl start to change. I’m not sure that it is change so much as without Merle or his father around Daryl can start to be the man he would have grown into had he had a supportive family life instead of an abusive one. He finally has the chance to be himself instead of what he was forced to be by Merle and his father.
Maggie/Beth
Maggie and Beth’s relationship is still a bit of a mystery. Maggie is not abusive towards Beth but we haven’t seen that much interaction between them other than Beth’s illness and suicide attempt. Family gets unconditional love, (just look at how Daryl reacted to Merle being left on the roof) so we don’t know if Maggie’s affection toward Beth is triggered by the fact that she is sick. It seems like they are close but until we see more of how they react to each other in a fairly ‘safe’ environment we won’t know.
