The Jaded Horror Fan – The Walking Frustration
Steve Wood
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Let me preface this by saying I am not a comic book reader, though I am aware of all major plot points up until The Walking Dead issue 100 (which will coincide with the season 6 finale). That being said, I’ve given up on this show twice, but was always drawn back in. There isn’t much actual horror on TV, so the pickin’s slim, but has there ever been a more frustrating genre show?
Like many people on this site, and the general TV viewer, I was hooked from the first episode. The first season of “The Walking Dead” is probably the best zombie related work I have ever seen, in any medium. It was interesting, yet didn’t reveal too much, and that was nice considering most TV plots are driven down your throat with a spoon. I was on board throughout the second season as well, but that’s when things took a turn and I found myself hating the show that I loved just a year prior.
There will be SPOILERS from here on.
With season one out of the way, “The Walking Dead” was able to start its real story, which was that of a human drama set in a zombie laden world, or a city for the time being. Lots of people were turned off by this, and the inclusion of a multiple month break midseason didn’t help out either. But again, I preferred this type of story due to the over abundance of zombie movies out there. This was something different, and kind of special.
My favorite character was always Shane, maybe because of Jon Bernthal, or maybe because he was the only guy in the group to have a realistic view of the new world they inhabit. Rick was a pussy, for the most part, and the other characters were just kind of there, only sometimes adding to the moral dilemma of it all. Oh, and Daryl hadn’t become the greasy-haired brooder just yet; he was still the little brother of a racist bigot.
Then they did what the comics already put to paper – killing Shane. Though the details in which he died differed, it was still powerful and probably Bernthal’s best performance on the show; this bothered me to no end. You can’t have everyone in the group survive, but when you take away one hand of the moral compass, you’re going to run into problems, or maybe someone taking up the slack of what’s missing. That’s exactly what happened from season 3 up until present, and it’s the main reason I can’t fully commit to the show.
Rick and Shane – like two peas in a pod, good cop and bad cop, optimist and realist. You simply cannot have an optimist running the group, with no sort of check or balance. I’m not alone in saying that the dynamic of the group and the decision making suffered greatly at the loss of Shane. But instead of writing another character to take on the role, it was decided to have Rick play both good and bad? What kind of sense does that make? He literally went through phases of being a killer, to not even carrying a gun for half of a season.
Skipping ahead a couple of years, “The Walking Dead” is somewhat “stuck”, for lack of a better word. Outside threats come and go, zombies are an afterthought, and no main characters are ever in any real danger. The biggest mistake of this season was the fake out of Glenn’s death, and then the atrocious explanation of his survival. No, I don’t want him to die just so a main character can be killed off; I just want this show to grow some balls and pull the trigger on certain things. If miracles keep happening, we’re going to get into superhero territory where we know someone won’t die, so why make us even go through the cliffhangers?
Fast forwarding to the present, speaking of cliffhangers, and with Rick still not having a moral opposite, we’re about to meet the series’ biggest bad guy yet – a barbed-wire-laced-baseball-bat-wielding Negan. I mentioned issue 100 of the comic earlier, and that’s because one of the more surprising, and violent, death scenes occurs in it. Whether or not the show will go along with this is yet to be seen, though some leaked video footage all but solidifies the idea. Who will meet their fate at the hands of Negan? Who knows? Comic readers know who it’s supposed to be, but I’m leaning towards someone else, someone in a minor role maybe. As I said, “The Walking Dead” has no balls, and probably never will. Sure, we see some blood and guts, but killing off a fan favorite? Blasphemy.
So I’ll probably give up the show, again, after the season finale April 3rd, but I’ll be back I’m sure. I do enjoy the drama aspects of “The Walking Dead” and I like some of the characters. The inclusion of Negan for hopefully an entire season should be at least entertaining, and I’m curious where they’ll go from there.
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