I’m getting sick of complaining about this show, so I think this is going to be my last rant/joke/essay/comment about it. To me, The Walking Dead TV show disappoints on so many different levels, it’s actually a fascinating study in what not to do with a TV show.
The Good: Well, the make up is top notch. The zombie design has really been elevated. My only nitpicky comment about it is that almost all the zombies seem to turn gray, which I guess is a callback to the clay dirt that makes up Georgia? But the make up is just the best. The source material is good too. I like what I’ve read of the comic. Maybe it’s one of those things that doesn’t translate well, although I buy it pretty sporadically. The acting is mostly decent, although everything else is always so painful, I wonder what the actors must think sometimes when they get a script.
The Bad: Let’s break it down.
What They Changed From the Comic Book Gained Them Nothing: In the comic, Carol is dead and Andrea is alive. This is a wash, as Carol now basically ended up fulfilling a similar role. But they also lost the potential romantic interest for Rick, in Andrea. Now TV shows are different from comics, but part of the appeal of the comic was the Game-of-Thrones-style deaths. If the producers of the TV show had taken a similar route, they would’ve killed more characters right as we got to like them. Unfortunately, it seemed that whenever they did kill a character, the episode lead up would always begin with some talky background and exposition. An actual flashback might’ve served them better and given the TV show an excuse to contrast the past with the present.
There are other changes and drops, but to me, the biggest one is Rick’s hand. Part of Rick being a badass in the comic is that the man has only one hand and it was cut off by the Governor and his goons. That would’ve made the Governor more ruthless too. Everything after the Governor story would’ve been ten times more amazing if Rick had to do it with one hand. Especially that whole season of Rick wandering around the prison like a lost soul. Maybe for production purposes it made things easier, but the producers erased a huge part of the book.
The Map of the Show is Awful: Where are things on this show? It’s often impossible to tell. Even during the season where the characters were in the prison, which cellblock or section they were in as opposed to other parts of the prison, were never clear. Same for Woodbury and now Alexandria. This is something they could fix on the show, simply by adding a few visual cues and making the shooting angles consistent. But good luck figuring out where Michonne’s house or Darryl’s garage is in relation to the front gate.
The Characters are Wildly Inconsistent: Each season brings a new Rick, new Carol, new Carl, etc. Character changes are often so abrupt, you get whiplash trying to follow them. The possible one exception to the rule was the episode with Tyresse, Carol and the two young girls. Probably the best show of the entire series, this episode worked because the girls had been set up to fall this way. Contrast that to Tyresse’s end, which seems so pointless and random.
You’d think in a world where the dead walk and can kill you with a bite, people would be constantly building defenses against them. Not so on TWD. Strategies that have worked in the past (like covering yourself in gore to walk amongst the zombies) are forgotten about until needed for a reason to get from A to B. Rick finds Morgan (another wildly inconsistent character that goes from “normal” to “crazy” to “Buddha/Batman”) in a town that he’s completely defended himself. Using spikes, he waits until the walkers impale themselves and then goes outside to finish them. Very rarely do the other characters employ this and other incredibly simple defense mechanisms. (You know what zombies can’t do? Climb rope ladders.)
The Plots Feel Very Forced: Most likely, part of the issues is that the producers try and follow the comic. But if you drop things and add things, that’s going to change the course of a character arc. To “fix” it, you’re going to need more changes, which then further deviate from the comic book. But since you’re actually using the comic book as a blueprint, you end up having to force it back on track. Darryl (as awesome has Norman Reedus has made him) is largely to blame for this. Darryl ended up taking away a lot of Rick’s badassery that comes out in the comic.
And speaking of inconsistent characters, Darryl went from a kind of racist Redneck to “I’m-okay-with-gay-guys” in one episode. Talk about tone-deaf Hollywood! Sure would be a much better show if the characters had to depend on Darryl despite his racist views. Instead, since Darryl’s character is so popular, they just continue to make him nicer and nicer. They’ll nice him right out of viewership by the end, I predict.
It’s hard to know where to put the blame. Most likely, it’s the producers. And while the writers probably share a good deal of the blame, it’s hard to do much when you’re boxed in trying to make what happen last season jibe with the events in the comic and the changes and make the next season exciting.
The Blocking is the Worst I’ve Ever Seen: This goes back to the map of the show, but I lay this square at the feet of the directors. The most glaring example of this was Glenn’s recent miraculous survival under the dumpster. I watched the lead up to that episode and it was already horrible. Glenn saves a guy that killed his friend AND tried to kill him. In a world where savagery becomes pretty common place, the producers just didn’t sell it for me.
But beyond that, Glenn and this douche get trapped on the dumpster and the guy shoots himself in the head. For some inexplicable reason, Glenn grabs the guy and gets dragged down in the zombies. By the previous physics of the show, he should’ve easily been torn to pieces. (Hell, by the inconsistent zombie physics, the dumpster should’ve been the end!) As Glenn lays on the ground, he watches as a t-shirt is ripped open and guts pulled out. By his expression, it looks like him, but surprise! It’s the body on top of him. Glenn scrambles under the dumpster and hides until the zombies leave. (Which they do.) This is another greatly inconsistent thing. In other episodes, zombies had no problem crawling under things to get people.
The director of that episode would like you to believe that in Georgia (a place that’s pretty wide open except for the major cities) Glenn and this dumbass ran down an alley ending with a fence that’s 20 feet high. Along the way, they pass a building with open windows and a stairwell blocked with debris that I bet zombies would be terrible at climbing over. It looks, to me, an obvious and lazy set up by the director to get the characters trapped. In the next episode, sure enough, Glenn actually goes into that building and uses one of the windows to leave! (The one time the map was relatively consistent.) But most of all…
I Just Don’t Care About the Characters: After a season or two, the show just wears you down. It’s really hard to care about any of the characters at this point. Who are they? Who will they be? What crazy thing will they do (or not do) next? I have a friend who would watch the show and we would get together and talk about how bad it was. (Even he’s stopped watching.)
The bottom line is, crazy is always a weak choice in any story. It gives the writer carte blanche to make the character do anything, so there’s no real tension. The entire Walking Dead series has become one giant crazy character. Anything can happen because, quite frankly, the show’s characters and plots are pretty crazy. That craziness probably is a direct result of the directors and producers trying to follow the comic, while trying to integrate their Hollywood changes.
Why is it popular? Well, I think it was because it was the only zombie game in town. That’s changing. Fear the Walking Dead starts in April and it’s slightly better than TWD. Maybe it’s because you get to see the zombie outbreak and the whole ship think should add another interesting element. Perhaps, unfettered by trying to please comic book fans, the producers can build the show more organically. We shall see.
