The Stumbling Dead

Back in the brilliant first season of The Walking Dead, I blogged about each new episode as it aired. Since then, I've checked in only once, during its lackluster second season, to lament the show's sharp decline in quality. The third season ended last night, and while the series has pulled out of the tailspin it was in last year, it has come nowhere near the heights in soared in initially. In fact, I'd say it's done little more than leveled off.

Look at seasons two and three together (spoilers here, people!), and you can see just how many clichés The Walking Dead has evolved for itself. If you're a side character that hasn't gotten much screen time, and you suddenly have an episode that focuses rather heavily on you and fleshes you out as a person? You're going to be dead by the end of the hour. The writers seem to have settled on the need to have a character body count every so often to show that they're "serious," that anyone could die at any time. Except that it's not anyone, but rather anybody they just don't think they need to tell any stories with in the future.

Unless we're at the end of a season, of course. Then we're willing to toss a few significant people onto the sacrificial altar. Which, in light of last night, brings me to the next cliché that's bothering me these days: the writers feel a greater obligation to surprising the comic book audience than telling a compelling story for their general audience who mostly haven't read the comics.

Several of my friends have read the comics, and had a hearty fanboy squee over the introduction of characters like Michonne, Tyrese, and The Governor over the last few seasons. And then they usually have another fanboy squee when something unfolds differently on the screen than it did on the page. But usually, I find myself scratching my head, thinking, "well, wouldn't the story have been more interesting if they'd done this instead?" Except they often can't, it seems, because that's just what the comics fans would expect. But by now, all the comics fans should be expecting the unexpected. When I floated the notion a few weeks ago that clearly Andrea was going to be dead by the end of the season, based on the not-at-all-subtle clues dropped in the episodes, I was told by several people how unlikely that is, because she's one of the few characters still alive in the comics. Well.... surprise! (Not.)

Another cliché I find pervasive is the "zombie kill of the week." It's a joke from the movie Zombieland. (Which was originally conceived of itself as a TV series -- and now will be again on Amazon.com, apparently. The "ZKotW" was one of the intended recurring gags.) Apparently having concluded that the real problem with "the Farm season" wasn't that it was narratively inert, but rather that not enough zombies were being killed in spectacular fashion, The Walking Dead is now sure to stage one (exactly one) blatantly over-the-top kill in every episode. You always know it when you see it, and it always snaps me right out of the episode, because it's such a blatant play for groans, laughs, cringes, whatever.

The Walking Dead is now 24 for the new decade -- a show that was once good, but which has devolved into a parody of itself. Maybe I need a drinking game to spark more enthusiasm. Even in this revitalized third season (which I do acknowledge, was worlds better than season two), I just never found myself looking forward to the new week's episode. I watched it because I still had a group of friends come over to do it (though we were always more excited to watch The Amazing Race first, it seemed), and I knew that if I was going to watch it at all, I'd have to do it the day of or risk it being spoiled for me in the media and among excited gossipers the next day.

I'm very glad that the series is taking a break now for half a year, making way for the superior Mad Men, and then the even more superior (best show on television) Breaking Bad. Maybe by October, I'll be able to rekindle a little enthusiasm again.