Super Action Walking Dead Mega-Rant, Go!

Everyone’s favorite show about filthy southerners living in a prison has returned from an extended mid-season break, much to the relief of viewers everywhere.  Fans eat each new installment of the series up, but just how good is it?  Here, in our first “Mega-Rant”, three of our bloggers explore the good and the bad of The Walking Dead.

Bring on the Bad Guys!

By Brian Martin

The Walking Dead has achieved something remarkable.  Not only is it the first major primetime drama series about a zombie apocalypse, but it has also won over legions of rabid fans who praise the series endlessly despite how overwhelmingly mediocre it is.  Log onto Facebook on a Sunday night or Monday morning during a season of The Walking Dead, and your newsfeed is likely to be 90% comprised of posts about the show, most of which will look something like, “OMG RICK I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT PHONE WAS RINGING AND U PICKED IT UP AND ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!”

Sure, there have been other, lousier shows that have garnered cult followings, but can we really call The Walking Dead a cult series at this point?  I’d be hard-pressed to think of a genre series as tepidly executed as The Walking Dead that has become so overwhelmingly beloved.  I don’t hate the show by any means, and I watch it religiously, but, like staging an intervention for an alcoholic family member, I’m close enough to admit that it’s got some serious flaws.  One of these flaws has been repaired considerably in the current season, but I’m afraid it might not last and, if it doesn’t, that the series will suffer tremendously for it.

If I were to ask you who the villain of The Walking Dead is, what would you say?  You might say, “The walkers!  Obviously they’re the main antagonists!  What are you, an idiot?!”  But the walkers aren’t antagonists.  They’re mindless, roving carnivores.  They harbor no ill-will toward our “intrepid” band, they’re simply running on instinct.  Is conflict created by their presence?  Certainly, but not enough to sustain a multi-season drama series.  The walkers are environmental hazards.  Calling them antagonists would be like saying the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back was a villain.

The odds of successfully navigating post-apocalyptic Atlanta are approximately 3,720 to 1!

When you watch virtually any zombie movie, the villains aren’t zombies, they’re other people.  If there’s one thing George Romero has taught me, it’s that the biggest problem mankind faces in the apocalypse isn’t posed by supernatural creatures, but each other.  So how has the show fared with human antagonists?

Aside from one episode in the first season in which Michael “The Rook” Rooker portrayed Merle, there hasn’t been another identifiable human villain in the series.  Sure, there were a few relatively faceless members of a human gang that opened fire on Rick and Co. in season 2, but did any of them have names?

You might say, “But Shane!  Shane was a villain!”  But, no, he wasn’t an antagonist either.  During the prolonged discussion about the virtues of farm life vs. ANYTHING else that was season 2 of The Walking Dead, chances are you and your viewing buddies split comfortably into two camps: those who sided with Rick, and those who sided with Shane.  The funny thing was that the split seemed to be almost 50/50.  To those who supported Rick, Shane was a time bomb, primed to go off and get everyone killed.  For Shane fans, Rick was a pussy.

Shane, for all his head-shaving and wife-boning, wasn't necessarily malevolent.  He simply embodied the opposite characteristics of Rick, which makes him a FOIL, which is not the same thing as an antagonist.  Foils are, at best, annoyances.  They're horrible at being straight-up villains, but great for staging philosophical debates (see ALL of season 2).  As we languished through week after week of Rick vs. Shane, it wasn't a simple nod and, "Well, he DOES have a point..." that the audience was spouting, it was clenched fists and cries of, "Yeah, Shane should be leading these guys!  I HATE Rick!"  If Shane was evil and Rick was the hero, then how, exactly, would this happen?  Unless at least 50% of The Walking Dead's audience was comprised of sociopathic lunatics, it probably wouldn’t.

And now, in season 3, we mercifully have the Governor, the show’s first actual bad guy.  The Governor is a villain because, while he's clearly achieved something that SEEMS wonderful in rebuilding the community of Woodbury, we can ALL agree that we don't trust him.  He’s a nice guy, but he combs his walker-daughter’s hair at night.  He provides for his people, but murders relentlessly to do so.  He's charismatic, and far more engaging than any other character on the series, which is another tell-tale sign of a villain (especially on a show where the protagonists are generally unlikable).  Furthermore, he'd kill every last member of the principal group if he could.  Could the same be said about Shane?  And while the walkers would kill everyone, is this because they hate their guts, or because they’re hungry and want to eat their guts?

Don't let the smile fool you, people!

In no small way, the Governor has single-handedly saved The Walking Dead for me, which absolutely fills me with fear.  Not because the Governor is scarier than any walker (he is), but because I worry about what happens when he’s defeated.  If the Governor doesn't make it out of this season alive, the series risks falling right back into the narrative spiral into which it sunk during season 2, which brings us to another problem...


We're on a Road to Nowhere!

By M. Glenn Gore

The advent of DVD, Netflix, and channels brave enough to let showrunners produce seasons shorter than 22 episodes (thank you, HBO and AMC!) has allowed television to digivolve into a new, more powerful form. One capable of telling involved, long-form stories that span entire seasons, have crystal wings, and shoot lightning from their eyes. I don't really know how television shows are made.

So what does all of that have to do with The Walking Dead? 

Simple. For all its strengths, the long-form narrative has become a crutch for many shows, inviting the powers-that-be to drag them out far beyond the point where they should have ended, especially when there's no place left for the series to go. In The Walking Dead, there literally is no place to go! 

This is a world populated by the reanimated dead. What's the best-case scenario here? We cure them? Not bloody likely! Once you're stone-fucking dead, nothing shy of MAGIC will ever erase your memory of having been stone-fucking dead. So even if that did happen, all we'd end up with are billions of irreparably traumatized people who vividly recall what it felt like to be mauled to death and eat their friends and neighbors. That's not a solution; that's a punishment!

"Yay! My zombie-ism is cured! Now, has anyone seen my daugh -- Oh, no."

Let's see. What if we learn to communicate with them and somehow convince them to stop eating us every time we go to sleep? Great idea, asshat! Now you just have a bunch of rotting corpses walking around stinking up the joint. Does that sound like fun to you? And they still need to eat. How do you feed that many zombies? And, more importantly, who would want to?

My point is, there IS NO SOLUTION TO A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! 

The way I see it is, there are only two ways out of this: Either they discover a plague that only kills zombies (I'll even humor that it dissolves them, too, just so there aren't bodies all over afterward), which is no picnic either because that just leaves a few million people who are, more than likely, unqualified to teach, hold office, grow food, draft and enforce laws, or reinstate municipal services like water and electricity. You know, all the basic cornerstones of a functioning society. Welcome to the Dark Ages, idiots. Hope you enjoy your dysentery. The other more probable solution is that everybody dies and the zombies inherit the Earth, which would be incredibly dissatisfying, not to mention a complete waste of my time.

So look, show, I don't need you to tell me what the ending is, but I do need to believe you have one, and that this isn't going to be season after season of watching these sweaty yahoos run from place to place only to stay there for six episodes and then have zombies overrun it every year. Convince me you have a plan. Convince me you have an ending.

Ohhh, don't you DARE!

Dragging something like this out without a destination only makes frothy-mouthed, torch-wielding mobs of normally civilized fans. I never met anybody (and neither have you, by the way) who ever said the words, "I just read the best story. It doesn't end!" 

To me, if you're anybody other than a boy whose just lost his horse in the Swamps of Sadness, I don't give three shits about your neverending story. You simply cannot sustain a narrative set in a world like this without it becoming boring. You're going to run out of ideas. Seriously, Season Two contained only three conversations. They were:

1 - Do you want to look for Sophia some more?

2 - You think Hershel will let us live on this bitchin' farm with him?

3 - I want to be the leader! You CAN'T be the leader. I'M the leader!

Season Two also ended the only way it could, with the farm going up in smoke, and the fact that we saw that coming from literally the moment the farm appeared is just sad. This year, the part of the farm will be played by a prison, and while the haunted house aspect of it has been fun thus far, we still have the same problem as last year. We want to stay here and somebody else wants us to... not stay here. Oh, and there are zombies, who also kinda want us to leave.

Or, at least, to come outside and stand still for a minute.

"We KNOW you're in there!"

Is it really gonna be this every year? Look for shelter, fight some zombies, find shelter, lose the shelter, fight some zombies, find some shelter, lose the shelter, and fight some zombies? I guess that's not so bad. After all, along the way you can look forward to more gripping conversations like "How long do you think we can stay here?" and "It's too bad we can't stay here anymore" and my personal favorite, "I hope nobody finds out we fucking stay here!" 

T-Dog and Lori did finally die this year, answering the prayers of every person I know, but it's time to take a good, long look in the mirror. They didn't die because the story called for it. They died because they were horrible characters disliked by the fans.

T-Dog was so devoid of personality, I imagine stereotypes hated being compared to him, and Lori was dead weight. A manipulative and selfish anchor threatening not to drag down the group, which would have been perfectly acceptable, but the show itself, which would NOT. Was there a single time you didn't groan when you realized a scene was going to be about her? I didn't think so. 

The problem is, almost all of the lame characters are dead, leaving only the cool ones. And by "cool," I mean people who do ANYTHING. Yeah, the bar is officially set that low. This would be fine, great even, if I believed for one second that this show had the balls to kill off Daryl or Michonne or Maggie. If it did, I'd probably feel better about it, but you know it doesn't. You know they won't, and it's because the viewers would never forgive them if they did. 

Safe. Safe. Safe. Not so fast, Carol.

Eventually, we're going to run out of boring, useless characters. Hershel has one leg. That guy's as good as gone. Hershel's daughter? I can't even remember her name! That means she's dead, too! Oh, and these new people? Done for! Except for Tyreese, of course, because he has a hammer. Which begs the question: How long until the guy with nunchucks shows up? When does the girl who kills zombies with Kung Fu arrive? You know this is coming. It's the only thing left they can do. 

Believe me, when this show jumps the zombie, it's going to be one for the record books. 

Word to the wise, new people. If you want to survive in The Walking Dead, get yourself a gimmick. A crossbow, a sword, Glenn, whatever. You know, something that looks good on an action figure. And do it quick. The life you save may be your own.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, just maybe, I'm missing something. Maybe...

I'm Conflicted!

By Nate Bowden

I won’t claim that The Walking Dead is the greatest story ever told or the greatest show to ever air on television, but I feel pretty confident saying it’s the best thing on television right now. I say this with all the confidence of a man that has yet to watch Breaking Bad, Homeland, House of Cards or Duck Dynasty. I live for Sunday night, and those overwhelming fans are obviously sucked into something!

Interesting to hear that the Governor has saved the show for my cohort, because while the series hasn't dipped (as I feared it would) it's not soaring to new heights either. To claim the show needs a singular "I'm the bad-guy" villain to be successful is awfully simplistic. Home Improvement ran like 8 seasons, although that neighbor Wilson was always kinda shady.

"No, Mr. Grimes, I expect you to DIE!"

No sir, He-Man may need Skeletor, but Rick Grimes is a little more complex than a man in fuzzy diapers. Literature and storytelling are filled with numerous types of conflict beyond Man v. Man. See: Man v. Nature, v. Society, v. Technology, and the all too popular Man v. Himself. Who's the villain in Charlotte's Web, or A Christmas Carol? Did we all cheer watching Brad Pitt slay the almighty dollar in Moneyball? 

The Walking Dead Season Two had conflict in a pressure cooker and it burst at the seams in the form of a barn door zombie massacre and an earth-shattering reveal! But hey, maybe they should have done more with those two dudes at the bar.

I'm guessing those two dudes at the bar probably felt that way, too.

The show is about survival, not one-upping an opponent. It portrays the struggles we endure when faced with catastrophe and how we remain ourselves, if we even can. Dale and Shane, Rick and Shane, Rick and Lori, Rick, Daryl and Merle, Shane, Carl and Lori, Hershel and the group… conflict much? The Walkers are a vicious representation of the environment that our heroes must survive in, but the show is about people.

For the love of Eternia, tell me there’s no story in that. Oh, and it's got zombies to boot!

Happily Never After...

Zombies and The Walking Dead in particular have taught me to embrace the sad ending. Guess what folks, you’re on the train to Nowheresville, but do you really want to give up your seat? An author friend of mine, Ross Campbell, introduced me to the zombie genre years ago with his OGN The Abandoned, from TokyoPop. When I read this touching story of love and friendships that ended with all but one character being killed, I said, “What the fuck? They all die? You’re a zombie as soon as you turn 23? How do you win?”

"Zombie apocalypse, dude. You don’t survive the zombie apocalypse.”

I wouldn't hear of it! At the time. Now I see the point. Until zombies stare down James Tiberius Kirk, I'm going to believe in the no-win scenario.

It's certainly no worse an idea than THIS.

After all, how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say? And the answer to that question begets more than 3 conversations. Does the show run the risk of becoming repetitive? Oh fuck yes! I haven’t seen it derail, however.

Most fanboys such as myself have heard the title of the show and its source material refers to the main characters, not the zombies. Rick, Glenn and, yes, even Daryl are dead men walking. Do the show runners know who is popular and who isn’t? They better, they’re the fucking show runners. So of course decisions are made delicately I’m sure. But I wasn’t 100% positive Daryl would be back for this second half until I saw the promo.

When War of the Worlds came out, and people were failing to remove the Thetan from his character, I heard the argument, “What makes Tom Cruise so great that he can survive this invasion anyway?” Would you tell the story of the first guy to get vaporized?

No. No, you wouldn't.

My point is that we tune in to watch certain characters follow their arcs. It takes courage to kill popular characters, but it’s not cowardly to keep them alive. It’s good for business. If Daryl Dixon were dead tomorrow, would I think twice about tuning back in? Maybe. I want Daryl to live more than I want writers to show me how brave they are. That said, if you’re gonna keep a brother alive for a while, don’t write the story that begs for him to have died. Right there with you on that one.

All we really need to do is examine the cast from Season One to Season Three and ask if we really haven’t seen enough death and sacrifice on this show. If you felt nothing when Dale was eviscerated or Sophia turned, you had nothing invested to begin with. Shane, Dale, Lori… all main characters that change the dynamic of the group once they are removed or replaced, to say nothing of secondary characters. Lest we forget that Daryl wasn’t top dog until Shane was dead.

This month’s issue of Geek Magazine has a blurb on the cover: “The Walking Dead- Who will Survive Season Three?” I have yet to read said article, but the fact that they get to ask the question suggests to me that the audience doesn’t know the answer.

Y'know, entirely.

NEXT: Nicole Angeleen has some strong words for the detective genre and the hard-boiled gumshoes who just can't seem to do their job.