One has to ask, is The Walking Dead still relevant? Will this be the season where it concludes the final chapter? Many seem to think so, year after year. It’s this love/hate relationship some people have over the series as well. People don’t want the same thing thrown at their face. They often don’t want a major shift in direction either. We’re here to talk about the major changes going on with AMC’s The Walking Dead. We will also be talking about what killed my own interest in the series. Fair warning, there will be potential spoilers leading up to at least the first eight seasons.
AMC’s The Walking Dead. It felt right in the beginning…
From the very start, The Walking Dead felt like a real representation as to what a zombie apocalypse might be like. It starts out with our main character, establishing mood and allowing your mind to be drawn in. This is symbolizing the beginning of shock value that this series has later become known for. Watch the opening scene, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. It was fine and all then, but the directors or writers kept using it as a plot device and main theme of the show. No longer would you have real drama during certain scenes. Later, we get cliff hangers that make very little story-telling sense. Extreme fake-outs are evolved from this one scene, the very first scene.
For some, it was that moment in season two of The Walking Dead, when the group finally does find the one person they are looking for. I can understand the backlash with that, since they use the same overused technique to keep the story at pace with itself. Oh and there are plenty of “is this person dead, are they still alive out there?” Later, revealing the answer. It’s not a very creative technique and feels like more fluff to test viewership. For myself, season two was not the turning point. They also kill off a main character, but it didn’t feel well-established in my mind. I don’t know, maybe they could have fleshed it out more in the next episode. The motivations just felt rushed.
Season three of The Walking Dead is not as strong, clearly. We get some hints of character building, but come to find out that a lot of it didn’t matter in the first place. Some you wished had survived, meanwhile wanting certain ones to get killed off because they just weren’t entertaining to watch. This season didn’t feel like the writers really knew how to handle so many characters at once, so they started killing them off. Again, if it had been fleshed out more, the season could have made for more compelling character development. Of course, there were also some decisions that made you question whether or not you even cared about Rick. Not even season three was enough to kill this series for me, but I stuck with it because concepts were nice and the prison looked awesome.
Without too much detail, here some things that I personally didn’t enjoy from the series:
- In season four, this thing about the “claimers” wasn’t going anywhere, with Daryl being a small part of their pact.
- Beth’s episode being in the hospital could have been written out and her death being done much more respectfully (Season five).
- Season six, kidnapping Daryl made no real sense with the explanation given? At least to me, it was weird.
- Keeping the priest around in season seven, as he felt like one of the more useless characters on the show.
- Season eight, Carl gets bit. Oh, not the fact that he does. That was a terrible idea in the first place. It was the fact that mere moments after that episode aired, I see a sponsored ad on my Facebook. “Carl got bit! :o” THANK you, AMC…. I had NOT even seen the episode yet and am really good at avoiding spoilers, oftentimes for a whole season.
What Started to kill the series for me?
The Walking Dead, season six episode four, “Here’s Not Here.” Yes, it took me a whole six seasons to finally just about turn my back on the show. It has been running for six seasons straight with little coherence to some parts. Being compelling in a way up to that point, it was mostly watchable just to see what would happen. Never having been as shocked to see a character go as I had this episode.
To think, all these years, training Morgan even, and being a master at what he does, a guy living alone in the woods dies like this. In fact, it was such a nonsensical episode that I almost didn’t even finish it. Literally did not have to have him die to send Morgan off. Morgan is a big boy, and the guy teaching him akido wanted to be alone in the first place. That episode would have been so much stronger. It’s really one of the most terribly-written episodes. We even learn, in the beginning, what akido was! Maybe I’ll later rank episodes so others can see where I stand with this one.
The Walking Dead itself is not a bad series in the least, but it’s not a great one either. It’s decent, does its job, and moves on. The group goes on a search, finds a base of some kind, meets with people, their old base gets destroyed. That seems to be a running theme of the series. It’s not so much that either, even though it’s getting stale at this point.
Even Netflix can’t get me to watch The Walking Dead now.
That’s where I completely abstained from watching The Walking Dead series as a whole. The death of akido expert to a single wandering walker killed it for me. AMC’s spoiler ad buried it. Thank you again, for a wonderful seven years. I always have waited until the Netflix episodes, but now it looks as though I don’t have to. It’s a shame too, because AMC’s The Walking Dead was an entertaining show to say the least. It might not have been great. Maybe not have even been that good. It was also something to watch and can’t help but still be drawn to zombie media. The Walking Deceased is a hilarious Walking Dead parody film. Z-Nation is also a somewhat parody of The Walking Dead franchise, but it has some serious moments. Zombieland is of course always fun.
There are good movies, and really great shows that involve that category of cinema. The Walking Dead takes itself way too seriously, to the point where it’s just not fun anymore. It’s filled with so many tropes of just regular films in general, whereas Z-Nation doesn’t feel that way. Maybe sometime in the future, I may pick up the series again, but I’ve moved on. Once I lose interest, I lose it for good. There are also those movies, and the fake-out death of Rick. Things could have been handled much better with respect to the characters. I get that others may feel passionate about this series still, but this is my own personal take.
What killed the series for you? Let us know in the comments!
