I’ve been a hard core fan of TWD forever. I’m a lover of all things zombie, so when the show first aired, I was instantly smitten. Throughout the seasons, I’ve cheered the deaths of baddies, cried with the deaths of those I liked, and was secretly happy when Lori finally got what she deserved. However, in the last few seasons, I’ve caught my undying devotion to the show wavering. I’ve found that I’ve had to force myself through episodes and even watched them several days after they originally aired because it just felt like a chore to actually watch it. After this last fall season, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just done with it. Hell, I just watched the mid-season finale last night, New Year’s Eve. And I couldn’t even sit through all of it.
There are some long running shows out there that have found the formula for success and stayed with it. Take a look at Supernatural, which is on their 13th season. (It happens to be my all time favorite show.) They found a formula that works and they haven’t strayed from it much at all. Why would they? 13 seasons is a crazy amount in today’s fickle tv market. The Walking Dead is only on season 8 and I feel like they are beginning to fall into the trap of their own success. It’s costing them, and the ratings show it. So, after watching less than half of the mid-season finale last night, (I did catch the end after the ‘face montage’ where they show Cooral had gotten bit) I realized that there were five reasons why I’m just finished with the show:
Reason #1: Too Much Artsy-Fartsy Ok, disclaimer, I’m an artist. I do stupid crap with pieces for the sake of art. However, The Walking Dead is a damn zombie show. It’s not meant to be artistic. I don’t care to watch 5 minutes straight of just seeing faces of characters who look sad. Come on. The only artistic stuff I want to see is how nasty the zombies look. This who dragging out of the story line that is the one day that just lasted half a season is bullshit. I don’t care about the majority of what happened this season. I want to see what I love the show for: zombies and people killing them in narsty ways.
Reason #2: Too Much Change We all know that change is good, right? Well, too much change is not. I feel that the show has changed hands so many damn times that it probably should go get tested. I swear it’s like the find someone who is great at running the show, they start to pull the ratings back up, and BAM! They shitcan that person and bring in someone else. Then, we’re back to artsy-fartsy stupid, drawn out episodes that suck. So, if TWD producers/showrunners/etc are reading this: stop it. Just. Stop. You have had some crazy talented people who were in tune with what us viewers wanted to see and you shitcanned them. It just makes me sad that you guys are letting the show’s success go to your collective heads.
Reason #3: Characters Have Changed For The Worse I’ll admit to freely sharing my fair share of TWD memes that touted the phrase: “If Darryl dies, we riot!” While he wasn’t a character in the comic books, he has become one of the few characters on the show that you just don’t screw with. Yet, the writers have. I don’t get this either. He had always been a macho, I’ll-kill-whatever-or-whoever type that we knew had a soft side and we loved to pieces. Now, he seems to be just a blubbering crybag and has lost his ‘umph’. (To Norman Reedus, if you read this, I still love you. You’re a badass. You should throat punch the writers who’ve done this to Darryl. Please.) I understand that Negan did a number on him, but damn it, he’s had numbers danced all over his head before and never ended up like this. I hate that they have twisted this character into something he was never meant to be.
Reason #4: Not Enough Dying I hate seeing characters die on the show, I always have. However, it is a part of reality. Do you really think that in real life we would have a set of people who just couldn’t die? I mean come the hell on. Y’all played with our emotions with Glenn and the horde of zombies because we know, in reality, he would never have survived that. He’d have at the least gotten bitten. Sure, he died horrifically at Negan’s hand, ‘er bat, but really, since then, there haven’t been a lot of deaths on the show. In all the other seasons, we’ve lost SO many people that it would make your head spin – and it did. It may not have always been main characters, but we watched them die in realistic ways, ways we would expect in a zombie apocalypse. Now, it’s like “Eh, maybe we will kill off extra number 515 in three episodes from now”. Yes, yes, I know, you have killed a ton this season. But, it has never touched the main core cast, has it? It’s not really been anyone who brought tears to my eyes or made me cry when they died, has it? No. No it hasn’t.
Reason #5: The Writing Sucks I’ve been a writer for over 20 years. I’ve written more articles than I can count at this point, and more books that I can admit to. I’ll admit that my style has evolved over the decades, which is to be expected. However, over the evolution of TWD, the writing has changed to the point that it’s like a soap opera now instead of a zombie drama. Why? Why change the formula that’s worked for so long? Why not just give those writers raises and perks and keep them on so that the show stays what the fans have loved for so long? I could understand if the writing sucked from the start and it had to be changed to save the show. But that’s not the case. It’s the opposite. I don’t get it.
So Long My Zombie Love After coming to the realization that I couldn’t even sit through a mid-season finale and I didn’t even care when the second half of the season started, I knew that I was going to be saying goodbye to my zombie love on tv. I hate that I’m having to break up with you, but we both knew it was coming for a while now. Unfortunately, I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way as the show’s ratings are horrid. I’m hoping that the showrunners will realize this and make changes to pull the show back from the abyss, but I’m not going to hold my breath. So, to my favorite characters, Negan especially, Rick, Darryl, Maggie, Michone, and GawdIHopeYouDie Eugene, I say goodbye.
Submitted January 01, 2018 at 03:10PM by Zownder http://ift.tt/2DJf8Ku
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