WHY IS THIS SHOW SO TERRIBLE?
CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS SHOW IS SO TERRIBLE?
For the record, I just finished Season 2, and I've never read the comics. I approach The Walking Dead with a clean mind, prepared only for watching a really poorly written zombie show.
Everyone on the show is a douchebag. And I mean, it's not like you couldn't write a good show about a bunch of douchebags trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. But these are stupid douchebags. Stupid when there's no reason to be. And the writers seem to think the characters aren't stupid douchebags, which makes no sense.
First off, why does everyone insist on calling the zombies Walkers? Dead body, up and walking around, hungers for the flesh of the living? We have a word for those. It's "zombie." They're fucking zombies.
I guess the short version of this post is that I hate watching a show that's supposed to be about surviving the zombie apocalypse, when no one on it seems at all interested in survival. They just want to prance around in the woods and squabble like teenagers, and then the audience is supposed to freak out when they end up in life-or-death situations they brought upon themselves by not foreseeing even the most obvious of outcomes.
Basically, Team Douchebag act like the people at the beginning of every horror movie who are shown doing everything wrong and thereby getting horribly killed, all to make the real hero seem more competent and badass. Everyone on this show is begging to be zombie food, is what I'm saying. I'm rooting for the zombies.
This is a long one, so I'll divide my many problems with the show into easily-digestible parts, with fancy sub-headings.
1. Everyone Fails at Zombie Apocalypse
Why does everyone fail at zombie apocalypse? I mean, I understand that the survival horror genre is no fun if everyone's been prepping for a zombie apocalypse their whole lives, so I can accept that a bunch of random people wouldn't be able to fend for themselves in the wild. But I mean, this is common sense stuff. All that time they spent on Hershel's magical farm, a half mile from the highway where herds of zombies were roaming about, it never occurred to anyone to, I don't know, reinforce the fences? I can buy having to live in tents far out on the property because Hershel's a douchebag, but not building any sort of permanent defenses seems irrational.
Of course, right after everyone's driven off the farm by an inevitable herd of marauding zombies, Rick, henceforth Douchebag Prime, goes into a zany speech about how they have to find a place for them to stay, somewhere safe, that can be fortified. You know, somewhere fairly remote, away from any major population centers. With enough space and resources to grow food. Somewhere with reliable water access. Like, maybe a farm or something?
Oh, wait. Shit.
I hear in Season 3 they go live in a prison. Definitely preferable to fortifying the completely-functional farm they already had. One hundred percent.
The whole group seemed to stop caring about their resource usage this season, too. They use their cars for everything. Since when do they have enough fuel at hand to justify using a car just to move bodies across the property, when they have a dozen able-bodied people available? Despite the repeated assertions that loud noises attract zombies, they use their guns for everything, too. How much ammunition do they have? (Answer: As much as the "plot" requires!) They make a big deal about having the former police officers train everyone in how to shoot, which is good, but there's no training in hand-to-hand combat. Not just anybody is able to bash someone's head in with a baseball bat, after all. They also never mention safe handling of firearms, as demonstrated by the fact that no one on the show safely handles a firearm.
I can understand not putting any energy into long-term planning when you're fighting for your life day-to-day, but in the relative safety of Magic Farm? If they have time to shoot each other over whose property Lori and Carl are, they have time to at least make an escape plan. Is all I'm sayin'.
2. Everyone Fails at Being A Fucking Person
I can't for the life of me understand why Team Douchebag has to attack or abandon every other survivor they see.
I'm referring specifically to the subplot with Randall, which was so wrong to me.
Douchebag Prime shoots some dudes. (I mean, yeah, they were a little douchey, but no douchier than Shane, for sure.) The dudes' buddies show up, find out that their dudes were murdered by Douchebag Prime, sensibly assume he's a threat because he just shot two living people, and shoot back. All the gunfire attracts the zombies. When the dudes' buddies bail, they leave behind a teenager-ish named Randall who was wounded. Douchebag Prime decides to save him take him with them, because he's "just a kid."
And then once he recovers, Douchebag Prime decides to dump him on the side of the road. You know, the same thing he told Hershel was a death sentence.
Randall insists that he barely knows the people he was with,
supported by the fact that he's local (He went to high school with the
farmer's daughter! That makes him more of a threat instead of less of one! For reasons!), while the guys Douchebag Prime murdered were from Philadelphia. But apparently, the fact that Randall was loosely associated with the murder victims means he's going to go back to "his people" and bring them back to take over the magical farm, resulting in some kind of weird gang fight.
How would any rational person come to that conclusion?
Why on earth would anyone want to waste precious ammunition on other living people? And why would anyone want to take over the unfortified magical farm? I mean, sure, they have a stable food and water supply, for the time being, but they have no defenses in place, so it's all for nothing when the place inevitably gets overrun by zombies SPOILER ALERT. If anything, since they have a water supply and a way to produce food, they should be looking for more people to secure the place. Not to mention that the last time they almost got into a shootout with some survivors, it turned out they were just trying to protect a hospital full of sick elderly people. It was also a pretty big plot point in Season 1 that Douchebag Prime is only alive because of the kindness and courage of random strangers, like Morgan, Glenn, and now Hershel.
Ignore the sound, that's continuity sobbing in a corner.
The show tries to make the murder victims sound like a bigger threat by having Randall tell a story about how they raped and killed some teenage girls. Now, don't get me wrong- rape is an epidemic in all war zones, so it's not an unrealistic thing to happen or be concerned about during the zombie apocalypse. That doesn't excuse the fact that they have Lori of all people shrink back and say she "wouldn't feel safe" unless Randall was chained up, despite the fact that Shane already tried to rape her in Season 1, which was conveniently forgotten by everyone. I don't think the hypothetical roving band of scaaary rapists is the threat here, hmm?
Dale is the only one opposed to shooting the tied-up, unarmed teenager in the head. (Not that Dale is a total peach, mind you- he has a habit of lying to and manipulating his companions for what he thinks is "the greater good.") Everyone scoffs at the idea of letting Randall join the group while not leaving him alone, with the implication that that would be way too dangerous, or too much work.
It's the goddamn zombie apocalypse. No one's ever alone anyway.
I don't get this bizarrely intense pack mentality that Team Douchebag has, especially since none of them particularly like each other to begin with. They're just a bunch of random strangers who happened to be stuck in the same traffic jam when the world ended. And now, they're getting picked off by zombies. The group's going to need new people eventually.
There's a pretty wide gap between being cautious, and being self-destructive.
3. Everyone Fails at Making Basic Decisions
The zombie budget was low in season two, apparently, and typically only one or two zombies show up per episode. This shortage of immediate, gruesome threats inevitably leads to a speech from Glenn about how he "forgot that they were dangerous," after his girlfriend gets attacked.
Can I make a quick point, here?
All of these characters get attacked by zombies all the time. Each of them has watched people get torn apart, eaten alive, and turned into zombies. Repeatedly.
They're not really clear on how long everyone spends on the magical farm
not fighting zombies, but it's not long enough to
forget that a zombie will kill you in a fashion most horrible. I mean, yeah, to the viewers this has been dragging on forever because the plot is advancing at a snail's pace, but to the characters, it's been what, a few days? "Whoops, I forgot that two weeks ago, zombies tore apart everyone I ever loved, and also that they're fucking everywhere, so I'd better go walk around outside by myself"? Really?
I've never been personally attacked by a bear. That said, if I was in an area that I knew was crawling with hordes of ravenous killer bears, I would generally prefer to stay the fuck inside.
Which leads us to complaining about the show's awful writing, and all of the aggressively bad decision making.
Why is no one able to spot the obvious? Like Lori being pregnant. These people spend 100% of their time together in a pretty small area. People would have noticed that she stopped getting her period. Zombies aren't exactly quiet, even when they're not eating, and Hershel's group was feeding them every day. Why didn't anyone hear the zombies in the barn? Or how about Shane's erratic, destructive behavior? Why does no one besides Dale notice, or maybe more importantly care, that Shane killed Otis? Now, Dale had a tendency to jump to wacky conclusions about people, but it's not like it was an unfounded accusation. One of my favorite moments of Season 2 was when Daryl casually mentioned that he knows Shane killed Otis. A paraphrase:
"Umm... he claimed Otis stayed back to cover him, but he came back with Otis's gun. Duuuuhhhh."
Go Daryl! He notices obvious things! Can he be leader instead? Is it too late to vote for Crazy Jim? At least that guy had the sense to get some graves ready.
Why is Carl wandering off by himself all the time? They make this huge deal about how Douchebag Prime has to do all this evil shit to protect Carl, but then no one bothers to watch him, ever. He'd be in danger even if he were healthy, which he's not, because he just had amateur chest surgery in a farmhouse. What if he has another seizure? Whoops!
"Oh no! Carl got attacked by a zombie! After he wandered into the woods alone, which he figured would be a good idea, because he's a little slow, I guess. And no one thought to check up on him. Or be watching him in the first place. Or teach him how to defend himself."
In another episode, Douchebag Prime and Glenn are gone for like, ten minutes, before Lori panics and steals someone's car to go after them. So, again with the resources: she thinks it's a good idea to waste a car and fuel on this errand, after everyone else told her it was a terrible idea and refused to go. She doesn't tell anyone she's going, so when she inevitably crashes the car and gets attacked by zombies, no one knows she's missing. Why, when she ditches the car, does she stay on the road, knowing that it's dark and the zombies like to stay on the road? Why did none of the other people hear the car leaving, or notice that it was gone, even though they supposedly always have someone on lookout? It's like writers are writing each episode backwards and filling in the holes as they go.
"And then Lori gets in a car accident and Shane rescues her!"
"Wait, why was Lori in a car accident? Why was she alone? Why was she driving a car?"
"Um... don't worry about it."
The same can be said for anyone who fires a gun, ever. They've established that firing a gun is basically ringing the dinner bell for every zombie within earshot, so why does everyone keep doing it? Especially when they're shooting at people, not zombies? And then why are they always surprised when all the zombies show up five minutes later?
"I'm gonna touch the oven. Ouch! Hot! I'm gonna touch the oven. Ouch! Hot! I'm gonna touch the oven. Ouch! Hot! I'm gonna touch the oven. Ouch! Hot!"
All the gunfire is really just a lazy way to make the show more "exciting." The best way to survive a zombie encounter is by hiding, not attacking. (I think the script writers are playing a little too much Left 4 Dead.) There's a big dramatic moment where Shane reflexively fires his pistol after Douchebag Prime stabs him, and the shot is shown to attract a massive horde of zombies. Which is nice and all, except that they just gunned down two dozen zombies in the middle of the farm, like, two days before, and this horde didn't seem to care at all.
Which leads us to:
4. Everyone Fails at Logic
This show has strung continuity up by its own entrails. Maybe the Continuity Zombie is the real villain of the show, but he's always just off-screen, resizing Carl's hat. Who knows?
So, gunshots only attract zombies when the plot wants it to be so. Carl's been told repeatedly not to leave his parents' sight, but he still wanders off alone all the time and no one does anything about it. All the survivors they've met have been pretty ok, but they still kill all the living people they see. Lori tells Douchebag Prime he has to do something because Shane will try to kill him, then freaks out after he tells her that Shane's dead because Shane tried to kill him. They're always freaking out about supplies, but they always have enough fuel for joyriding and enough food to feed chickens to zombies and enough bullets to shoot at each other for no reason.
What's with all the characters that show up once and then kind of exist off-screen for a while? The show is crawling with red shirts. What was with that one dude who was shown on Hershel's farm, like, once, and then reappeared ten episodes later just to get mauled by zombies? Cheap shot, writers. I know that the people making the show are too cheap to pay all the actors, but come on. I'm kind of surprised T-Dog's still alive, given that he just kind of lurks in the background all the time, waiting to be eaten.
I don't generally expect much science from my zombie entertainment, but I do expect them not to make stupid, obvious mistakes. Like, why does everyone involved with the writing and production of The Walking Dead think that the adrenal glands are in the brain?
And then there's the entire episode where Lori tries to give herself an abortion.
First of all, she asks Glenn to get her some Plan B ("the morning after pill"), which prevents pregnancies from happening in the first place, but does not induce abortions.
Secondly, all the pills come in little cardboard boxes that say THE MORNING AFTER PILL on them, which is ridiculous. I mean, yeah, they need Douchebag Prime to find them and know what they are, but he's a fucking police officer. He has to have seen a rape kit before, so he would know what Plan B is. And even if he didn't, he would still ask his wife why she was taking pills, which makes the goofy THE MORNING AFTER PILL boxes doubly superfluous.
Thirdly, Glenn gets her a million of them, and she takes them all. I mean, what? If it were a plot point that she had no idea how birth control works or what the fuck she was doing, ok, maybe. Then she pukes them up in the bushes. Douchebag Prime finds her and yells at her for not telling him.
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, YOU TERRIBLE PERSON," he yells. "DO YOU THINK I'D TRY TO FORCE YOU TO HAVE A BABY YOU DON'T WANT!?"
Yes, because that is EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT NOW. WHAT THE HELL.
I mean, I don't really understand why she wouldn't want an abortion, given that there's a 98% chance she's going to accidentally smother that baby to death to keep it quiet while everyone around them is mauled to death by zombies. But maybe that's just me. The internet told me that next season, Lori dies in childbirth or some shit, and then her ghost haunts Douchebag Prime. Neato.
5. Everyone Fails at Not Being Sexist
Holy shit, the sexism on this show.
Exhibit A would be everything I just wrote about the episode where Lori tries to have an abortion.
Andrea wants to practice shooting so she can protect the camp from zombies, and Lori accuses her of just trying to get out of laundry duty, and tells her to let the men do all the shooting and protecting. Um, ok. I mean, making food and washing things are important for survival, they need to be done, and not everyone is able to run around and shoot zombies. But why does the show insist on a gendered division of labor? Dale was too old for heavy lifting or fast movement, and he wasn't any good with a gun- why wasn't he helping with laundry? And why doesn't Carl ever do anything? It's the goddamn zombie apocalypse, he can handle washing some sheets.
Every single fight Douchebag Prime had with Shane where he's ranting about how Lori and Carl are "MY wife and MY son" made me want to barf. Not to mention the part where Shane tried to rape Lori and no one cared. Or any of Lori's weird "stand by my man" crap that lets writers opt out of having to write any actual opinions for her.
The entire relationship between Glenn, Maggie, and Hershel. Why, exactly, did Hershel feel the need to give Glenn permission to fuck his daughter? Gross.
The entire culture of deference to the dudes that the group has is just infuriating. It makes sense for Carol to be a bit meek and deferential, because she just got out of an abusive relationship, but there aren't any other types of women to contrast her with. Everyone goes along with all of Douchebag Prime's terrible ideas, and no one ever is able or willing to come up with an alternative, even when being directly asked. He asks Lori for her opinion and she always says some variation of "Whatever, do what you want." I mean, Andrea was supposedly a fucking civil rights lawyer before all this. She should be able to negotiate her way out of a tough situation, but she never does.
Why?
Lazy writing, that's why.
None of the women on the show ever get to do anything cool. (Until the wacky katana chick shows up next season, but I hear she doesn't get to talk. Like, ever.) They're always getting rescued, or making silly mistakes. I mean, I guess it makes sense, because Douchebag Prime is a terrible leader, and if anyone else was shown to be remotely competent, he'd get kicked out in a heartbeat.
6. Everyone Fails at Ever Getting Anything Done
In Book 7, Harry Potter spends half the book sitting in a tent in the woods, waiting for the plot to trip over him.
That's pretty much what The Walking Dead is like, except that there isn't really a plot.
Douchebag Prime has no plan for long-term survival. All he wants, apparently, is to drive around in circles, looking for a rescue. In two seasons, these people haven't figured out the number one rule of survival horror:
No one is going to rescue you.
Not now, not ever.
That lesson should have been hammered home with the trip to the improbably explosive Center for Disease Control. There's no structure, there's no government. Nothing is left. You'll all die long before you find some utopia that will take you in and feed you and protect you from the undead.
You have to make your own rescue.
Douchebag Prime isn't a leader, except in the sense that everyone lets him speak for them, god knows why. A real leader doesn't wait for someone else to take care of him. If someone does show up and rescue them, I'll just wonder why we weren't watching that person from the beginning.
I mean, they were in a place where they had food, water, and shelter, and they squandered it because they were too stupid for planning. In what universe is watching a group of misfits band together to try to create a new society in a post-apocalyptic world while getting picked off by zombies one by one less interesting television than watching a bunch of assholes snipe at each other while getting picked off by zombies one by one? Well, if the show was self-aware about the fact that everyone's a douchebag, that second version would probably be awesome. But I digress.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I will probably continue to watch the show, because I hear the next season is awesomely terrible, and also I like the zombies.
Zombies are cool.
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