BE WARNED: the following contains spoilers for The
Walking Dead up to (and including) the mid-season finale for Season 8.
Also: excuse the length of this article, but I have
broken it down into segments. Bear with me.
Call this an 'open letter' or a train of thoughts written down or whatever you fancy, but suffice it to say The Walking Dead has caught some flack in the last couple of years and made some missteps. Here I address some of the bad - as well as landmark moments of good - that the show has represented on screen, with a few possible fixes. TWD is one of the best shows on television, but there is room for improvement...
SEASON SEVEN
WOBBLES
The seventh season of AMC's thunderously successful zombie
show caught a lot of flack. Some balked at the violence in the première
episode, although to be quite honest, what were they expecting?! Having your
head smashed in with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire is going to leave
quite a mark. Did they forget the geysers of blood that gushed from slit
throats in the season five première? Or how about the countless scenes of flesh
eating, zombie slaying, bullet-spraying carnage that has been a staple of The
Walking Dead since the get-go?
The main criticism of the seventh season however, was with
the overall structure and pacing. All too often major characters went absent
for several episodes at a time as Scott Gimple and his writers opted to focus
on one contained story after another. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
The first half of Season 7 sums up the issue quite well: after the
Lucille-swinging première (one of the finest episodes of TWD's entire
run) we are introduced to The Kingdom, Sanctuary, and then Oceanside all
within five episodes – each with a procession of new characters whose names,
faces, and allegiances we struggled to remember. Basically, it was too much to
take in and our long-running show started to feel unfamiliar. Although, I will
say that 7x02 – the introduction of The Kingdom – was a very good episode,
handling Shiva and King Ezekiel perfectly (especially how Carol – and we the
viewers – were clued-in to the real Ezekiel by the end of the episode).
Some folks didn't like that Team Rick were under Negan's
thumb. “Just kill him already!” they screamed, which was ironic
considering that if they did that then it would be the exact same case of
'rinse & repeat' that the most ardent complainers accused the show of
committing, when comics readers know that All Out War is an entirely different
conflict to what we've seen before with the likes of Woodbury, Terminus, or
even The Claimers. To be fair to Gimple & Co, a little patience was
required from the audience – drama and tension aren't derived from getting what
you want immediately, after all! You don't enjoy the thrill of getting the gang
back together in 7x08 without going through a period of separation and
subjugation. Resolution can't come five minutes down the road, or even next
week!
Let's fast forward to Season 8 and how the structural
problems were being faced head-on according to Scott Gimple, Greg Nicotero, and
the cast as they headed into Comic-Con 2017. Now, certainly, there have been
some structural improvements compared to the seventh season: We've not gone for
long periods of time without seeing certain characters generally, although,
yes, Negan, Michonne, and Rosita all went missing from the screen for three or
four weeks in 'viewer time' (likely because of scheduling issues and the
other commitments of a popular and in-demand cast). Meanwhile, the
propensity to focus too much on a single “A Story” at the expense of any “B”
and “C” stories taking place with other groups in other locations has been
limited in Season 8A – but they can definitely go further...
Click "READ MORE" below to continue **SPOILERS UP TO 8x08 AHEAD** ...
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