Why I Stopped Watching The Walking Dead

Why I Stopped Watching 'The Walking Dead'
J.R

When I first discovered The Walking Dead two or three years ago, I was obsessed. It's a zombie movie but it lasts tens of hours and is of brilliant quality, what's not to love (if you're a zombie fan that is)? But with the last few seasons, the quality has dipped massively. And apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Average viewers per episode fell from 14.38 million for Season Five to 13.15 for Season Six, then to 11.35 for the recent Season Seven, the lowest average ratings since Season Three in 2012-13. If we look at the Rotten Tomatoes score per series, it goes from 90% in Season Five to 78% in Season Six to only 66% for Season Seven. But of course, I'm not going to hide behind statistics and expect the numbers to speak for me. The following are three and a half of the main reasons I no longer want to watch The Walking Dead.

1. Villains/Antagonists
I don't have a massive problem with the idea of The Walking Dead using human characters as villains, in fact, it's somewhat logical that in the post-apocalyptic world there would be people scrambling for power and control. The first notable human character to be a main antagonist was The Governor in Seasons Three and Four. He was very good, well acted by David Morrissey, but I imagined he was a one-off. But then there was that group of bikers Daryl went around with (in one of the seasons that blends into the next) and of course, Negan, bigged up to be the most menacing and brilliantly scary antagonist of the entire franchise. And he delivers, but...call me crazy...I think near-unkillable flesh-eating monsters that brought governments and nations to their knees are more intimidating than somebody who once put an iron on a man's face as a punishment (of course Negan is horrific, but there's only so scary a human can be compared to a zombie). The reason I think humans are becoming villains is that the zombies are rotting and dying out (well, as close to it as they can get). I know it's not scientifically accurate (but neither is much of the show), but stop the Walkers rotting. They are a much more interesting antagonist than people. Television audiences see power-hungry humans as the villains in every other series, but this was, could and should be the exception.

2. Stretched-out Storylines

The first season is my favourite probably because it is the most concise. It's basically a miniseries telling the survival of one group in a zombie apocalypse. Frank Darabont and the rest of the production team only had six episodes to show how brilliant the show was. And they succeeded. Every episode has a clear and distinct purpose in the narrative, whereas I don't really feel I can say that about the newer seasons. Every story arc in recent years feels like it could have been done much better in half the time. But of  course, the main goal for a series is to make more money than is spent producing it (probably why AMC wanted the second season to be over twice as long with a lower budget, which is why many fans view it as the most boring series due to most time being spent in one location). Every season from three onwards has been sixteen episodes long, with generally the first and last episode of every half season (yes, they even split every season in half with a break now) being watchable and having an impact on the plot (which only makes up for 25% of the content). When three quarters of your show is stretched out into bland filler in which every episode is nearly indistinguishable from others, it may be time to rethink your structure.

3. Protagonist Characters and Deaths

There are far too many supporting protagonist characters as the show stands today. Of course, If you're going to kill off characters, you need a few fan favorite ones to stay in the bank, but there are just too many characters, backstories, relationships and subplots that the audience are expected to remember. I can barely remember half their names alone now. The ones I constantly remember and have at least something resembling a connection to are the following: Daryl, Michonne, Carol, Rick, Carl (not for too much longer though), Maggie, Morgan. The other 'main' characters listed for Season Seven are: Sasha, Tara, Gabriel, Jesus, Rosita, Aaron, Eugene, Negan, Spencer (who??), Dwight (who??) and Gregory (who??). And of course, we have all the supporting Alexandria-dwellers (Enid, etc.), the people from the Hilltop, the Saviours, people living in The Kingdom and Oceanside, and the Scavengers. There are just too many characters. I know the writers/producers wanted to create a larger world for the story, but there's a limit to how many characters an audience can care about. Game of Thrones similarly has a fairly large main cast, but that series offers circumstances in which the audience is constantly aware of all of the character's motivations, goals and personalities by spending a (relatively) even amount of time with each set of characters because there is no one central character like Rick. And characters I actually wanted to see develop (Eugene for example), I no longer care about, because instead of taking time to explore the overflowing bucket of characters, the series focuses on only a few and their relationships with each other. These days they're only really killing off characters nobody cared about. Like that nurse who got an arrow through the eye in Season Six. Nobody was reaching for the tissues after that. And when they faked Glenn's death, that massively subtracted from the impact from fans that would have come from the actual death of Glenn, one of only two characters who's been on Rick's side since the very first episode, so even when they do kill off a main character they have to do it twice, because the network knows that audience only have an attachment to characters that have been on board since pre-Season Five, when all the characters got their share of screen time and development.

3.1. Carl

Carl has become a very strange character. He's given lots of development, but each season seems to rewrite any development made in the previous one. The only real arc I can see with Carl is him being on some sort of dark path. This, I believe, started in Season Two, and can be seen when Carl becomes over-confident and teases a Walker but accidentally sets it free (in the most annoying scene of the series by far) and it later bites Dale, who is shot by Daryl. I take it that Carl's guilt from this is what really started his darker journey. Also in this series, Carl becomes emotionally distant after it is discovered that Sophia was a walker for the majority of the series, and the group was living off false hope. Only a couple of episodes into Season Three, Carl has to help his mother give birth, then shoot her in the head. His additional feelings of guilt and the unnatural nature of this action further propelled his arc. He also behaves irrationally towards Walkers in an episode of Season Four in which he brings an unconscious Rick to a suburban house and is effectively alone for the day. This, as in Season Two, shows his confidence in the face of Walkers, showing either that he does not see them as as much of a threat as everybody else does, or he is suffering minor insanity. Throughout the rest of the series, he continues to keep his distance from everything emotionally, for example in Season Seven Negan orders Rick to cut off Carl's hand. While Rick is understandably hesitant, Carl tells him to 'just do it'. This, coupled with numerous other moments, makes me think that Carl believes Rick to be a weak leader. My hope is that Carl's dark side will soon get the better of him, and he might even take control from Rick in some way, but at the rate things are going, that's not likely to happen too soon.
Additionally, my anger at Carl's floppy development can be summed up by one episode in the most recent series, in which Carl breaks into Negan's haven, points a gun at him, then...puts it down. If the Carl I knew were motivated enough to go to Negan, he would definitely have the motivation to pull the trigger. Also, Negan orders Carl to take off his eyepatch and Carl cries from Negan's insults. Yep. Carl, this warrior who pretty much exemplified stoicism for the last few years was driven to tears by somebody telling him he was ugly. Carl is definitely the character I find the most confusing, and I sincerely hope they do something with his dark character arc. I don't at all have a problem with Chandler Riggs, he's probably doing the best he can with the little they give him, but the character is in desperate need of permanent development and change.

There are dozens of other smaller things that annoy me about the series. Such as:

• What on earth is going on with the possible 'will they, won't they' of Carol and Daryl?
• Why did the producers think that Alexandria would be a more interesting place for the survivors to be than the prison?
• When are they going to explain the helicopter that led Rick into the street of Walkers in Atlanta at the start of Season One, the helicopter that was luring the Walkers somewhere before they were drawn to the farm by Carl's gunshot at the end of Season Two, and the helicopter that the Governor investigated after it went down at the start of Season Three? (I NEED TO KNOW THIS) Or did those really interesting ideas leave with Frank Darabont when he was fired?

To conclude, similar to how I feel about the some of the new material from the X-Files, the latest seasons of The Walking Dead only worry me because its first two or three were so brilliant, and I'd really like to see it get back in form.