Why I’m Done with the Walking Dead

This blog is ostensibly about law.  But it’s also about whatever comes into my head, and–just in case the general theme of the website didn’t clue you in–I’m a big fan of superheroes, science fiction, and comic books (though, I’ll admit I haven’t heavily consumed the latter since college.  That said, I was consuming the latter in college and still do.).  What that means for you, the reader, is that I will occasionally veer off from appellate and legal topics (“œprofessional nerd-dom”) into babbling on about other stuff (“just plain nerd-dom”) like who would win in a fight between the Hulk and the Thing (Hulk, no question), whether Kirk was a better captain than Picard (Kirk was a better warrior; Picard, a better tactician, both duties of a starship captain), or whether Avengers, Mark I, featuring Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye was a more formidable team than Avengers, Mark II featuring War Machine, Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Falcon.  Yeah, this is what we talk about.

So, this being said, the above topics are, of course, not going to be of interest to everyone.  But I’m still going to delve into stuff here because this is my platform, and you can read or not, as you please.  Hopefully, I’ll put up something that catches your eye, even if everything doesn’t.  If you like it, read on, and if you hate it, ignore it (but please come back another time).  And it was this line of thinking that brought me to The Walking Dead.

I suspect I don’t actually have to say this, but The Walking Dead is a television series (and before that and still, a series of graphic novels) about the world gone to hell, post-zombie apocalypse.  Life is brutal, with survivors making grisly choices to survive each day.  I watched the series faithfully, beginning with the first episode of the first season through the second-to-the-last episode of last season, season six.  I TIVOed every episode.  And then, I stopped.  I never did watch the last episode of season six.  And, when the seventh season premiered this last Sunday, I didn’t tune in.  And, this morning, I canceled my season pass on TIVO and deleted my last recorded episodes.  I was done.  Why?

Because The Walking Dead has descended into sadism, at least as far as I can see.  Here’s a “big bad,” who wants to take everything from our heroes and kill anyone who disagrees.  He’s called “the Governor.”  Here’s a “big bad,” who wants to take everything from our heroes and kill anyone who disagrees.  They’re called “The Wolves.”  Here’s a “big bad,” who wants to take everything from our heroes and kill anyone who disagrees.  He’s called “Negan.”

It’s not a life-affirming struggle to survive.  It’s tap-dancing in a minefield. With a gun held on them and instructions to dance faster and harder. As the series progresses, it has to kill off more and more established characters to maintain the shock value.  And that’s not good writing; that’s just pandering to basest instincts (and besides, the writers are running out of people we care about).  Every death of a major character is an excuse not to come up with a genuinely new storyline.

Hope is an essential element of any tale of conflict, for me.  There has to be something we can hold onto as a harbinger of peace and a better day.  Besides, perhaps, being a tremendously cynical and conceivably inaccurate reading of human nature, The Walking Dead finally, ultimately, misses the mark as entertainment and social commentary.  Basically, the entire premise of the series–that the average person will become a monster to survive, including doing horrible things to his fellow survivor–is, authoritative sources say, myth.  People aren’t that horrible, after all.  George Romero invented the modern zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, and he used it as a catalyst for his exploration of racism, classism, and consumerism. For Romero, the living dead always represented the dead inside the living.

The Walking Dead seemed to start out with that in mind (and it’s had occasional great moments, since), but it now seems to have descended into a steady diet of one set of horrible, amoral antagonists after another (zombies, totally aside), and the writers seem disinclined to find anything else to write about, content with the theme of “people suck.” It doesn’t have any real commentary in mind. What separates the living from the living dead is no longer a concern.  Now, it’s all about how can a fly survive with his wings torn off? That’s not something I want to see.