The Walking Drag
Remember when
this show used to be about zombies? In the months running up to each season or
mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead, I usually get asked if I’m looking
forward to it. For the last couple of years, I've usually responded with a
“meh”.
When asking
myself if I’m willing to invest 50 minutes of my life each week for another 16
episode series, my gut instinct tells me I’ll get more of the same: “Rick makes
a speech about working together and/or surviving. The squad heads out on a mission
or a slightly convoluted plot. Things seem like they’re going smoothly. Oh no,
things are suddenly not going so smoothly. Will that person die? Probably not.
Repeat 16 times until the finale”.
Watching the
Season 8 premiere, I was still slightly optimistic but much less than I have
been with seasons that came before. Being the 100th episode, titled “Mercy”, also being a tribute to both the show’s deceased
stuntman and horror icon, George A. Romero, you’d have expected something
special. Not like a parody of Night of
the Living Dead or anything but perhaps a deviation from the episodic
formula that’s been batted into the ground over the last few seasons (just like
Glenn). So was the episode a tribute to the stuntman and Father of the Zombie drama as such?
Ha ha. No.
The episode
opened with Rick standing in front of all of his followers. Giving a speech,
talking about the bad guy they need to go have yet another slightly tense shoot-out with. Saying they’re not just friends or colleagues, they’re family,
for what feels like the 45th time. The Fast & Furious franchise has less repetitive dialogue and I
never thought I’d have to make that comparison but that’s the world we live in
now I suppose.
So Rick and his
brand of The Super Best Friends get to Neagan’s, call him and his squad out,
chat a bit with guns pointed. Neagan trash talks in retort, makes threats under
his charismatic persona, shooting starts, roll credits. It all just feels so
tired. Similar to that feeling when you’d get dropped off at a grandparent’s on
school holidays and you had no choice but to rewatch that one film they own on
VHS. We’ve seen this all before in The
Walking Dead. It’s not that it isn’t entertaining for some but many have
seen this all too many times.
The reason
for Neagan’s inclusion in the show, back in the season 6 finale, was an attempt
to rejuvenate the direction of the show forward. To give audiences a
charismatic face of evil that they’d just hate to love and love to hate. As
infuriating his introduction was teased and drawn out, Neagan was a success.
Before the finale of season 6, I could barely tell you anything what happened
during the show’s previous couple of seasons. I simply remember them as big
blocks of the same formulaic episodes mentioned earlier. That formula grew tired by The Walking Dead’s
4th season and unfortunately, the Neagan-infused version of the show
is now suffering the same fate.
It cannot be
denied that Neagan was a breath of fresh air. He was the reason to get keen on
watching TWD again. For the first half of the seventh season anyway.
Regrettably, because Neagan became the only reason to watch the show, the Neagan-esque
formula quickly got tired by the season finale, ending an exhaustingly
stretched out run of filler episodes with bouts of PG-13 violence as
checkpoints.
Season 8 has
basically been marketed as “they’re going to war!”. Isn’t that what the second half
of season 7 was about? So we’re basically in for another full drawn out season
of a few bullet-riddled conflicts padded with filler episodes - unless it’s all
been a clever marketing ploy and everyone just goes back to fighting zombies in
an awesome survival gore fest. I say this because this is what’s
missing from the show. The Walkers. The zombies
that were once the driving allure of the show have been pushed into the
background, being nothing more than mere props. They’re now more decorations
for aesthetic than the horrifying creatures they’re meant to be known for,
adding a theme of decay to a showcase of mediocre gun violence and worn out
story lines of conflicting societies.
Absence of
the Walkers’ weight onscreen carries further disappointment because it’s a sign
of the series dropping its roots in order to be mainstream complaint-proof.
It’s safe to say we’ll never see the level of perfectly brutal, bloody violence
that made the Season 7 premiere so perfect when the series needs some
inevitable jazzing up. Following the brain-smashing batting to death of Abraham
and Glenn, beautiful eyeball popping included, parents, TV fans and many others
with too much time on their hands were quick to cry in outrage. Despite the
Glenn-smashing being faithful to its comic book roots, The Walking Dead has
become a victim of its own success. If it were 4 or 5 years ago, barely anyone
would have bat an eye. Now due to its mass viewership, any complaints are
picked up and inflated immediately, with pressure to reduce its levels of gory
violence reaching its producers almost instantaneously.
This was
evident in the Season 8 premiere. Despite being a show about zombies
overflowing the world, with hundreds being in this particular episode, only one
person got eaten alive and it was all off screen. Rick fiercely stabbing a
baddy in the stomach was all implied. Fear of mass criticism over violence and
not being Marvel-film family friendly has caused showrunners to only stick with
what’s safe, and we’ve already seen what’s safe 99 times before.
Up to season
4, The Walking Dead was one of the best shows on television. Being
the concluding series of a war between clashing societies before it got as dull
as a spoon, everything grew at an appropriate pace. Characters steadily
developed, the stories felt fresh and the violence was abundantly fitting for the
world its set in. This is where The Walking Dead peaked. After finally setting
up a safe haven for our cast of survivors and clashing with a human villain,
The Governor, for the first time, there was no room left to grow. Beyond a few
tweaks to the particular baddie, each season has repeated itself with the
stakes only being slightly raised to make viewers think otherwise.
