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The Walking Disappointed
Who else was disappointed in the midseason finale of “The Walking Dead?” And I’m not talking about students coming out of their college and law school exams.
I’ve always enjoyed the show and even think it is basically conservative in outlook — it reminds us of the state of nature to which we could return if it were not for the fragile institutions that keep society functioning. The group at the heart of the show tries to build a society among itself with rules and institutions and try to balance security with the need for a future. Alexandria struck me as a typical liberal fantasy land, kept alive by luck but from which the inhabitants inferred that they could build a perfect community free from the tough truths of reality.
But I thought that the fall of Alexandria’s walls by the collapse of a church tower was a random element that made little sense. I think for the walls to have fallen because of a direct attack by the other competing groups would have made sense. Maybe they did, since the walls were weakened because of the attack by the fellows with the W’s on their heads, but the inhabitants had plenty of time to recognize and fix that. I also didn’t find the escape of the W prisoner believable or that Carol would try to take on Morgan armed only with a knife to get to him.
But perhaps (spoiler alert!) it is all a let down from discovering that Glen was still alive, hiding under trash dumpster. I had expected it, because you would expect the departure of a major character to get a much bigger send-off. But it was still great all the same. After that revelation, maybe any finale would have been an anti-climax. What did you think?
Published in Entertainment
Well, yeah. I guess I should have said conflict based on stupid decisions. I agree that the real point of the show is to show how people behave against each other in a disaster situation – the walkers are just the macGuffin that moves the plot forward.
There’s no question, however, that the characters do woefully stupid things. Like the scene where Carl backs away from a walker, trips, and ends up with a couple of them right on top of him. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
This is one of those areas where they talked about it early on in TWD, then dropped it. Man gets bit. Man gets sick. Man dies. Then man turns. Or man gets bit so they cut man’s leg off. They never really explain it adequately. It comes up again in FTWD. But again, never really explained why one gets sick and dies if they get bit, but they don’t get sick and die if they don’t get bit. Or they just get a scratch.
Maybe everyone has the virus but it is kept dormant by the immune system. But after death the virus blossoms and takes over the body. And maybe getting bit kills you because you are getting injected with active virus. It’s not hard to come up with possible explanations.
But there’s no reason any character in the show would know the answer to that. All the science labs have been wiped out. So there’s no reason the viewers need to know either.
This is exactly the reason most people suppose that is the case. Again, it isn’t very germane to a story that features zombies but isn’t about zombies. Kirkman has made it clear (for both the comics and the show): there will never be an explanation for the virus beyond the basics of how it works. We will never know where it came from. And we will never know how it ends. There will not be a conclusion to the zombie apocalypse in the TWD universe. Unless he changes his mind. Knowing that, I’ve wondered how they’ll bring the show in for a landing, given that it has started to get a bit long in the tooth.
Still enjoying the show, but think it’s suffering from the addition of too many characters. Characters used to have plot threads and you felt engaged. An episode would be devoted to one or two threads and you gained a sense of forward momentum. Now, you see Abraham or Daryl one episode and its years until you see them again (I’ve forgotten at this point whatever became of Aaron). And the episodes get spread out among so many little plotlines that nothing much seems to happen, overall.
I agree it’s best not to overthink the zombie logic, but have you noticed there are no overweight zombies? This is America and in the south, no less.
John and James Lileks discuss The Walking Dead in this podcast. Give it a listen!
Not completely true. The well walker was one fat walker!
There is a famous story about the John Ford movie Stagecoach (which was John Wayne’s breakout role) (If you have not seen it the passengers and drivers of a stage coach are menaced by Indians chasing them for pretty much the whole movie). Anyway the question was Why didn’t the Indians just shoot the horses? The answer, The movie would be too short.