Killgrave
07-26-2012, 05:12 PM
I'm a big fan of "The Walking Dead' series both comic book and TV series but season two showed some flaws in the series that could become fatal if not addressed. Now I'm guessing going from six episodes in season one to thirteen in season two and losing Frank Darabont probably didn't help the series but these flaws have existed since season one and I'm hoping the producers will fix them by the time season three starts on Oct 14th.
1: Better written characters. With the exception of Sheriff Rick Grimes none of the other survivors, in my opinion, are particularly well drawn or defined. This hurts the story because when characters commit questionable or outright stupid acts (which I will address next) its hard to see those actions as anything other than to create false tension. Now Rick is the 'hero' of the story (at least for now) and it makes sense he gets the lion's share of character development. And season two was, as my friend Jerry puts it, the journey from democracy to the Ricktatorship. Rick's been fighting the impulse and necessity to let his inner Stalin out but he realized the futility of that battle at the end of season two. Democracy won't work in the land of the zombie apocalypse especially with a group of civilians.
But the way other characters are written makes it hard to feel anything for them. Why were Rick and Shane so enamored of Laurie, Rick's wife? There has been nothing in her character that deserves such affection. She comes off as cold and not very pleasant. Laurie threw in with Team Shane pretty quickly once Rick was supposedly dead. Why? It was obvious Shane was in love with her and would have done anything for her, without the sex. It was done to create tension between Rick and Shane and have the scene where Shane considers shooting Rick. Powerful for the moment but as the series wore one I keep asking 'what's so special about her?'
Shane started out as the guy who would do what Rick wouldn't but in season two became a one note thug whose solution to everything was kill all the zombies and let God find his own. A leader needs more than brute force. He won't be missed.
The producers should look to a series like 'Breaking Bad' which has sharply delineated characters who do right, wrong and dumb but still remain interesting because you understand why they are doing those things. You may not agree but you know the reasons why.
2: Stop taking the stupid pills! Its never good writing when characters commit stupid acts just to further the plot. Its equally bad when people believe in things that make no sense to pad the episode count (the next topic) and season two was loaded with acts of mass stupidity. Such as:
Dale (who later dies, another who I won't miss) takes the group's weapons to keep them from Shane, who he regards as dangerous, runs into the swamp to get rid of them and then walks back out of the swamp with weapons in hand. Now what was the purpose of his actions except to create false tension. No one is going to believe that in a world where the dead hunt the living that anyone is really going to get rid of their best means of defense.
Hershel, our religious veterinarian, believes the dead are sick. Really? A trained animal doctor (BTW vets go to med school longer than regular doctors) believes that rotting flesh, missing limbs and an appetite for flesh can be cured? As he was played Hershel was religious but not delusional. Granted it gave us the spooky barn and the mass zombie killing but then Hershel explained his reasons for rounding up the dead and sticking them in the barn and it didn't ring true. How and what was supposed to make the zombies better? A vaccine, serum, divine intervention? That too was never explained.
Then stricken with grief and guilt he falls off the wagon, drives into town, a.k.a. zombie central, to get drunk? Then Rick and Glen follow him and to really make it a party Laurie drives into town (how many cars did they have?) to find Rick and has a zombie created accident just in time to be the episode's cliffhanger.
Rick isn't immune from stupidity. While retrieving Hershel from the bar, Rick kills two human bad guys and when their comrades come looking for them Rick, instead of letting the posse move on, tells them what he has done. Well, it gives us some more gunplay but I would have preferred Rick keep quiet. Or there is the protracted and needless debate between Rick and Shane about what to do with a prisoner: kill him or let him go. (I don't need to tell you who was arguing for which action.) All the debate did was fill time.
In the real world people commit gross acts of stupidity all the time. But 'Walking Dead' is entertainment and most people, myself included, find it hard to root for characters who should know better. In 'Breaking Bad' poor decisions are part of the show's structure and they give the actors scenes and dialogue to make those motivations clear. All media is manipulation, the book, movie, tv show, if its done right, gets you to buy into its plot so that you keep watching or reading. It's a deal you make with the media's creators: I know a world of the zombie apocalypse is highly improbable but you give me characters I care about in interesting situations and I'll watch. But when that manipulative becomes obvious and clumsy, leaves handprints so to speak, that turns people away.
Now I get what the producers were doing, they were laying the groundwork for Rick to abandon democracy and going Soviet. Unfortunately it made Rick look indecisive instead of conflicted. Now I cut him some slack because Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick and does a good job, lets you see the man inside and the reasons behind his actions. He is holding onto the remains of the old world, he doesn't want to go Stalin but he's afraid he will have to save the group.
3: A New Kind of Slow 'The Walking Dead', pun intended, needs to pick up the pace. At the beginning of season two I was glad to see how slowly the group was moving. All too often in films and shows like this very little consideration is given to how difficult and dangerous every day actions become. First episode and our group finds the road clogged with cars. Makes sense, people fled and their cars ran out of gas. Because they are stuck they almost fall victim to a horde of zombies scavenging the cars for remains. T-Dog slices his arm and contracts a dangerous infection because they lack antibiotics. A leaky radiator hose, inconvenient before the zombies, is now deadly.
But then they got to the farm and it all came to an almost complete halt. Turned into The Crawling Dead. The characters got stuck in a cycle of lather, rinse and repeat. Pad and stretch the episodes until we got to the mid season zombie massacre and repeat until the zombies over run the farm for the finale. Personally I would rather have ten tightly packed episodes then thirteen flaccid ones.
Come Oct 14th I'll be watching and hoping they fixed the aforementioned problems. Season three has the series' best villain, The Governor, appearing, the survivors decide to make a prison their new home - what's the first action you take when you move in, you sweep it clean or in this case de-zombiefy- and we have the return of Merle, who has mounted a machete onto his stump. (Not quite Ash's chainsaw hand but still pretty cool.)
Let the games begin.
1: Better written characters. With the exception of Sheriff Rick Grimes none of the other survivors, in my opinion, are particularly well drawn or defined. This hurts the story because when characters commit questionable or outright stupid acts (which I will address next) its hard to see those actions as anything other than to create false tension. Now Rick is the 'hero' of the story (at least for now) and it makes sense he gets the lion's share of character development. And season two was, as my friend Jerry puts it, the journey from democracy to the Ricktatorship. Rick's been fighting the impulse and necessity to let his inner Stalin out but he realized the futility of that battle at the end of season two. Democracy won't work in the land of the zombie apocalypse especially with a group of civilians.
But the way other characters are written makes it hard to feel anything for them. Why were Rick and Shane so enamored of Laurie, Rick's wife? There has been nothing in her character that deserves such affection. She comes off as cold and not very pleasant. Laurie threw in with Team Shane pretty quickly once Rick was supposedly dead. Why? It was obvious Shane was in love with her and would have done anything for her, without the sex. It was done to create tension between Rick and Shane and have the scene where Shane considers shooting Rick. Powerful for the moment but as the series wore one I keep asking 'what's so special about her?'
Shane started out as the guy who would do what Rick wouldn't but in season two became a one note thug whose solution to everything was kill all the zombies and let God find his own. A leader needs more than brute force. He won't be missed.
The producers should look to a series like 'Breaking Bad' which has sharply delineated characters who do right, wrong and dumb but still remain interesting because you understand why they are doing those things. You may not agree but you know the reasons why.
2: Stop taking the stupid pills! Its never good writing when characters commit stupid acts just to further the plot. Its equally bad when people believe in things that make no sense to pad the episode count (the next topic) and season two was loaded with acts of mass stupidity. Such as:
Dale (who later dies, another who I won't miss) takes the group's weapons to keep them from Shane, who he regards as dangerous, runs into the swamp to get rid of them and then walks back out of the swamp with weapons in hand. Now what was the purpose of his actions except to create false tension. No one is going to believe that in a world where the dead hunt the living that anyone is really going to get rid of their best means of defense.
Hershel, our religious veterinarian, believes the dead are sick. Really? A trained animal doctor (BTW vets go to med school longer than regular doctors) believes that rotting flesh, missing limbs and an appetite for flesh can be cured? As he was played Hershel was religious but not delusional. Granted it gave us the spooky barn and the mass zombie killing but then Hershel explained his reasons for rounding up the dead and sticking them in the barn and it didn't ring true. How and what was supposed to make the zombies better? A vaccine, serum, divine intervention? That too was never explained.
Then stricken with grief and guilt he falls off the wagon, drives into town, a.k.a. zombie central, to get drunk? Then Rick and Glen follow him and to really make it a party Laurie drives into town (how many cars did they have?) to find Rick and has a zombie created accident just in time to be the episode's cliffhanger.
Rick isn't immune from stupidity. While retrieving Hershel from the bar, Rick kills two human bad guys and when their comrades come looking for them Rick, instead of letting the posse move on, tells them what he has done. Well, it gives us some more gunplay but I would have preferred Rick keep quiet. Or there is the protracted and needless debate between Rick and Shane about what to do with a prisoner: kill him or let him go. (I don't need to tell you who was arguing for which action.) All the debate did was fill time.
In the real world people commit gross acts of stupidity all the time. But 'Walking Dead' is entertainment and most people, myself included, find it hard to root for characters who should know better. In 'Breaking Bad' poor decisions are part of the show's structure and they give the actors scenes and dialogue to make those motivations clear. All media is manipulation, the book, movie, tv show, if its done right, gets you to buy into its plot so that you keep watching or reading. It's a deal you make with the media's creators: I know a world of the zombie apocalypse is highly improbable but you give me characters I care about in interesting situations and I'll watch. But when that manipulative becomes obvious and clumsy, leaves handprints so to speak, that turns people away.
Now I get what the producers were doing, they were laying the groundwork for Rick to abandon democracy and going Soviet. Unfortunately it made Rick look indecisive instead of conflicted. Now I cut him some slack because Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick and does a good job, lets you see the man inside and the reasons behind his actions. He is holding onto the remains of the old world, he doesn't want to go Stalin but he's afraid he will have to save the group.
3: A New Kind of Slow 'The Walking Dead', pun intended, needs to pick up the pace. At the beginning of season two I was glad to see how slowly the group was moving. All too often in films and shows like this very little consideration is given to how difficult and dangerous every day actions become. First episode and our group finds the road clogged with cars. Makes sense, people fled and their cars ran out of gas. Because they are stuck they almost fall victim to a horde of zombies scavenging the cars for remains. T-Dog slices his arm and contracts a dangerous infection because they lack antibiotics. A leaky radiator hose, inconvenient before the zombies, is now deadly.
But then they got to the farm and it all came to an almost complete halt. Turned into The Crawling Dead. The characters got stuck in a cycle of lather, rinse and repeat. Pad and stretch the episodes until we got to the mid season zombie massacre and repeat until the zombies over run the farm for the finale. Personally I would rather have ten tightly packed episodes then thirteen flaccid ones.
Come Oct 14th I'll be watching and hoping they fixed the aforementioned problems. Season three has the series' best villain, The Governor, appearing, the survivors decide to make a prison their new home - what's the first action you take when you move in, you sweep it clean or in this case de-zombiefy- and we have the return of Merle, who has mounted a machete onto his stump. (Not quite Ash's chainsaw hand but still pretty cool.)
Let the games begin.