Why I Don’t Care About The AMC’s The Walking Dead Anymore
I want to make this clear up front.
- This is my opinion.
- There will be spoilers. If you have not read the comic or seen the show you may want to move on.
I was told to read the Walking Dead about 4 years ago. I don’t like the horror genre because it is often poorly written and repetitive, which i thought the comic would be. I final gave the comic book a shot at around issue 70 (about 3 years ago). Like everyone else I was hooked from the first trade. It is by far the best single comic book on the market today. It is consistently and constantly breathing new live into itself. Every time you think Robert Kirkman has taken this story as far as it can go, he pushes it further. The Walking Dead comic book has never been poorly written or repetitive.
Fast forward AMC now is making a Walking Dead TV show. Awesome! They produce Madmen, Breaking Bad and other amazing cutting edge series. Season 1 comes and goes, great. Season 2 slow but good. Season 3. The Prison. The Governor. Michonne. Perfect, right? Not so much. The Walking Dead on AMC only complaint was it seemed to “slow” for some . Season 2 was stretched from 6 episodes to a full season. It dragged because Season 3 was the pay off. OK, I can accept that. It’s business. What I can not accept is, a story that has always been smart and compelling in a comic book being turned into background noise while I watch the clock for so I can watch Dexter.
This is the scene in the Walking Dead that lost me.
Lori is pregnant and during some Zombie mishap goes into labor. Her son and Herschel’s Daughter are locked in a room and have to deal with this. Surprise there is a complication. Holy Cesarean viewers, they have to cut Lori open. Then she dies? Maybe, its implied. Either way her son pops a cap in her ass any ways. Lori was bleeding to death this takes time. She would have gone into shock. Carl would have known that, the girl who grew up on a farm should have known that. I would bet Forest Gump would have known it. AMC, Robert Kirkman and the whole Walking Dead crew wish you to believe that before trying to save her life or keep her alive for any period of time her (what 8-year-old) son will make the HARD choice and shot her. Now let’s be clear people were crying about this. Real life people and they praise The Walking Dead on AMC for such an emotional scene. Wait, lets stop right there. All this is happening during a Zombie event. Zombies who in the TV series by this point are very clearly attracted to sound, and the group knows this especially “smart” little Carl. He should have hit her with a hammer or something, but no he endangered his life, his new little sisters life, and farm girl. He’s smart enough to make the hard choice but not smart enough to think what a loud noise will do? Makes no sense nothing about the scene makes any sense. Until you view it from a different angle.
Carl in The Walking Dead idolizes and follows in his father’s foot steps. Making the hard decisions. He makes choices that no one should have to make and he’s a kid. Specifically, Carl makes a choice no one including his father is willing to make. He kills a kid. He executes a boy who killed his own brother, because the boy needed to die for. You break the rules you’re out. He did what no one else would. What everyone in the group agreed to do. This scene on the Walking Dead on AMC, where Carl shots Lori, was meant to replace this event in the Walking Dead comic book and show that Carl was hard and changed by this new world. It FAILS in every way. This was not Sophie’s Choice. This was stupidity at its finest. This single poorly written, acted, directed and executed scene was the final straw. Michonne a bore. Rick is Daryl’s sidekick. Trigger happy Governor. Dense Andrea. Add all that together and you get an OK TV series that is much better than most television shows, But like Heroes, its fun to watch till something good comes on. O look Dexter is about to begin. I’ll be back on the AMC drip for Breaking Bad and Madmen, but Walking Dead has just become to repetitive and boring.
All hail Negan.
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I have to agree that The Walking Dead could be better (and I haven’t even read the comic), but in the scene that you describe you have to remember one thing: As tough as Carl may be in a world that has no time for childhood, he is still a child. So considering the task before him, and the emotional impact that the situation would have on a child, it’s not too surprising that he wasn’t thinking of his or Maggie’s vulnerability when he made the decision to shoot his own mother.
I can’t agree about the comic – I’ve always found it to be very poorly written.