THE WALKING DUD

— AN ANALYSIS

So let’s talk about tv, shall we? I LOVE tv. I mean, I really love it. And I have my favorites and my must-watches and my in-the-background shows and my it’s just ok I enjoy it shows. The Walking Dead is the show I love to hate. I watch it reluctantly, wishing it had the intelligence it had in season one under Frank Darabont’s deft, micromanaging hand. But alas, that ship sailed long long ago…

I watched this season. I watched the much hyped finale. I watched Talking Dead afterwards. I listened to Showrunner Scott Gimple talk about the cliffhanger and this season’s story and The Hatch on L O S T and teasing that mystery between season 1 and season 2. I read a few post finale recaps. I read tweets and more tweets. I shook my head.

Let’s talk about what a cliffhanger is for a moment. We all know that a “cliffhanger” is a storytelling device to hook the audience/viewer/reader into WANTING MORE. It’s a bread crumb. It can be big or small or major or minor or completely unexpected. Cliffhangers are fun. They are INTENDED to be fun and frustrating and surprising. A show like LOST or 24 or Breaking Bad makes the cliffhanger an art form. The Walking Dead does not.

Now, I used to enjoy watching TWD a lot. The greatest episode TWD has ever done was the season 1 finale, “TS-19.” A masterful piece of writing, acting, and exposition with an ending that was both solid resolution AND cliffhanger, giving huge answers to the characters and the audience, and yet stranding them with no safe haven and no plan of what to do or where to go next. A brilliant cliffhanger. Gimple, who is a good Showrunner in my opinion, has allowed the show to fall into a cliffhanger rut. It is overused, predictable, and always the same cliffhanger if only executed in a different manner each time.

Gimple is a big LOST fan, as am I. He cites it often as both a model of great television and storytelling and inspiration for The Walking Dead. Well, let’s break that down a little bit.

I love L O S T. LOST is my favorite television show ever. I do not consider it the greatest television show of all time. That honor belongs to Breaking Bad. But LOST is my favorite tv show ever. It redefined so much about television and at a level & quality that is really something truly impressive. Is it a perfect show? Almost. Did the ending and some of the mystery reveals make nearly half of the audience turn on the show? Yes. And that’s because the level and quantity of mysteries introduced in the show could NEVER please the diverse audience that chose to engage in the deep, involved, appointment television that show challenged it’s viewership to be a part of. The first show to have so many peripherals to feed into the mysteries of The Island with podcasts, books, online scavenger hunts, secret DHARMA Initiative videos, etc made it such a unique TV experience that lured in not just so many people, but so many types of tv viewers that no outcome would have been completely satisfying and that’s unfortunate. The ending is VERY well done, whether you liked it or not, it’s well done. The final season is not as well done and that definitely hurt the finale as “answers” weren’t doled out quickly enough or in a satisfying way (The Whispers!) and that made the audience anxious that questions that mattered to them would be left out or forgotten or mishandled and they were right. But the finale, disappointing or not, was WELL DONE. And EVERY season premier and season finale was also well done over the course of the entire series. And LOST mastered the cliffhanger and what sort of questions the audience would be asking and puzzling over and discussing for three months or longer until the next season started up again. It truly was a one-of-kind television show.

The Walking Dead, in sharp contrast slogs along, taking cues from LOST, but not really trying or wanting to understand the spirit of how they made their cliffhangers work. LOST, 24, Breaking Bad, even Mad Men or an older show like ER gave their cliffhangers VERSATILITY. What’s in The Hatch? Holy crap Benry IS not only an Other, but he’s their leader AND he just captured the top three members of the cast AND told Michael HOW to get off The Island?! Not Penny’s boat?! HOLY CRAP THE ISLAND JUST DISAPPEARED! Amazing, diverse, unpredictable cliffhangers where deaths occurred, but weren’t the cliffhanger. The cliffhanger was something else. Something larger. Something baffling. Meanwhile, another brilliant cliffhanger show — 24 — made the cliffhanger a weekly, often an every commercial break, event! The clock and the kebloop of it’s appearance interrupting staggering moments of tension and action. You’d feel yourself exhale, becoming aware how you’d literally been holding your breath for who knows how many minutes as Jack Bauer tried to find a bomb or interrogate a terrorist or save Chloe or find Kim. Dammit, Kim! It was fantastic. And different.

TWD sadly seems to have one cliffhanger: Did so-and-so die? Did Sofia die? Did Shane die? Did Andrea die? Did Merle die? Did Glen die? Did Tyreese die? Did Carol die? Did Glen die? Did the Governor die? Did Glen die? Did Glen die? Did Glen die? You know what? I no longer care. And I stopped caring a while ago. But this season’s finale was different. We KNOW somebody died. Just not who. Still a death cliffhanger, and Mr. Gimple went out of his way to liken it to The Hatch at the end of LOST season 1 in his Talking Dead appearance, but “WHO died?!?!” is now the big cliffhanger mystery. And the unfortunate thing about it is not so much the mundane cliffhanger of it, but that I have grown to dislike nearly every character in the cast after this season and wanted to see one of them die! I felt the audience earned a gratuitous unapologetic killing of a major cast member or three after all the horrible beyond-Governor level atrocities our so-called heroes perpetrated and justified committing all season long. And we were robbed. I not only was anxious to see Negan after that boring 50 plus minute lead up to his reveal, but welcomed him executing one or more of these characters I no longer enjoy watching or rooting for, let alone care about. I wanted to see who he picked and watch him take over as the hero of the show by killing one or more of the core cast. And yes, I wanted it to be Rick.

This season had a slew of did so-and-so die cliffhangers and with prize cast members, too! Glen, Daryl, Carol! But nope. Nobody major died. Just Deana, Walker Deana, barely know Rick girlfriend & sons, and Denise in mid sentence. And all that after a much hyped premier that was kind of dull, a much hyped mid-season finale where the Walker Herd infiltrated Alexandria and lead to almost nothing happening but a lot of talking in bedrooms, a very hyped mid-season premier that almost made me quit the show over its obsession to kill as many children as a Planned Parenthood on a Tuesday afternoon, and now this 90 minute road trip with larger and larger roadblocks that resulted in an amazing reveal/performance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan and then a yawn.

Yep. Just what I expected. Not what I predicted, because I waited all week and WANTED to see Negan execute someone in grand fashion (Rick) after all the boredom I’ve endured this season, but definitely what I expected from TWD’s tired pattern of death cliffhangers. So who did Negan kill? I’ll save you the trouble of tuning in for season seven’s premier: Abraham. Why? He’s the strongest, healthiest remaining member of Rick’s crew who was given an entire season’s arc of falling in love, breaking someone’s heart, having a falling out with a dear friend, then reconciling with that friend, nearly dying at Hilltop, given some lingering close ups, standing up to Negan (even while having to do it on his knees), and — most importantly — waxing hopeful with Sasha about having a baby. That is the sure fire death sentence for a character on The Walking Dead, except for Glen/Maggie. Say something morally upright and hopeful and YOU. MUST. DIE. Goodbye, Abraham. And Goodbye, The Walking Dead….

…Although I may tune in just to watch Morgan play Negan and cheer him on. #TeamNegan