I give up on The Walking Dead
Finished. Done. Kaput. Put it to bed. Stick a fork in it, it's done.
And I write this, not as someone who has become frustrated while waiting for the third season, and who feels entitled to more frequent updates from the series' creators.
Nay, I write this as someone who *hasn't even finished the second season.*
Like everybody else who loves excellent writing and who has a taste for grand guignol, I encountered the first season of The Walking Dead after hearing rave reviews from a friend, and then got my cerebellum hammered into the concrete by its sublime mastery of pacing, tension, and realistic characterization. The small group of survivors were so very human in the midst of their inhuman (and inhumane, different thing) situation. I hadn't been smacked in the face by a series like that since I stumbled, years after everyone else, into BattleStar Galactica. Like BSG, I ate Walking Dead in heaping helpings, then went back and cherished little bits of episodes. Gods of media, bless Netflix and keep her well.
Then the second season. And...
Well, back up a second. Before the second season, I watched a playthrough of the Walking Dead videogames, by the same team which brought forth the show. There's a sequence in the third episode, and it's impossible to take. I'm going to spoil it. No, it's not when the kid goes zombie...that, while sad and harsh, was consistent with the series' grim premise. No, I'm talking about the moment where one of the survivors, suspicious and perhaps jealous, suddenly whips out her gun and shoots another *uninfected* survivor in the head. Then she drives away.
Huh. So then I started watching the second season. And at the end (*spoilers again!*) of one episode, flashbacks reveal that Shane put a bullet into a guy's leg and left him for zombie chow in order to facilitate his own escape.
The critics loved that epsode. They thought it added depth and drama to the series. The critics are full of dung. It was crap writing, and here's why.
What both sequences suggest is that, in a world where the few (*VERY few) human survivors must cling to one another to survive...they won't. They'll act with the same nasty pettiness they do in everyday society, only exacerbated into outrageous violence by their miserable, deadly situation.
Sorry, but that's a crock. I'm not just saying that because I'm more optimistic about human nature...I'm saying it because that's not the way even sociopaths act. Sociopaths are interested in their own survival. Tautologically, that survival is going to be much more likely in zombieland when there are other humans around. Shooting your comrades just because they're inconvenient, or you're grumpy, isn't just vicious. It's suicidal, and that's the one thing sociopaths absolutely are not.
That the two sequences appeared at all was to pander to a false pseudo-critical perspective which conflates "drama" with "depth." I'm reminded of those composition students who throw tragedy (dead grandparents, dead pets) into their essays because they foolishly think doing so lends their work gravitas. That many viewers fell for such obvious manipulation doesn't make it any less crass or illogical.
Some self-styled "realists" adopt the argument that this type of illogical, self-destructive violence is at the heart of the human condition, Lord of the Flies style. It's ridiculously easy to shoot down that position. If humanity acted that way in mortal crises, we would never have made it out of the trees.
But we did, and made this lovely civilization, with communicative faculties and technology which allow us to unfortunately watch badly written television.
Or to choose not to.
And I write this, not as someone who has become frustrated while waiting for the third season, and who feels entitled to more frequent updates from the series' creators.
Nay, I write this as someone who *hasn't even finished the second season.*
Like everybody else who loves excellent writing and who has a taste for grand guignol, I encountered the first season of The Walking Dead after hearing rave reviews from a friend, and then got my cerebellum hammered into the concrete by its sublime mastery of pacing, tension, and realistic characterization. The small group of survivors were so very human in the midst of their inhuman (and inhumane, different thing) situation. I hadn't been smacked in the face by a series like that since I stumbled, years after everyone else, into BattleStar Galactica. Like BSG, I ate Walking Dead in heaping helpings, then went back and cherished little bits of episodes. Gods of media, bless Netflix and keep her well.
Then the second season. And...
Well, back up a second. Before the second season, I watched a playthrough of the Walking Dead videogames, by the same team which brought forth the show. There's a sequence in the third episode, and it's impossible to take. I'm going to spoil it. No, it's not when the kid goes zombie...that, while sad and harsh, was consistent with the series' grim premise. No, I'm talking about the moment where one of the survivors, suspicious and perhaps jealous, suddenly whips out her gun and shoots another *uninfected* survivor in the head. Then she drives away.
Huh. So then I started watching the second season. And at the end (*spoilers again!*) of one episode, flashbacks reveal that Shane put a bullet into a guy's leg and left him for zombie chow in order to facilitate his own escape.
The critics loved that epsode. They thought it added depth and drama to the series. The critics are full of dung. It was crap writing, and here's why.
What both sequences suggest is that, in a world where the few (*VERY few) human survivors must cling to one another to survive...they won't. They'll act with the same nasty pettiness they do in everyday society, only exacerbated into outrageous violence by their miserable, deadly situation.
Sorry, but that's a crock. I'm not just saying that because I'm more optimistic about human nature...I'm saying it because that's not the way even sociopaths act. Sociopaths are interested in their own survival. Tautologically, that survival is going to be much more likely in zombieland when there are other humans around. Shooting your comrades just because they're inconvenient, or you're grumpy, isn't just vicious. It's suicidal, and that's the one thing sociopaths absolutely are not.
That the two sequences appeared at all was to pander to a false pseudo-critical perspective which conflates "drama" with "depth." I'm reminded of those composition students who throw tragedy (dead grandparents, dead pets) into their essays because they foolishly think doing so lends their work gravitas. That many viewers fell for such obvious manipulation doesn't make it any less crass or illogical.
Some self-styled "realists" adopt the argument that this type of illogical, self-destructive violence is at the heart of the human condition, Lord of the Flies style. It's ridiculously easy to shoot down that position. If humanity acted that way in mortal crises, we would never have made it out of the trees.
But we did, and made this lovely civilization, with communicative faculties and technology which allow us to unfortunately watch badly written television.
Or to choose not to.
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