That Walking Dead Finale, Man

The season 6 finale of The Walking Dead, AMC's most popular show about undead shambling husks clinging to dear life and also about zombies, will no doubt have people talking. This season was supposed to introduce Negan, the next big bad character of the series who was infamous in the comics for reasons I don't need to spoil because you can find people talking about it on the shallowest surfaces of Google. It did that, but it also just created a whole new set of problems. Bad problems. Problems I'm going to talk about in here with SPOILERS attached!

...

Okay. Are they all gone yet? Did the people who don't want spoilers leave the website yet? They did? Sweet.

Basically what happens is, Negan shows up after this frankly pretty good finale full of tension and suspense, and the audience is shitting their pants with fear. The atmosphere and anticipation of what's about to happen was really through the roof, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a pretty good job overall. This character has been hyped for a while and everyone wanted to see what he would do. So he shows up, talks for a bit, makes everyone fucking sweat, and he raises a bat and kills... someone. We don't see who. It's a total cliffhanger. For the finale of this whole thing, a cliffhanger, and now we have to wait like five months to see that they no doubt killed off a character who won't affect the story in any major way for more than two episodes.

It especially sucks because I liked a lot of this season up until now better than anything this show has done in years. A ton of the episodes this time around were awesomely action packed, suspenseful and cool. I really was hyped for this finale, as I figured they could finally keep the momentum going. But instead the finale makes me see the show as that really cool friend that you liked, who came to your birthday parties early and bought you an extra drink at happy hour when you were down, but then you find out that he posted a status on Facebook asking why can't HE use the "N word" if rappers can do it, while you were asleep. It's a buzzkill.

It's just such cheap hack work writing. What the hell am I supposed to say? It reeks of social media pandering and bullshit hash tags and planned, calculated and focus-tested art. They've basically been given a license to keep pulling this shit over and over again – more cliffhangers dangling the prospect of death in front of you, more tricks and gimmicks to get their social media team something to do. It's bullshit. The idea of AMC putting up stupid polls asking who we think got killed and the hash tags and the fake suspense is nauseating, because you know they've probably already started by the time this blog post is up. It's anti-storytelling. Drama sucked out with a liposuction and replaced with corporate marketing. It couldn't be more transparent about that if we were talking about Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The Walking Dead just feels desperate with how often it does these ridiculous cliffhangers and drawn out “suspense” parts with disappointing returns. We should've seen the writing on the wall way back in early season 5 when they kept splitting up the narrative between Beth's hospital story and the rest of the gang – it was evident back then. They did it twice this season with Glenn's dumpster hiding extravaganza and then with Daryl getting shot in the previous episode – a complete non-story now, since he barely showed up in the finale. It's like we've all been enabling a drug addict, just going okay, he's not too bad, he was lucid at dinner last night so let's just not say a word. But then he steals Mom's jewelry she inherited from her dead aunt to pawn off for another ounce, and we look like fools all the more for it. And I know it's ridiculously hyperbolic to compare a TV show ending I didn't care for to a drug addict, but come on, it's the Internet and that is what we do here.

This really is the final nail in the coffin of network TV. It's done. That battle's over and Netflix's “put everything up at once” model has clearly emerged the winner if shows as big as TWD are resorting to desperate pandering garbage like this. It just shows how little integrity the show has left. They needed a way to compete with Netflix's juggernaut shows that come out all at once and are usually pretty fucking amazing. Since they have to wait another six months for another season while Netflix just pops out shows like the Octomom, well, we get cliffhangers and gimmicks to keep the audience abuzz on social media. A good story would have done the same, but when has that ever been in style? Someone is having a very good day at AMC's media marketing relations department, seeing the stats go up and up. I guess I'm not helping in that regard.

If it seems rather dramatic that I'm ranting about this, well, it's because I like the show when it isn't pulling dumb shit like this. When it doesn't fall back on the goofy cliffhangers and the ludicrous drawn-out parts, the show has a lot of good stuff going for it – strong acting, good characters, some good drama here and there and some good action. It's well worth watching, or it has been in the past anyway. But it sucks that the people running it are more interested in gimmickry and fake-outs than in real storytelling. The Walking Dead will remain successful, I have no doubt about that, but I think the illusion is over and we're kind of beyond the pale now – people will see the difference between this and really great TV.

I think overall, it's telling that the most cynical part about the nihilistic zombie apocalypse show is not the malaise of the main characters, but instead the marketing team's chokehold over the narrative, strangling the life out of it with these trash tricks and tomfoolery. That's depressing.

So Let's Talk About The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead finished its midseason finale, "Start to Finish," and predictably, the Internet is full of a variety of colorful complaints. I've only really been watching this show for a year, but I've read all kinds of criticisms about it dating back to season 2 or so, and I think it's time to just sit down and talk candidly about this show. Can we do that? Let's give it a shot.

First, the midseason finale. SPOILERS if you haven't seen it, so don't read any further if that's not your bag.

The finale was mostly fine. It wasn't terrible or anything. Parts of it were quite blood pumping good - several cool action sequences and some solid tension between Carol and Morgan being the highlights for me. It moved along at a fairly brisk pace. But then it just kinda ended, way earlier than I thought it would. Maybe I was expecting a 90 minute episode or something - but even at the usual 45, they still could have resolved a few more of these plotlines. As is, it felt a bit like they just cut short before we got to a really climactic moment for any of the various storylines.

Like, really, we couldn't have had a cool climactic end to the situation between Carol, Morgan and the tied-up Wolf guy kidnapping Dr. Denise? We had to end Rick's story this year with him and the others just wandering out into the crowd of zombies? We know their deaths won't come from these things because that would have been the big emotional payoff, and that would have happened this year in this episode. The show obviously has something else planned. So what's the deal? It just feels like this was a placeholder, a stop-gap to move the show from one point to the next, utilitarian-style. Which is not a good way to do a show. The Carol and Morgan fight should have felt huge, and Rick getting to the armory should have been the climax of the episode, not some cliffhanger cut off in the middle.

Surely - predictably - they want to open up next February with a real bang in some new way. But why does the show have to sacrifice the midseason finale for that?

The show's real problem is inherently intertwined with its very nature. The show's intent isn't really to build toward some great epic climax or to have some big earth-shattering discovery for one character - it's to show the endless, droning life of a zombie apocalypse. That premise combined with the 'ooh, let's get a cliffhanger' nature of network TV inevitably leads to a lot of dead space in the show and a lot of diminished payoffs. I like the huge cast, but the number of characters inevitably leads to the show only developing them right when they're about to die in the same episode. That gets predictable fast.

Maybe it would have been better if it was an Orange is the New Black or House of Cards style show where every season is just released at once. Maybe a more out of the ordinary structure would have helped, one where all the episodes could focus on being self-contained and good, rather than several of them ending on dumb cliffhangers that end up taking weeks to resolve. The show often feels protracted to a fault, and while I like a lot of things about it, it seems like they could probably put more effort into some of the filler stuff in between 'big moments.'

Too much of the time now, The Walking Dead teases you with good build-ups and strong character acting, but then fails to deliver the real punchy moment, the zinger so to speak, until weeks later, when the moment is supposed to happen for the best ratings or some other evil reason. It'd be a better show if we could just get the good stuff quicker and keep the show rolling without losing the sense of pacing and build-up. The way it is, too many scenes and episodes feel like they came off a conveyor belt, as similar as they are to ones we've already seen before.

I do remember this show taking more risks in its earlier seasons. Things felt more dramatic, and there was a lot more blood pumping energetic action going on. The characters were livelier and showed more personality - though the show's way of showing how they adapt to the zombie apocalypse makes it fitting for them to seem so much grayer and quieter as the years go on. I don't mind the quiet moments in the show and I never have, though the dialogue could sometimes stand to be a bit more substantial and less hollow platitudes in the real sad moments. There have been a lot of critiques on dialogue in the show tending to mull incessantly over how life has changed in the apocalypse. I don't mind that aspect too much myself, as it's not like they can talk about fucking Gray's Anatomy or the newest issue of Sports Illustrated to pass the time. What do people expect?

But I get it. Is that really going to make for compelling TV season after season? Not if they don't introduce more interesting new characters. The show has had a lack of them for a while now. A few good ones here and there, but there are so many characters overall that they get lost in the shuffle, and none of them are really properly developed. And there hasn't been an awesome villain since The Governor died. But then, I hear this Negan character will be good. Here's hoping. This, I think, could really fix the show's problems.

In the end it's still a fine show for what it is. I like a lot of the main characters and there are enough good, dramatic moments going on for me to want to see what happens. But at this point, I just wonder if the show really has it in it to deliver something drastically more exciting and better. Can it really be better than it has been lately? I guess we'll see.

The Ballad of The Killing

The Killing was a great show,
For about two seasons.
After season two it got cancelled,
And we thought we had seen the end,
AMC having put a bullet to its head.
But then Netflix and Fox stepped in,
Wielding great and powerful magic,
Possibly threatening AMC execs’ families,
And brought it back for season three.

Despite the fact that,
In the original European version,
It was a completely different show,
And the case stretched over two seasons in the U.S.
Was only one over there!
They had played with our emotions,
Put the show out of its misery,
And then buried it in the Pet Sematary,
And brought it back as something new.

The third season didn’t need to exist,
It was pretty much completely different
From the other two.
It followed new characters and put the old ones in the background,
While it had some captivating moments,
It was largely a different show.
There was one very captivating episode,
Mostly because of that guy who played the dad in Orphan,
(Or as some call him, Peter Sarsgaard!)
And the skillful representation
Of a man left on death row.
But then came the final episode,
In which a disappointing twist was revealed,
Such a cliche I never would have expected
From a show that did so well at covering them in the past.
And to top it all off like a cherry on a pile of manure,
The worst cliffhanger I’ve ever seen
On TV in my entire life,
Was how they chose to end this show they’d spent
So much time bringing back to life.

What a disappointment!

It was as if I’d been dumped by a girl
And then she came to my house the next day
And took a shit on my front lawn.
I left the show with disappointment
Feeling in the future I’d simply
Watch the first two seasons.
It was not even half a year later,
That Netflix waved their magic wand again
Necromancers supreme
They raised the show from the dead a third time
And announced there would be six final episodes
Masqueraded as a ‘season’
To finish off the show.

So let’s recap:
This show has been cancelled
After EVERY FUCKING SEASON.
And then brought back again and again
LIke an unwilling zombie
Forcefully reanimated
Walking living-dead,
And now they say it’ll finally be done.
I don’t know if I believe it,
I’m prepared for another announcement next Spring:
‘The Killing returns for season five! Only on Netflix!’
And all I gotta say is,
Poor Mireille Enos,
Constantly pulled back and forth
In a limbo tug-o-war
Is the show dead or alive?

I dunno.
But it sure is succeeding at driving me insane.

You’ve got one shot, guys. One. Last. Shot.