Is There Still Time to Save 'The Walking Dead'?
by EG
Ratings for The Walking Dead have never been worse, and millions of regular viewers have turned their backs on the series over the past couple of seasons. Can current attempts to improve the quality of the writing stop the series' death spiral? Read on for one writer's opinion.
[To some degree this article contains spoilers through the Sunday, Nov. 18, episode of The Walking Dead. But seriously, there's basically nothing that can be spoiled about this show anymore.]
Watching The Walking Dead on Sunday, something I've been doing on pure autopilot for four or five seasons now, an odd thought struck me: Dating back probably to the very end of last season, but certainly through this new fall arc, this is the least bad The Walking Dead has been in a long, long time.
Phrased a more complimentary way, the version of The Walking Dead that will cap off its half-season this weekend (the first half of season nine) is the closest the show has been to the show I've wanted it to be probably since the start of the Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) arc or maybe the start of the Governor (David Morrissey) arc or the start of the prison arc or possibly even start of the arc on Hershel's (Scott Wilson) farm.
Under the watch of new showrunner Angela Kang — who started as a writer back in season two — AMC's The Walking Dead has put aside its recent string of sadistic, weakly motivated bad guys and consolidated its storylines to only a pair of primary geographical locations. The show has also generally de-emphasized the walkers/zombies of its title, or maybe it just feels that way? In seven episodes this fall, the number of zombie interactions that have stuck with me even briefly, in terms of either scares or general disgust, has been limited to the opening museum scene in the premiere and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) on the Bridge on the River Kwai scene in the eventful "What Comes After," which I'll surely discuss a bit later.
For the most part, this period of Walking Dead has been dominated by people talking. The main drama this season has been the conflict in political ideology between the Alexandria survivor group, featuring basically everybody old-school fans of the show care about, and the Hilltop gang, featuring Lauren Cohan's Maggie and a bunch of characters whose names I don't remember other than Jesus (Tom Payne), whose name I only remember because he shares a name with a character from The Big Lebowski. The two camps have approached the task of rebuilding society from different perspectives, especially when it comes to things like welcoming new members and meting out justice against adversaries like Negan, whose death would have pleased Maggie and whose ongoing incarceration satisfied Rick as punishment enough.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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