This ain’t no network propaganda that’s cemented the term Golden Age of Television in the pop-culture lexicon. I, for one, have long championed the notion, at least until the other person fumbles for his/her iPhone (because TV is for mindless loners; Facebook is the cat’s ass). I’m willing to lay my movie geekdom on the line and assert that, in terms of pure cinematic expression, shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos belong in the same conversation as Welles, Hitchcock, Bergman, Kurosawa, Scorcese, et al. Many a film snob would scoff at such a statement, but I challenge anyone to show me a classic film character that’s as richly drawn and well-acted as Don Draper, Walter White, or Tony Soprano. Where AMC’s The Walking Dead belongs in the canon of TV’s Golden Age is a storyline far more intriguing than anything Season Five has offered thus far. Indeed, the zombie drama’s audacious arrival in 2010 largely heralded this great Golden Age, but becoming the number one show on TV has seemingly done a huge disservice to the series' creative forces. Once a perfect synthesis of tense narrative and inspired action sequences, The Walking Dead now suffers from aimlessness and repetitiveness. The show’s current setup for a rescue mission at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta feels like a slap in the face, or perhaps more aptly, a gentle poke in the tummy. This counts as the third season in a row where we are watching Rick’s clan clash with yet another inimical suzerain from a well-organized encampment. The scenario was intriguing the first time we went through it with the Governor and Woodbury. Then we wasted most of Season Four on a protracted quest for the ironically named Terminus, where we met another evil leader. Rick and co. made quick work of him. And now we’ve followed the show’s least interesting character, Beth, to Grady Memorial. It’s astonishing that the writers’ big plan for Season Five was to have Beth and Carol be kidnapped by some toughies in a hospital. Honk-shoo-quack-quack (DuckTales reference). The Walking Dead should be taking advantage of its embarrassment of riches to hire the best writers in the business. It should be breaking new ground in the now very tired zombie genre, and rewarding the fans whose loyalty has propelled the show to NFL levels of popularity. Instead, it’s playing it very safe, relying solely on expositive dialogue and mission after mission after mission. They seemed to be onto something with the mission involving Eugene, the scientist who claimed he knew how to fix everything, if only he could get to Washington D.C. But guess what? He was lying. He’s really just a wimpy hick. I would’ve inserted a spoiler alert there if not for the fact that this reveal was so utterly deflating and idiotic.
So is there any hope for The Walking Dead returning to its former level of heart attack-inducing awesomeness? I’ve long felt that there needs to be at least the tease of an endgame. Otherwise the characters will just continue pointlessly hermit-crabbing around rural Georgia. Ever the altruist, I’ve taken it upon myself to compile a brief outline of how to improve The Walking Dead:
1) Look to the George Romero movies for more than just makeup design.
Romero’s ought-to-be four star zombie epic Day of the Dead is so compelling because the characters are trying to figure out, however vainly, ways to save mankind. It doesn’t matter if they never find the cure. It presents all kinds of possibilities in exploring the nature of zombies, what caused the outbreak, what’s going on in the rest of the world, etc. The Romero movies always center on debates among the human characters about the best ways to handle the zombie outbreak. As the audience, we begin to imagine all the cool what-ifs. Is the basement safer than the boarded-up living room? Should we focus on eradicating the virus, or conditioning the existing zombies? Is the North Pole the safest place? How about an isolated island? It never occurs to Rick’s group to travel north or steal a ship and find a small island. Instead they keep bumping into new hideouts and groups of survivors a mile down the road (how is it that places like Herschel’s farm, Woodbury, and Terminus could all coexist without knowing of each other?).
2) If they don’t want to introduce an endgame, then develop the characters.
Characterization was never the show’s strong point, nor did it need to be. But early characters like Shane, Dale, Morgan, Andrea, and even Milton were interesting and complex. Now there is just a cast of faces (how many can you even name?). The father/son relationship between Rick and Carl offers a bevy of opportunities, mostly squandered by making Carl a stoic, mini-adult. What’s marriage like for Glenn and Maggie? We don’t know because they never have any lines. What if Carol and Daryl started boning but Daryl has erectile dysfunction due to zombie-related PTSD? Nope, they’re just going to walk around empty buildings and splatter CG blood everywhere.
3) Start killing off characters again.
Let’s face it-the reason The Walking Dead used to be so damn potent was that you never knew who was going to die next. Almost no one was safe. Sometimes it hurt because they killed characters we loved. They can’t do that anymore because none of the characters matter, except the ones who won’t die (i.e. Rick, Daryl, etc.). Now it’s just an endless line of racially diverse nobodies who die as soon as we learn their names. Better writers would make us fall in love again with Glenn and Maggie, then have them die horrifically because of a tactical blunder by Rick, leading to a mutiny which forces the characters to take sides. Just pitching here, but it surely sounds more interesting to me than Gabriel's church.
4). Make it scary again.
Think of the zombies slowly filing into the house in Night of the Living Dead. Zombies are scary because of their vast numbers. They’re scary because they’ve decimated society. They’re scary because, unlike AMC's “walkers,” they retain a degree of humanness. They’re also scary when they pop out at ya, or when they look really gross, but The Walking Dead has way overused those gimmicks. That hissy snarly noise they make is so wholly ineffective now, because it plays like a broken record throughout half of every episode. The scare factor could have an easy fix. The old horror/suspense tropes still work, just as they did in the show’s early seasons. Have the zombies jump out when we least expect it. Build up some suspense with sound effects, low camera angles, and tight medium shots. The show’s not even trying to be scary anymore. Last Sunday’s episode was just people walking around killing zombies that didn’t even pose any real danger. The closest thing to suspense in the episode was the ridiculous scene where Carol and Daryl decide to escape the zombies by tipping their car off a bridge (Carol sustained a cut on her shoulder-ouch!). If the show was still scary, I wouldn’t care about an endgame or that the characters are boring.
Hey folks, I know it’s easy for a keyboard crusader to trash the hard work of others and act like it’s easy to come up with better ideas. But I have to think that I’m not the only fan who feels they’ve sucked all the imagination right out of the show. And I think it’s pretty obvious why it has happened. The producers have an unprecedented success on their hands, and they’re obligated to tread water as long as possible, hoping viewers will keep eating up more of the same (they even have a spinoff in the works, which will likely stretch the franchise’s creative reserves even thinner). According the show’s well-sourced Wikipedia page, the producers recently bragged that they’ve planned this thing out as far ahead as Season 12. Sounds like we’ll be running into a lot more Governor clones and Grady hospitals. How lucky we are that Mad Men and Breaking Bad never got overly popular. When history makes its final judgment on TV’s Golden Age, the best shows will be remembered as having concluded at the heights of their brilliance. This could still happen with The Walking Dead, but only if the show values its legacy over maintaining audience share in the short term.
That's all for this week. Next week I'll be reviewing the new Rancid album, plus some movie recommendations, a punk rock playlist, and more. Thanks for checking out Master Nation, where cultural commentary is self-stimulating.