I spent most of today watching the Battlestar Galactica miniseries and the first four episodes of the first regular season. I then watched the Walking Dead first season finale. Talk about a study in contrasts. Now I have a better sense of what serial tv can be, and Walking Dead comes nowhere near meeting that potential. The original BSG was pretty much a cut-rate Star Wars knockoff/cash-in, but what I've seen of the reimagining so far is surprisingly smart and moving (more on that in a later post); Walking Dead, on the other hand, took the much more promising source material of an outstanding and acclaimed comic and dumbed it down in almost every way--characters, story, tone, dialogue, narrative rhythm, you name it. Look at what the new BSG did with Commander Adama and Starbuck, and compare that with what Walking Dead has done with Shane and Tyrese (T-Dawgg, for fuck's sake?!?!?).
This episode was straight-up crap. That goes double, considering it's a season-ender. As far as I can tell, it resolved nothing, set nothing up, and served up no other developments of any kind whatsoever, and the only difference it makes to any status quo is, now the cast is a little bit whiter (last week the Morales family split to go their own way, this week the only African American woman in the group decides to stay behind and die in a fire--and boy, they sure abandoned her with very little protest). I think Sean nails the problem with the conflict at the heart of this episode--that it's entirely peripheral to any larger, ongoing conflicts at the heart of the series.
Shane going all Rapey Under the Influence was another blunt, trite blot on the subplot with Lori that had shown some promise of improving in recent episodes. Daryl reverted to the broadest stereotypical version we've seen of him yet. Even the normally-reliable Glenn failed to shine at any point.
The revelation of the global scale of the zombie apocalypse packed no punch at all (in contrast to BSG, where it feels like humans are under constant, nerve-wracking threat of extinction). The pseudosciencey stuff was a deceptively empty placeholder for the stock moment where everything is explained--I guess the idea is, viewers who expect or need that moment will think they got it, but more perceptive viewers will recognize that the show didn't quite really cross that line. In that sense, it's the worst of both worlds, interjecting the deflationary tone of such a moment without actually serving any purpose.
I'm not done with the show yet. I'll give next season a chance. But this was an awful episode to ring out a disappointingly uneven first season.
8 comments:
I will be shocked if this show is picked up for another season. Just one bad piece of writing after another. The scene with Shane in the shower with the bottle.... it was like watching a parody movie. Felt like Date Movie or Epic Movie. One of those really bad spoofs.
Having never read the comic I probably have a bit of a different take on things... Granted, some of the writing seems to stoop to cliche to portray characterization, but other elements, like Shane abandoning his best friend because he truly thought he was dead, did demonstrate he was not just a lying, conniving a-hole. As for the ending, it was probably written well before the knew if they would be renewed or not, so rather than have a bunch of cliff-hangers that would never be resolved, the writers had it finish at a spot where it could effectively be "The end of the beginning". Having been renewed, it also serves as a valid starting point for Season 2. Overall, it's not classic television yet, bet it's every bit as good as another CSI clone, and has great potential. 'Nuff said.
Tell us what your really think, Curt!
As another who unfortunately hasn't read the source material, perhaps my expectations weren't so high as yours. While I never found an episode "crap", I do think the series was hit-and-miss, its characters trite or sketchily written, and the drama ultimately unsatisfying.
I still looked forward to it every Sunday night, though. It had its visual high-points, it certainly elevated the acceptable level of gore in (cable) network TV (And it was, thankfully, motivated gore. Otherwise I would've turned it off.), and it did something new with the tired zombie sub-genre -- if nothing else it gave it some scale.
And it brought horror -- real gutsy, grisly horror, eyeball-poppin' horror -- into the television mainstream.
Lots of series have a rough year or two starting out. "Seinfeld" was almost embarrassingly awkward in its early episodes.
Am I disappointed? Yeah.
But I'll be back.
I'm with you ...
If there is another episode in next year's season like this one, then I have my answer to the question "How bad does a zombie show have to be before it's not worth an hour of my time?"
Putting aside the inane, fantasyland version of the CDC (talking computer systems, really?), the logic holes, and the overwhelming sense of dramatic contrivance (our cast arrives the next to last day of the place's power, just in time to hear a bunch of lame exposition from a character whose only purpose is to deliver that exposition and then die), but the reliance on a big, badly rendered explosion to provide climactic dramatic excitement was enough to send me back to streaming classic exploitation flicks. The last two episodes of this show have made me doubtful about picking it up next fall.
And now Darabont has reportedly fired all the writers...
I have never read a single issue of The Walking Dead. As the series started I thought about picking up the Compendium. Now, I'm going to wait. I don't want to compare what has gone before in comics form with what the series is doing. I enjoyed every episode of this series to date. while I think that the lead should have been zombie chow a few times, I like this series.
Next season is supposed to be more episodes which will be nice and I'll watch it until it's over. Of course you realize that I'm also the guy who watches Monday Night RAW without fail.
Nuff said.
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Wow, the level of distain & disappointment over TWD here actually sort of saddens me a wee bit.
To each their own of course, but damn, I never expected to find myself in such a minority status here regarding the show.
Not that that influences my feelings toward it whatsoever of course.
I happen to be of the mind that the show has thus far been some of the very best, most emotionally engaging genre television ever telecast. Period.
With the first, the fourth & this past season finale episode being the strongest. Outstanding stuff IMHO.
Any chance that my love for the comic source material for the show has influenced my feelings for the series?
None whatsoever.
I only just purchased the first three volumes ( of 13 ) back in August in anticipation of the show's Halloween debut. So, though I've thus far quite enjoyed what little I have read of the comic, I'm FAR more impressed with the TV show.
I don't watch THE WALKING DEAD with disdain trying to imaigine how much better it could be, I watch it with rapt enjoyment knowing how much better it is (and more in my taste range) than about 90% of the crap that is already on TV.
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