By: Jesse Striewski
When The Walking Dead premiered on Halloween night 2010, I was a single father at the time, in need of some definite escapism to fill the void after completing a full night of trick-or-treating with my son and dropping him off to his mother’s place for the rest of the night. The show was the perfect remedy I needed, not only that very night, but for many more to come.
Since then I’ve never seen a show climb so steadily (and painfully) down hill before in my life. What once was a concise series filled with relatable characters and plots worth emotionally vesting in, became muddled with far too many ridiculously tedious and (often non-sensical) subplots, as well as the addition of far too many unlikable characters that it became impossible to keep track of them all, many just being added for no better reason other than to show how “woke” the show could be. Even the special effects have suffered an immense loss of quality.
The show had been on a noticeable decline for several seasons now, ever since the writing staff started going through changes and main characters like original boss man Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincolin) left (no doubt seeing the writing on the wall). But this latest season has just been so predictable, and just plan weird at times. You’ve got all these different communities (or “Commonwealth”) intertwined together, with these storm-trooper looking morons walking around now that it all just feels like, frankly, a joke. There’s even an episode that featured a full-on wrestling match in the zombie apocalypse, if you can believe that.
The core trio of early cast members that consists of Darryl (Norman Reedus), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and Carol (Melissa McBride) hold it together as best as the can among the noise and chaos, but are given little to nothing to work with here. It’s not until the very last finale episode that anything of any real interest actually occurs, with some standout emotional performances from the likes of Rosita (Christian Serratos) and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) that offers some sort of closure at least.
But it doesn’t really end there now, does it? With multiple spin-offs still very much in motion, we’ll still be seeing more from this “dead” horse for years to come. Let The Walking Dead be a lesson to AMC of exactly what not to do to a once-flawless show. Hopefully at least one of said spin-offs (I’m putting my money on the one about Rick and Michonne) will manage to bring some integrity back to the brand, instead of just continuing to tarnish it.
Rating: 1.5/5 Stars
