Monday, October 24, 2016

I found myself dreading watching The Walking Dead last night. Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

SPOILERS!

It was worse than I thought.

I'd figured it would be Glenn for a simple reason: his death leads to the most storylines. His widow, his kid, his legacy.

Didn't see Abraham departing. (Did the actor ask for a raise?)

So now I'm torn about this show. It was a pretty miserable experience, and there were a couple of genuinely shocking moments.

I actually value that--how often does that really happen to someone like me who watched lots of grimdark material? At the same time, it really seemed to cross over into Torture Porn. Especially the way it was draw.....nnnnn out.

It's interesting, in juxtaposition to watching Westworld, which asks how complicit we are in this kind of entertainment. Generally, I always say, Hey it's only fiction. (Also somehow tied into the dread I've been feeling about the election, heh.)

The effectiveness of this hour was that it seemed realistic to me. The character interactions, the message Negan was sending. I didn't think he was a cartoon villain, he seemed realistically chilling to me.

And again, I value that. Someone taking the premise all the way to its logical conclusion.

But did I enjoy it? Do I want more of it? Do I really want to watch a season of Rick knuckling under until he can't take it anymore?

I'm pretty torn. I'll see how I feel next week. I've never yet quit a show and regretted it. It always seems like a good idea in hindsight.

(I'm stopping the Talking Dead, for sure. I always feel somehow like I've eaten a bag of donuts after I watch that show--tasty but meaningless.)

Not judging anyone else's appetite for this. I've never been the one to say "Too Much."

Until now.

2 comments:

Luci & Loree said...

Well, we know, the Walking Dead is graphic, but... I was duly horrified and just sat there in shock most of the show. Just 'came' to the show and watched all 5 (6?) seasons on Netflix since august, so am fully up on everything that happened and understand, mostly... but gee.. we lost so many people before and in awful detail, people we had become attached to... but this just went on and on... and the suspense was torturous. And Glenn was one of my favs... him and Maggie.. well, no more of that. And what is to become of poor Darryl? I like the story as there are so many lines that go here and there and people going off in different directions, then you get to learn their story, it really is not 'just' about the 'walkers' and dealing with them or the violence, there are good stories there... :) ah well, it was surely a night to remember....

Dave Cline said...

Not a fan of TWD, but did watch the first season. What I find utterly unfathomable is the absence of logic in such shows. Anyone ever heard of the law of the conservation of energy? Magic is one thing -- suspension of reality -- and that's fine. But without a rational for how zombies can possibly exist past the first month of existence, especially when normal humans die within 40-60 days of not eating. Ugh!

Maybe nuclear powered zombies? Magic zombies? Ghost/mystic/spiritual powered zombies? Zero point energy powered zombies maybe? (Andrea Rossi as a zombie! Wait, he already it a zombie.)

My point is, maybe TWD should just reboot itself every season.

Get a surviving crew from season one and then fold time to inject them back into the precursor of the zombaclypse, again and again. Each time, this crew gets a chance to STOP the outbreak. They keep going back with more information and try to hunt down the PZ "patient zero". But they just can't seem to find this person, season after season.

At least the CoE would not be violated -- just the small matter of bending space/time... Like 12 Monkeys, but with zombies.