Loving and hating The Walking Dead


THAT’S WHAT’S THE MATTER
By Kevin Rackham

AMC’s The Walking Dead has earned a reputation as the show fans love to hate. Each episode is full of potential, but many people seem to feel that it’s failed to reach that potential.

That reputation is unfair—the show has managed to stay faithful to its source and has provided some great entertainment along the way.

Beware! Spoilers ahead.

I watched the first season of TWD before reading the comic and loved it. After I’d read the comic’s first few volumes, I watched the show again and didn’t love it quite so much.

Liking the characters was harder because the graphic novels had done a much better job of developing strong, complex people. The show introduced weirdly, blatantly stereotyped characters: Daryl “the Redneck” and
T-Dog “the Token Black Guy” (we might as well just call him Theodore, or Ted, or even Teddy).

Some amazing moments shone through despite coming directly from the graphic novels, like Rick’s first kill and Andrea’s sister turning into a “walker.” Some moments, however, didn’t quite make the grade, like the Center for Disease Control story arc.

So, when it aired, I didn’t keep up with the second season beyond the first three episodes, though people still complained about Lori. I watched comedy website CollegeHumor’s #KillCarlAlready campaign take off and was fairly content with my choice, until last week.

I sat down and watched the second season. And I understood why folks had so
much hate.

Lori was pretty terrible. Carl really needed to just stay in the house and shut up. Andrea was way too melodramatic.

At the same time, I loved it. The zombie battles were disgusting but awesome, most of the characters grew enormously, and though the hunt for Sophia was drawn out, its resulting reveal still hit me pretty hard.

I think I understand the problem: In graphic novel form, TWD is a great series because of the characters. It might be obvious, but the title refers to the survivors just as much as it does the undead. Their days are numbered, and the odds are overwhelmingly against them.

Some people expect nonstop zombie-butchering action, and those people will often be disappointed, because that’s not what TWD is about.

To do the source material any kind of justice, the show has to spend a lot of time developing characters, something much more difficult to do on TV than in a comic.

Mapping out a character’s backstory in a graphic novel can be done in a few panels, and showing characters’ reactions and personal struggles takes relatively the same amount of space. Readers’ minds will fill in the details between panels, and understatement is perfectly acceptable.

Not so much with TV, though. Mapping characters’ backgrounds can resort to employing flashbacks (which disrupt the narrative) or having the characters just tell it (immersion-breaking and often corny). All good reasons why season two was dedicated to character development.

Some of TWD’s characters have been really sloppily developed, to be sure, as in the case of Lori, but they’ve succeeded more than they’ve failed.

I love the TV version of Dale just as much as graphic novel Dale, and his death hit just as hard. Both Andrea and Daryl have become much stronger and more enjoyable characters, and Hershel has been a perfect mix of aggravating old man, worried father and good Samaritan. Glenn remains my favorite.

Above all, they’ve done a great job with Rick. His ascent to leadership, and his self-doubt and reluctance about it, has been perfectly portrayed—just how it should’ve been.

They’ve trimmed down the number of characters, too. No more red shirts—the remaining characters are important and have had significant amounts of screen time.

Without the relative safety of Hershel’s farm, the characters to whom we’ve become at least somewhat attached are going to be in real danger again, and seeing how they react and grow from it will be worth watching.

I don’t have cable, so I haven’t caught up on season three, but I’m going into it with high expectations. The stakes are much higher, the characters are competent and we’re going to be introduced to new folks—some of author Robert Kirkman’s best characters.

It’s going to be good.