TV interlude: Death to the Walking Dead

Columnists have spilled more ink in praise for AMC’s Walking Dead than the show’s decomposing zombies have spilled blood.

(Looks around. Noise of crickets.)

Whatever, I’m funny. Anyway, the critical praise continues after last night’s third episode of the zombie apocalypse thriller.

Maybe I’m in a rage because the show actually did set itself apart from other zombie fare: instead of focusing on a merry band of survivors winning a temporary battle against zombies and returning to normal, it focuses on the horrors of surviving amid a cataclysm, amid the end of the world. Maybe you give up your privilege to cite disbelief when you sign on for a sci-fi, fantasy shlockfest, but suffice it to say, I’m buying it no more.

The key to any story is verisimilitude. At some level, the motives and actions have to be believable, if not readily understandable. The viewers have to buy it. I don’t care if you’re spinning a tale about unicorns, fire-breathing dinosaurs, or a family riding a toaster to the moon, characters’ actions CANNOT repeatedly belie the characters. Yes, I’m shouting.

Because last night, the Walking Dead just shat all over its characters. Protagonist after protagonist just kept making and justifying stupid, outlandish decisions that even in their FANTASTIC situation, no one would never make. SPOILER ALERTS, AHEAD, DICKHEADS. I’m revealing it all. It doesn’t matter.

Last night, the Walking Dead’s plot remained in motion solely by characters making decisions that absolutely no one would make. Worse yet, the rationales were simply boilerplate moralizing – posturing no one in an apocalyptic situation has time for.

It’s fine to reinforce the notion of societal breakdown. It’s quite another to assume our hero would finally discover his presumed-dead wife and son, but a day later, agree to return to Zombie Ground Zero to rescue, oh by the way, the one human who tried to kill three survivors. That’s preposterous. And it exists solely for the moral point of “no human deserves to die.” And this moral point repeats itself, half of the cast is revealed to be a sociopathic redneck hellbent on lording over women. Good times.

Moralizing aside, several of the supporting cast agreed to accompany him on this mission. That’s the other half of the cast – impossibly noble dipshits, spouting platitudes about eyes-for-eyes. At least when the zombie apocalypse hits, we’ll have our fair share of these laudable assholes to fall on swords.

Secondly, the story features a love triangle between Our Hero, His Wife, and his Buddy Cop. The zombies took over, she thought he was dead, so she immediately started banging the buddy. How long should a survivor – with all mores and norms out the window – resist moving on from the previous life? A believable moral quandary in a tale of survivorship, right?

Not so fast. The writers wasted no time in totally undercutting her character, creating a submissive female instead of a tangible real person.They don’t trust the audience with this moral dilemma. Instead, they reveal that Buddy Cop told Wife that Our Hero was dead. See, it’s his fault. She was just eagerly waiting for advice from the alpha male! Buddy Cop made her fall for him – the liar!

Instead of a mother struggling with survival, instead of a strong person re-evaluating life, the writers rendered her a timid puppet waiting for male direction and approval. Oh, by the way, this is similar to every other dismissable female lead on the show.

Maybe I’m not a fanboy, maybe I expect too much. Maybe I’m too sensitive to character points in a story largely about zombies. But in fantasy and extreme science fiction, tales based solely on flights of fancy, what, exactly, connects the story to any audience besides the characters? And if that’s it, how can you let the characters fail?