Taking a Bite out of The Walking Dead TV Series

I like to believe I’ve matured past being the sort of comic book fan who immediately decides a movie or television adaptation is automatically inferior to the original simply because it diverges from the source material or, god forbid, dares to bring anything new to the table. I’ve been around long enough and have seen enough dramatic adaptations in my life to know for every Superman Returns, Green Lantern and Elektra film that completely misses the mark of the original, there’s a Godfather, Jaws or Kick-Ass (just to name three very different examples) that surpasses the quality of the source book.

And if Batman Begins taught me anything, it’s that even a source mythology as thoroughly explored as the Batman legend offers the space and freedom for a talented storyteller to blaze exciting new ground while keeping faithful to the spirit of the original. By and large, I’m willing to judge an adaptation and its source on their own merits while allowing them both to exist as separate entities, and as long as an adaptation sticks to the spirit, tone and basic intent of the original work I enjoy, I’m rarely bothered by specific inconsistencies between the two.

All that being said, whenever I hear someone praise AMC’s The Walking Dead television series as some sort of extraordinary achievement in entertainment, I can’t help but revert to my worst Simpson’s Comic Book Guy voice while pointing out that not only is the phenomenal comic series vastly superior to the adaptation, but the TV show isn’t even all that good to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong – at times, as in its near-perfect pilot episode and fleeting moments spread out across its first two seasons, The Walking Dead is great. But there are far more times (and for reasons I’ll get into in the body of this post) when it’s downright awful and exceedingly difficult to watch. And it’s because of that jarring inconsistency that the show is by far one of the most frustrating television serials I’ve ever stuck with for any significant amount of time.

(I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers or specific references to plot points for the rest of the post, but if you’re not caught up on the show I’d still tread carefully if I were you.)

My many problems with AMC’s The Walking Dead have very little to do with the show veering from the spirit, tone or intent of the original comics. On the contrary, the series sticks pretty closely to the source’s core premise of a group of survivors dealing with the aftermath (as opposed to the outbreak) of the zombie apocalypse while questioning their own willingness to live, the trustworthiness of their fellow travelers and the possibility of returning to any semblance of their past lives in a world that’s descended far past any basic laws of civilization. On a fundamental level, it’s that core premise that set the comics apart from every other zombie story to come before it, and I suspect the show’s willingness to focus on those tough questions other zombie movies ignore is also what has made it a hit with mainstream television audiences. The Walking Dead TV show’s problems have very little to do with straying from the comics’ core principals and everything to do with a lack of execution on the writers’ parts, particularly when it comes to matters of characterization and pacing.

Let’s start with the series’ characters, most of whom waver between existing as thin, wooden, often unlikable stereotypes and acting in accordance of the plot regardless of whether their actions fit with their established personalities. Considering much of the strength and power of the original comic series is derived from the fact that we care, love and root for the individual cast members despite the horrible decisions they’re forced to make, the unlikable, stereotypical nature of the show’s cast is a serious shortcoming. When you find yourself not caring whether a main character lives or dies, the writers are doing something seriously wrong, and I find this is often the case with the show’s handling of its characters.

Nowhere is this problem more prevalent than in the case of the Lori Grimes character, who, depending on the whims and plot requirements of the writers, fluctuates between acting as a caring mother and patriarch, a bitchy shrew, a manipulative Lady MacBeth figure, a capable badass, or an emotionally crippled damsel in distress. While I’m tempted to put at least some of the blame for the character’s shortcomings on actress Sarah Wayne Collies, it’s hard to deny she’s simply playing to the unbelievably extreme emotions and personalities the writers provide her each episode. Rather than not give Collies enough to work with, which is the case with far too many of the show’s cast of characters, the writers give her way too much, to the point where she’s become a walking, talking, crying, screaming plot contrivance. It’s tough to keep from wincing every time she walks on screen, which makes me believe the writers are going to get the opposite audience reaction they’re going for when they bring Lori’s comic book character arc to its fruition.

On the other extreme end of the spectrum of the writer’s schizophrenic handling of Lori stands the almost comical, superficial tokenism of “T-Dog,” a character that is such a ridiculous stereotype that he’s actually named fucking “T-Dog.” After using T-Dog’s relationship to Michael Rooker’s redneck Merle as a somewhat effective vehicle to explore how racial tensions would impact a group’s ability to survive, the writers pushed the character off to the side in such a manner as to suggest there was never a dramatic reason for him to be there besides his initial clash with Merle and – if you want to get really cynical about it – some classic Hollywood tokenism. What makes the T-Dog character, and the show’s handling of him, even more maddening to fans of the original series is that it’s damn near impossible to not see T-Dog as a stand-in for the comics’ Tyree, the tough, burly African American survivor who is one of the comic book’s strongest and most fully realized characters. And once you start seeing T-Dog as a piss-poor stand-in for Tyree, it’s not hard to think this is the worst case of an adaptation marginalizing an important core cast member since Bryan Singer’s treatment of Cyclops in the X-Men movies.

Since there are other aspects of the show I’d like to address without turning this post into a 5000-word tome on the specific character shortcomings of the show’s cast, grant me the one over-simplification of saying that most of the character’s fall somewhere between Lori’s inconsistent hysteria and T-Dog’s superficiality. With the one exception of Dale, who is perhaps the one creation who felt like a fully formed, believable person but – due to the climactic events of Season 2 – can hardly be considered a positive aspect of the show moving forward, the series’ characters far too often feel like their actions are being dictated first and foremost by the writers’ clumsy plot machinations.

There’s Andrew Lincoln’s Rick, whose performance as the group’s tortured leader recalls the more annoying, two-note aspects of Matthew Fox’s Jack Sheppard without any of Jack’s tragic pathos; Chandler Riggs’ Carl, who at this point is nothing more than an annoying excuse to put the group in danger; and Scott Wilson’s Hershel, who at times comes off as a believable example of what it looks like when a devout believer has his faith shaken to its core, and at other times plays like a loony old bat whose only purpose is to allow the writers to clumsily throw another obstacle in the group’s way.

Even Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon, who began the show by transforming from a racist sidekick to his brother Merle into a well-meaning but tortured anti-hero hell-bent on keeping the group’s hope of finding Sophia alive (one of the only instances of a character actually growing over the course of the show’s storytelling), reverted back to his original stereotype far too often to call him a compelling and rich character. That leaves Maggie, Glen and their budding relationship, which is one of the few heartfelt aspects of the show, and Andrea, who shows depth and promise despite veering dangerously close to Lori’s level of schizophrenia. As a whole, when you sit down and really examine the bigger picture, there are not too many characters worth rooting for, which is kind of problematic for a show about survival.

Which brings us to the show’s other gigantic, gaping flaw: it’s pacing. If there was ever an example of a group of writers artificially dragging and – in the worst instances – outright stalling a storyline in order to fill up episodes and pad out a season, it’s The Walking Dead’s second season. What began as an intriguing change of locale with the group’s arrival at Hershel’s farm quickly became an extended interlude in anything resembling plot development, as the group arrived at the farm…then stayed there…and stayed there…and stayed there…until enough episodes were filled with meaningless diversionary subplots and false-starts in order for the writer’s to arrive at the plot advancement of the Season 2 finale.

The show's plot often moved at a the same pace.

And if you’re willing to recognize the doughy, substance-less filler that made up the body of Season 2’s story, it’s not difficult to recognize a similar structure at work in most of the episodes, where far too often an intriguing early development was followed by thirty-five minutes of wheel-spinning followed by a last-minute cliffhanger. Hardly what I would call edge-of-your-seat suspense. The fact that Robert Kirman’s writing in the comics series almost never eases up on the dramatic momentum even when it focuses on a quiet-before-the-storm story arc is just further proof the show’s writers aren’t succeeding in channeling the story’s strengths from page to screen.

Despite all the aforementioned problems I have with the show, there’s still a lot to like about AMC’s The Walking Dead. The zombie makeup, overall special effects and production quality remain top-notch, as does the musical score. There are moments, even with the clumsy writing and hysterical acting, where the palpable dread of having to survive in the show’s harsh environment comes across with horrific precision, and I truly do sympathize with the characters even if I don’t like them. And every now and then, the show’s problems subside long enough to get a whiff of what the series would look like if it better channeled the comics’ serialized brilliance.

Like any good, optimistic comic fan, I still hold out hope for The Walking Dead TV show and Season 3 in particular. If you’ve read the comic, you know there is plenty of great stuff coming down the pipeline this season in order to right the ship. But even with the vibrant prison setting, Michonne arriving to flesh out the cast and The Governor bearing down on the group to give the show its first great villain, the series still has its work cut out for it. I’m holding out hope, but I’m definitely not holding my breath. The show has pissed me off and frustrated me far too often  to believe it’ll change its ways overnight.

That’s it for now. As always, thanks for reading, and please spread word of the blog to friends and like-minded fans.