THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
An open letter to the creators of The Walking Dead
Being a Zombie fan, I feel it is by duty to, not only watch AMC's TV adaption of The Walking Dead every week it is on and not simply to casually "like" the show but to be a diehard fanboy, loving Rick and his motley crew as they fight, stumble and scavenge their way through the apocalypse. After all, this landmark TV series was a key factor in bringing the ravenous, living dead into the popular spotlight - at its height, The Walking Dead was the most watched show on TV, beating big budget hits like Game of Thrones and Westworld by miles.
However, there's a problem and it's a bit of a biggie; I am not the fanboy I should be and, to be honest, I'm struggling to even "like" the show anymore. It's not just me who is afflicted by this "unliking" disease either - the once-epic TV series has lost over 6 million viewers in recent years with many climatic episodes reporting the lowest ratings in the show's long history. What can be happening, what is the terrible cause of this calamity and, perhaps more importantly, can the downward spiral be reversed?
What went wrong
First of all, even with the recent news of actors leaving the show, let's get one thing straight; The Walking Dead is not, in my opinion, on the rain-slick precipice of darkness - it's not in imminent danger of being cancelled or going off air. It may have lost millions of viewers since the show began, but it is still phenomenally successful, pouring out ratings that most shows can only dream of as well as having a slew of followers willing to spend thousands on action figures and other memorabilia. It is clear though, you just have to watch the three most recent seasons, that the programme is losing its steam - not really surprising after 100 episodes but still depressing enough that I feel something must be done.
There are a number of reasons the show is not doing well; re-used stories, episodes that feel like "filler" to bridge gaps in a wider story, killing off some well-liked characters with fleshed-out backstories while leaving others to live, making the apocalypse seem only dangerous to off-shoot characters as narrative central figures breeze by unharmed, breaking the Zombie infection "rules" that the show established early on and, worst of all, repeating the same formulaic 'a good situation turns bad' theme. Some people even learned that Andrew Lincoln, the actor who plays the long-running hero Rick, has never actually watched an episode of The Walking Dead and is therefore unable to improve.
So, while it is clear there is a problem, is the solution out of reach? No - hell, no. I am absolutely sure things can be saved - the all-American show can, without any shadow of a doubt, be made great again and, fortunately, the ingredients for this wonderous turnaround are already in play.
A different story, a dangerous world
There is a main theme among Zombie media; the survivors, lost and alone, find like-minded others, band together, seek shelter and, finally, engage the undead in a fight for their lives. The Walking Dead has in the past, put a slight spin on this to account for the extended amount of time since the initial Zombie outbreak (the TV series now taking place several months into the apocalypse compared to your typical Zombie movie, taking place only days, or hours, after things go bad). In the TV show, most shelters are already occupied, and while they are often welcoming to Rick and his band of survivors, events quickly turn nasty, forcing our courageous bunch to take over control of that shelter before the Zombies come and we fall back into the old routine. This cannot continue, it has been done almost every season and regular viewers seldom forget previous events - we need a new formula, a fresh start.
Also, in a related point, have you noticed how infrequently people die in this, so-called, extremely hostile apocalyptic world? Sure, minor characters die all the time, killed by Rick or a quick bite from a Walker - the main characters like Daryl, Morgan, Carrol and Michonne all seem relatively impervious to harm. The closing section of season 8 provided an excellent que to shake up the usual storyline and bring back the immense tension of knowing anyone can die at any point; the mega-horde.
At the end of season 8 we saw a gigantic herd of Walkers heading towards Hilltop - the survivor's current shelter. Season 9, should open with those survivors, low on supplies from their last battle and fatally overstretched with the recent influx of surrendered Saviors, panicking to hastily get their base in order before the wave of living death crashes upon their walls. They send out scouts to assess the true size of the horde, few return. The episode ends when the horde reaches the walls, their number disappearing behind the crest of a hill, giving the viewer a soul-destroying sense of the apocalyptic number of dead about to swarm Hilltop. It should be obvious at that point - people are going to die and, for the survivors, this will not end well.
The second episode starts off at running pace; the dead are against the walls, survivors shout orders and dash from point to point, trying desperately to hold back the tide - an impossible task. The walls collapse, the dead pile through. People a killed in the stampede, the chaos, dust rises obscuring vision and buildings are overrun. A few people die from friendly fire as those left alive shoot blindly into the crowd or trip and are crushed by those, unfamiliar with the land, trying to escape. At the end of it all, it only takes about 15 minutes of air time, Rick lies dead - you never saw him killed but you see his blood strewn corpse. Negan, captured at the end of season 8 is gone from the infirmary, no one knows where. Daryl's trademark jacket blows past - his fate unknown. The remaining major characters are dead apart from Morgan, Judith and Michonne; two conflicting ideas about how to proceed arising - Morgan wanting to go it alone but Michonne desperate to hold what little remains of the group and rebuild. There are still survivors alive; the new doctor guy that Carl saved and many minor characters still breath. Also, some of Hilltop is still intact - the undead are not an all-conquering enemy with a planned focus to eradicate all traces of humanity - so rebuilding is a perfectly viable option.
Plus, Daryl is still out there, Negan too. With these two notable characters, there is huge potential for sub-plots.
Role-reversal, reversed again
In the The Walking Dead comics, Negan is a cut-throat killer - he is full-on brutal, is not afraid of dropping F-bombs and he takes no stick from anyone. Naturally, TV being what it is, with rules and regulations about what can and cannot be broadcast, Negan does not really lend himself well to public screening - the developers, being forced to get this landmark bad-ass character in the show, had to change his demeanour, and, while they did not do a poor job in my opinion, it does take some creative thinking to know exactly what their intentions were.
Negan, still definitely a "bad dude" and someone not to be crossed, was made a bit 'lighter'; more friendly and caring - he "saved" people; what he was doing was, in his mind at least, a just cause despite seemingly exploiting the hard work of others while offering mere protection in return. In my mind, this made him a "good guy" - at least, as good as you can get in the downtrodden world of the apocalypse. Rick on the other hand, coming in to the eighth season with a legendary "do-gooder" status really struck me as the "bad guy" this time around. He was hellbent on vengeance, murder and anyone who got in his way got a bullet to the brain. Negan offered Rick and his crew peace, time after time, and, time after time, Rick spat it back in his face - killing, lying, leaving people to die and not showing much in the way of emotion. This was summed up excellently in the episode The Big Scary U where the priest and Negan were trapped in a trailer, surrounded by Walkers. It was clear to the two characters that, only if they worked together could either one of them escape - a bond of temporary peace first proposed by the supposedly 'entirely-evil' man in the leather jacket. Ask yourself, if Rick had been in that trailer, would he have cooperated with Negan in order to survive, put his grudge aside for the time being to return to those counting on him?
Return to simplicity, cut the fat
With today's mammoth 16-episode seasons, most people will be astounded to learn that the first (and arguably best) season of The Walking Dead was a poultry 6 episodes long. This huge increase in length may seem like a awesome thing initially - more air time, more content, more fan appreciation - but I sincerely believe that cutting back down to just six 50-minute long episodes would allow the show to get back on track and there are a couple of reasons for this.
- TV programmes, as I'm sure you're aware, have a strict budget - a fixed financial amount from the men behind the scenes to make dream into reality. This budget can be used for set-pieces, actor's wages, detailed story-boarding, SFX costs, stuff like that. Obviously then, a bigger budget for a single episode in a season means more time and energy goes into that episode and the chances of it being "cooler" greatly increase. So, it does not take a genius to figure out that having a smaller number of episodes with a bigger budget for each individual episode will substantially increase the coolness factor of that series. Okay, I'm over-simplifying things here, budget and finances are really complex things for projects involving so many different people, but the logic of it holds true.
- With such a long time to fill in a 16-episode season, you really need a quality, well-thought-out story that gradually unravels itself as the series goes forward, ramping up to a dramatic climax or viewers will lose interest. If the narrative for the season only spans, say, 8 episodes, the remaining 8 episodes will have to be filled up with so called "filler" episodes - things that, while possibly entertaining, have no impact on the overall story. Filler episodes can kill a series; if a programme can be missed and you still understand the story, what was the point in watching that programme? It's actually even worse than that; if regular viewers witness filler episodes too often, they realize they don't need to watch every episode of a season to get the main upshot of that season and, without knowing what episodes are filler and which aren't beforehand, may miss a crucial piece of information, loosing tracking of the story and wondering if they really cared about it in the first place, drastically reducing the likelihood of them watching future seasons. Seriously, avoid filler episodes at all costs; if an episode does not need to be seen, don't let it be seen.
- With only six hours (or thereabouts) to tell a story (still an absurdly long time when you consider that the average narrative-led movie is only around two hours long), that story must, as a necessity, be made simpler. The dead walk for goodness sake - for an awful lot of people, that is enough to maintain interest. Seeing how people survive in an undead-infested world with scant resources is plenty for fans of the majority of Zombie movie fans. I'm not saying you do not have the bigger stuff like Negan or Woodbury, just to intermix the grand with the mundane - repeating narratives too often can be just as deadly as a poorly thought-through story. That's another advantage of the shorter season; you can experiment - see what works and what doesn't. You don't have to stick to the 6-episode limit either - if you need more episodes to tell a story or less episodes, change the format.
- A shorter season, if good, leaves people wanting more - they are anticipating the next instalment eagerly, something much harder to achieve with standard length seasons. An excellent example of this was the superb second season of Wolf Creek - every episode just oozed awesome, making me want more after the six episodes were up. This is also a cracking example of the simple story point above. The entire plot was Mick Taylor, the cold-blooded killer in the Australian Outback, abducts, hunts and kills, a coachload of innocent tourists on an Aussie adventure.
I really want to see The Walking Dead back on top - the TV series that is so biblical that even people who don't like Zombies watch it - and there are my ideas of how to get it there. With the recent news of departing actors, I am optimistic that this can only breathe new life into the aging series and am hopeful that you will see this as the great opportunity I think it is.
Yours sincerely,
ZombieTom
There you have it, that's some ideas for how The Walking Dead TV show can be returned to its former greatness. Have I got it right? Anything you would do differently if you had the power to influence this dramatic series? Have your say by leaving a comment below - I would love to read them.
DESCRIPTION:
The Walking Dead TV show is definitely struggling at the moment - its obvious just from watching the recent seasons. I've braved the fetid spider's web jungle of my brain to pick some of the ways I would bring the failing series back to the greatness it once knew. I've kept things open and transparent, hoping to get your opinions on the subject - I'm dying to read them.
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DATE UPLOADED:
10/06/2018