Walking Dead Reckoning

 *Consider this article as the parlor scene. All the suspects have been gathered, all the clues have been found. Secrets will be revealed, truths told, SPOILERS unmasked."

The Global Op cared about the zombie genre. Kindred spirits of a sort. No not the zombies, he was cold, but not that cold...and he knew most people's brains weren't very interesting anyways. No, it was the survivors he could connect with. Those stragglers of humanity who woke up each day to the bleak reality that the world was out to get them, to beat them into a submission from which there would be no recuperation.

Given these facts, he had been excited for the Walking Dead's pilgrimage to TV when it was first announced. Like many others he was familiar with the graphic novel source material, and while not a rabid fan, he still appreciated what it brought to the zombie conversation.  Because it was not constrained by the run time limits of movies, the graphic novel had been able to more deeply explore what the best of the genre, (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later) could only hint at: how do people live, not just survive, when confronted by the daily disintegration of the human race. The serialized graphic novel form allowed for large spaces of narrative in which the zombies were largely absent, in which it was just people left to interact with each other, to test and decide what prejudices, what morals, what beliefs, they would continue to hold onto.  Given TV's similar freedom from the constraints of narrative time, it stood to reason that this idea could transition quite nicely.

Yet, after one and a half seasons, he found this complexity sorely lacking. In its place, like a cheap plaster imitation, was a show that couldn't let characters evolve naturally because somewhere some writer had designated them as being emblematic of a specific moral code. Perhaps unfairly, the Global Op had named this the Lost effect. Yet, the parallels were there, the tortured leader who cannot bring himself to stray from what is "right" vs. the antihero who is more willing to embrace the dark side. Consider for a moment the second season's key acts of violence that have occurred at the hands of Rick and Shane respectively.  Rick's killing of zombie Sophia was treated as a moment of sadness and mercy. It was not like the slaughter of zombies that has just been unleashed by the other members of the group. It was a scene that wanted you to feel sorrow for what this man was being forced to do, while still keeping an aura of "good" about him. In contrast was Shane's killing of Otis (the man he shot in order to escape the zombies at the school). Everything about this was presented as a "wrong" but perhaps necessary act. Even the way the truth was revealed in fragmented flashbacks was meant to suggest guilt. By creating opposing moments like these, the writers forced definitions upon the two leads rather than letting them develop over time into more complex realistic characters.

To return to the Lost analogy, it did not stop with just the two leads. In addition, there was the all too familiar woman character tied to them both as well as the presence of a rotating cast of supporting characters serving as dramatic foils, with more able to be cycled in as plot required. The Global Op had enjoyed Lost, but like the accountant that mistakenly believes a gun makes him a tough guy, what works for some does not work for others. The problem with using this model for Walking Dead was that there was no island mystery to compensate for the simplicity of the characters. Yes, there were the questions of if civilization exists somewhere, if there was a cure, if there was a future for mankind, but these were not driving questions. Taken alone, they could not create cliffhangers episode after episode. So instead, the writers needed to create dramatic tension by creating arguments and philosophical standoffs between the characters. While this still had potential to be interesting TV, it failed at holding the viewer's attention for long if, as seen above, the characters were written so rigidly in their "identifying" beliefs that it telescoped how any dramatic scene was always going to play out.

It was in service of this artificial dichotomy that the TV version most disappointingly differed from the graphic novel. In the graphic novel, Shane does not last very long. For you see, the boy, Carl, kills him while protecting his father, Rick.  Narratively, this had very important consequences on the character of Rick. By dispatching  Shane, Rick was not allowed to exist as the "good" leader to be contrasted against Shane. Instead, he had to be more human, more nuanced. Effectively he became the TV versions of Rick and Shane rolled into one conflicted mess of a character. He was still the leader, but when needed, he did what was necessary for the protection of the group. Just think how much more interesting it would be if Rick had been the one to shoot Otis in addition to his mercy killing of Sophia.

Have you seen this girl?

Which brings the Global Op to the Sophia arc. He had heard phony stories before, knew when things didn't add up, and this certainly didn't add up. There was no way that someone on the farm wouldn't have made the connection between the zombie girl in the barn and the girl that all these people were looking for. A single mention of the logo on her shirt would have been enough to make at least one person go hmmmm. Sure, one might argue that Herschel was trying to keep the zombie barn a secret, but that didn't prevent him from telling them that Sophia had been found dead. Or given that Herschel was the designated zombie compassion character, it would have stood to reason that he would have used Sophia to make his case. But no, instead the writers decided to ignore these paths in order to artificially sustain something long enough solely in order for it to be a mid season shocker.

Yet it is this designation as a shocker that made this arc so frustrating. It was a shocker only because children are not supposed to die. In our society, women and children are protected territory. This point is heightened and elevated when run through the lens of popular culture. To kill a child, or to zombiefy a child is such a gimme, such an easy layup, that it is quite surprising how badly this one failed. And it failed primarily because the writers were greedy and went for the big mid season "oh wow" moment. Sophie had never been developed into enough a character, and had been off screen for way too long for us as viewers to really connect with her zombification and death.  In watching the finale, the Global Op, normally an astute observer, wasn't even sure at first that it was Sophia at the end. As such, what should have been a climatic and devastating scene was a moment that barely registered save for the residual emotions that seeing a child harmed triggered. Had they really wanted to shock, they would have either a) done the Sophia reveal an episode or two after her disappearance, or b) let Carl die from his bullet wound. But, the writers would never consider the latter because while they make a big show about the Walking Dead being about how people survive in a post-apocalyptic world, they are still operating in a within the TV arena which dictates that bad things happen but not to certain people.

He still had hope for the show, still believed that the Walking Dead could become a good show, if not a great one. But for this to happen the writers and showrunners needed to accept that working within the zombie genre meant more than just showing a gruesome zombie death every episode.  By more, the Global Op saw three main things:

1. Stop trying to manufacture suspense and plot. There were plenty of episodes to be done about the daily struggles of living in a zombie land without always needing to have a child missing or with a gunshot wound.  The question of fresh water and if zombies would infect it was a perfect example of a plot point that could have been expanded upon had the writers trusted their audience enough to believe they werent only watching in the hopes of seeing a maggot filled zombie corpse.
2. Accept the bleak. Accept the gritty. Accidents should happen. People should die, and not just the peripheral characters. In a zombie world, there could only be so many times that a character does something like taking an arrow to the side AND a gunshot to the head and survives. Any world that suggested otherwise would have managed to luck its way out of being a full blown zombiepocolypse. 
3. Rick or Shane no more. It would never happen, but it needed to. Either one could easily take on the moral mantle of the other and the show would be the better for it.