The Ridiculously Fast Speed-Walking Dead

"Stop! Slow down! Develop your characters!"
"There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong. Or useless pain. The sort of pain that's only suffering. I have no patient for useless things." - Frank Underwood, House of Cards, S01E01


Time flies when you're having fun - even more so when time literally flies! In the past four weeks, The Walking Dead's time has literally been flying. In just four hours of television time, our characters escaped from Terminus, met a new character, killed off an old character, killed the current villain of the show, AND brought in a whole new location/set of characters. Woah.

In many shows (Sopranos, Boardwalk, Mad Men, Leftovers all jump to mind), storytelling is told incredibly gradually. Seven episodes will go by without any major events happening. Yeah sure, someone will make an investment in Boardwalk or Don will bang some random broad out on the road in Mad Men, but overall, shit doesn't go down until the latter half of the season. In AMC's Walking Dead though, storytelling speed really varies. Take a look at season one. We started with one of the craziest pilots of all time that felt like a self-contained horror movie. From there, we sped through the next five episodes, showing our rag-tag gang fight their way through many dangerous situations and learning how various people are dealing with the apparent apocalypse. Characters were killed off at a moment's notice but since it was the very beginning, we weren't overly attached. The whole thing was a wild ride, one that won't be forgotten easily. It was unique, action packed, and interesting.
In season two, the remaining characters met up with Hershel and his famiglia. Our characters saw one way of dealing with the zombies: not dealing with them. Hershel had his own theories on how to make life work in the middle of darkness. People complained about this season though. The biggest complaint was that not enough happened. It felt more like a season of Mad Men with an occasional zombie attack. We got to know our characters a lot better, but the initial drive of the show felt lost. Personally, I enjoyed season two. As a lover of the slow-burn character-centric type show, I thought season two gave us a reason to care about who we were watching instead of just observing rugged strangers fight zombies. Now, yes, there were problems with the season, but there are with every show. Yeah, Hershel had like six kids of which only two mattered for the sole purpose of being able to kill off a bunch of them, but how many times has Justified done that exact formula? And really, in a show about a zombie apocalypse, you need to kill off characters to keep things interesting. At the end of season two, our surviving characters became Zionists and searched for a new homeland... one that just so happened to already be claimed by some angry people.
In season three, The Walking Dead started out strong. There was a good balance of slow and fast storytelling. Even better, we got our first true non-zombie villain: The Governor. He was ruthless, enigmatic, and seemed to be completely broken as a human being. After finding a Prison and clearing it out of inmates (sans Axel) and zombies, our protagonists settled a new home. But, because of The Governor's problems, a war soon began to brew. In the midseason finale of Season three, Michonne, a new character as of season three and problem child ever since, stabbed out Governor's eye. This is when things began to go downhill. Suddenly, instead of the broken man who was trying to keep his civilization together even if it meant killing others, The Governor became a comic-book villain. He wore an eye-patch and trench coat, whistling as he hunted down people to kill. Now, season 3B wasn't without its highlights, we still got "Clear" and "Arrow on the Doorpost", two very good episodes. But, when the finale came, "Welcome to the Tombs" was perhaps the most disappointing episode in the show's history. At the end of the third season, the show was on the precipice of falling into stupidity. I almost stopped watching.
Then, we arrived at season four: the best one to date. Immediately, the writers (now spearheaded by Scott Gimple) found their footing. The first half of the season detailed a sickness in the prison and the end of the conflict with The Governor. Both plots were interesting and intriguing. In the midseason finale, The Governor was finally killed, Hershel met his doom, and The Prison, home to the protagonists of the show for a season and a half, was blown to bits. Yet again, after a strong eight episodes, The Walking Dead found itself about to fall into stupidity. With the prison gone and our characters scattered, the show could easily have descended into directionless idiocy. But... it didn't! Instead, we were treated to six episodes of character-centric episodes that developed everyone a little better. The last two showed the uniting of almost all of characters under the worst circumstances: Terminus. At the very end of season four, most of our protagonists were locked up in a car, waiting to be eaten by cannibals.

So, four weeks ago, here's where we stood. The characters had a clear antagonist to fight against, they were in serious danger, and after a lot of character-developmenty episodes, we actually cared. But, picking up a small amount of time after the events of season four, our characters didn't want to wait around. Immediately, in the season five premiere, they busted out of Terminus. Two episodes later, Gareth, leader of Terminus, was dead. In the most recent episode, we saw Beth reintroduced to the group, holed up in a new location filled with new characters. It's been a fast fucking ride.
My point in detailing all of these events that you've watched over the past five years is that Dead fluctuates in quality, speed of storytelling, and plot more than any other show currently airing. Where sometimes I'll watch the show and think about how great the episode I just saw was, sometimes it'll leave me feeling like I don't know why I committed myself. What I'm saying here is not a shot against the current season of Dead. In fact, every episode I've watched thus far has been a really solid hour. My point is that once again, as this show always seems to do, we are at the precipice of stupidity. With the breakneck speed of this season, plotlines are coming and going faster than you can say "Why did the group split up one week after saying they'd never split up again?" If Dead can pull through and deliver once again, I'll be thoroughly impressed. If it falls into overly fast zombie warring, I'll be thoroughly disappointed.

To me, The Walking Dead feels like a teenager in school. One day, it's in a good mood and it's engaged and fun. It makes insights and provides a distinct point of view on the topics it discusses. On another day though, it's totally hormonal. All it wants to do is kill stuff and have sex... only it can't have sex because it's single... or it's in the middle of a zombie apocalypse... this analogy is getting muddled, I admit.

All I can say is carry on, The Walking Dead, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest. Don't you have stupid storytelling no more.

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