_PNG.png)
How The Walking Dead Could Pull Me Back In
Did anyone else forget that The Walking Dead existed? Because I did. But it was shoved back into my consciousness yesterday when the trailer for season nine was revealed at San Diego Comic Con.
TWD used to be a show that I would watch religiously. I binged the first three seasons before I caught up and started watching regularly in season four. What I didn’t realize, though, was that I had already made it past the best parts of the show at that point.
I would only continue watching until about halfway through season six, when Negan was introduced. Negan was a character I enjoyed overall, but the quality of the show as a whole was not nearly good enough for me to stick around. So I checked in on the season finale to see whose head Negan would bash in… but that was the infamous cliffhanger. If I wasn’t already done with the show, that sealed the deal for me.
The thing was, I had read most of TWD comics up to that point. I thought those were lightyears better than the show and was only hoping that the show would portray some of the comics’ great moments. But that just never happened.
But there was one storyline that I always thought could persuade me to come back. That storyline was a time jump where there was no more constant fighting, bickering, and lack of morals. Instead, the characters try to work together to rebuild the healthy and functioning civilization that they had lost at the outbreak of the apocalypse. I remember telling someone specifically a couple years back that this is the only thing that could make me return.
I’m always drawn to characters who act morally, or who have reasons for doing things that I can get behind. This is the reason I appreciated Breaking Bad, but fundamentally hated what Walter White became by the end of the show.
So when the trailer for the latest season of TWD was released yesterday, I raised my eyebrows a little bit. They have finally gotten to that storyline and it looks like it may actually be done fairly well. Instead of having the whole group of “good guys” against one big “bad guy,” it looks like there are opposing ideologies, with a couple bad apples amongst them. I think it has the potential to be intriguing, based on the source material alone.
But it probably won’t be. This show has notoriously poor pacing and there is nothing to suggest that this season will be any different, especially with lead actor Andrew Lincoln leaving the show. Unfortunately, it will probably be more of the same overall.
Make sure you check out the blog on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook! Updates and some shorter Robert's thoughts are posted there!