Author: Mark Alexander

Ben and I came into The Walking Dead at the beginning of season two and spent a week or so playing catch up with season one. We’ve both really enjoyed the series.

But this past season has been disappointing on so many levels, and while Ben abandoned the show a couple weeks ago, I soldiered onward, hoping there would still be something to keep me coming back for more.

But there isn’t. I’ve lost all sympathy for any of the main characters and simply do. not. care. any more whether they live or die.

Tom & Lorenzo (who I actually stopped following a couple months ago because of their constant bitchiness about pretty much everything) actually hit the nail on the head; the reason myself and apparently many others are abandoning the show:

Good job, TWD creative team! Attaboys and girls! You did it! It took you all some time, but you’ve effectively chipped away all the coolness from your few cool characters. You’ve managed to turn Carol into Andrea, Morgan into Dale and Daryl into season 2 Carl. Brilliant. We expect Michonne will start trying to run in heels any episode now. At the very least, they should have her flip her car into a ditch on an empty road, for old time’s sake.

We’ve spent roughly two whole seasons listening to Rick & Co. talk about how unprepared and naive the Alexandrians are, only to watch Rick & Co. consistently do idiotic things to demonstrate that they’re really no smarter or better equipped to handle the world than anyone else. Because really, is Denise the dumb one for leaving the safety of Alexandria in pursuit of can of pop or is Carol the dumber one for leaving the safety of Alexandria because she’s tired of killing people? Because you know what happens when you leave the safety of a place like Alexandria? You’re almost immediately plunged into life-or-death situations that call on you to…kill people to survive. In other words, Carol left Alexandria because she’s killed too many people, and then within hours of leaving, she kills another half-dozen. How does this make Carol anything but, well… an idiot? Then again, literally EVERYONE who walked out those gates—all of whom are counted among the best fighters in Alexandria because they’re all Rick-ites—are insanely and implausibly stupid for leaving the compound right after having declared war on a rival group by attacking and killing them.

Christ, what an awful episode. What a waste of time watching these people all inexplicably turn into other people for no reason than to service a plot that seems fairly weighted with inevitability and expectations at this point. Someone Important Is Going To Die. And in order for that to happen, Everyone’s IQ Has To Plummet.

And right on schedule, as we’ve been predicting all season, the Saviors suddenly and without warning went from a ragtag collection of smug Barney Fifes to the type of people who can sneak up on Daryl and shoot him before he gets a chance to react. Ugh. There is not one person in the cast right now whose death would upset us. Michonne, maybe. But it’s hard to remain concerned with (or even interested in) the fates of people who go dumb at a moment’s notice.

Even Kris, a friend of mine from DISH who is a hardcore fan responded to a text this morning wherein I told him I thought I was done with the series because of all this crap. “For me it’s the plot issues—the fact you can tell every episode has a different director. Doris and I very frequently look at each other and say ‘He/she wouldn’t do that!'”

At this point, I believe that whatever horrible things happen to Rick’s band at the hands of Neagan (I don’t follow the comics so I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I have a pretty good idea) are well deserved. Rick & Co. have turned into exactly the kind of people they’ve been trying to avoid since the beginning of the Apocalypse.

I could go on and on, but I’ve already expended more energy on this than I’d intended, and it just isn’t worth it, but I will leave you with this thought posted by a commenter on another board:

“There doesn’t seem to be an end game or conclusion to this story; just endless suffering.”