Does The Walking Dead Still Have Its Bite?

I remember waking up early on November 1st 2010 to watch the first episode of The Walking Dead. It was a show that I had been teased with for months that was based on an epic graphic novel (so I've heard, I've only read snippets of it) and featured a lot of blood, gore and zombies, that are referred to as walkers. I still don't understand why they aren't called zombies, unless in the fictional zombie infested worlds they've never had zombie fiction, and if they haven't I pity them as they didn't get the likes of The Walking Dead in The Walking Dead. I'll stop with that now as it feels like im getting a bit Inception-y. Within the first five minutes of the show I was enthralled and tuned in week after week without fail, waking up at the crack of dawn to watch it before anyone could spoil it for me. The Walking Dead is the reason people think I am obsessed with zombies and I tend to get zombie related gifts like Gnombie, who is my zombie gnome. Of course I love these gifts so keep them coming (I'm talking to you Matthew) but it's not the zombies I'm fascinated with, it's the show. I like to feel I have an appropriate level of obsession for zombies, as I do aliens. It's not over the top! The obsession only pops up when The Walking Dead is airing and thats no coincidence!



The Walking Dead has driven my love of zombie fiction (I'm not so obsessed that I really want it to happen!) and like I said before has kept me coming back again and again. However I'm not so deluded that I don't see when the show is going badly, I can openly admit it like I did with Supernatural. The Walking Dead is brilliant and it builds suspense like no other show because a walker can come out of no where and eat a main character alive, the show had balls and was constantly keeping you on your toes. I use the past tense because I think the growing success of the show has neutered it, when I watched the season five premiere it didn't really have me on the edge of my seat like the other premieres. Heck, my anxiety level didn't reach what it used to when watching one of the middle of the season episodes when the only thing the characters are doing is walking around woods. The Walking Dead shed characters thick and fast between seasons 1-3 and they've kept the characters we have now alive so long because they've become fan favourites, like Daryl, or a necessary evil, like Carl. I don't fear for the characters lives anymore because I don't think the writers are going to off them or leave their lives in the balance.

The season five premiere would have been a brilliant way to kill off some of the characters or at least put them in danger. Sure it seemed like they were in danger when they reached Terminus, the guys were about to be offed and robbed before Carol intervened, but was anyone actually worried about them? The only one that is expendable is Bob but I have a feeling he'll be sticking around for a little while longer. If they had dared to bash Glens brains in like the ads were implying then there would have been a full scale riot. You want to know what I think? Let them riot. It's great that the show has a lot of fans now but I don't think the writers should be pandering to them as it will just hinder their creativity. The most daring thing that they've really done the past season was killing off those two little girls, and I refer to them as little girls because I don't remember their names as they didn't matter. Their death didn't effect me one bit because they were just victim of the week type characters in my opinion, they were also annoying as hell. I want to feel something when these characters are killed off, you can't just bring in some red shirts for a few episodes and expect me to care when you kill them! Be more audacious, at least make us think that one of the core characters lives hangs in the balance, even if they don't end up being zombie food.

The writers may not like writing brutal demises of their core characters anymore but they do like brutal demises which is seen by how quickly the gang ruined Terminus with the help of Carol, who is now a cool bad ass rather than the annoying one she was before. Carol helped over run Terminus with zombies and managed to enter it herself unscathed with the help of zombie guts that she'd lathered all over herself. I'm glad the zombie guts are back, I thought they'd forgotten about it. The amount of deaths they could've avoided if they were always wearing zombie guts is ridiculous! On second thoughts lets not think about it and hope they forget it for another five seasons. The zombies gained entry to Terminus and managed to get a few bites out of the gangs captors and many of the ones that survived them didn't survive Ricks wrath. It was beautiful to see (not in a sadistic way) and we usually get scenes like that in a premiere and finale, with the episodes in between being a lot slower with fewer swarms of walkers. After the opening episode which was action packed, I think I can deal with the show being slow paced for a few episodes. Just a few though.

The premiere introduced us to the Terminus crew, and I said earlier that most of them were killed but there was of course a few survivors the most important being Gareth (Andrew J. West) who seemed to be the leader. The group have essentially ruined Gareth's life, his camp and robbed him of his minions so he'll most likely go after them. Seem a bit familiar? No? Must just be me then. I'm sure that West will  excel in his role as power hungry leader who has gone insane due to Rick but we've already seen it done beautifully by David Morrissey so I hope it doesn't go on for too long as it already seems like it's being repetitive. Hopefully by mid season he'll bite it. Very brutally. He was going to bash Glens brains in so he deserves it.

I do think The Walking Dead has lost its balls but I will still be watching every week, and it's more than the zombie buffet and zombie bashing that I'll be tuning in for. The season five premiere gave fans what they've been yearning for couple of years, it gave us the return of Morgan Jones. I know I said earlier that the writers shouldn't give into fans, and this proves it. He's been used sparingly in the past (two episodes) and is only having a larger role to play now the series is in it's fifth season. The delayed gratification makes his return all the more sweeter rather than have him pop up a few times a season. We've missed out on almost five seasons worth events (I can't for the life of me determine a timeline for the show) that happened to Morgan, we know that he has lost his son and has had to spend all this time alone so it will be brilliant to see him unravel even further or see Rick pull him back together. Perhaps he can make Rick see the good in humanity again, sure he's had a tough ride of it lately (probably an understatement) but Morgan is the first person Rick met after he woke from the coma and he showed him kindness. Maybe that could ground him and realise what he's fighting for, not just survival but to keep the morals and humanity he used to hold dear. The Rick we saw slaughtering the people at Terminus feels like a stranger to the person he was, so hopefully we can find and place in between Rick season 1 and Rick season 5.

Well that is just a prediction, who knows what is actually going to happen? The only way to find out is to watch. The Walking Dead may have disappointed me with it's lack of killing Carl, Tara and Rosita main characters but I will be watching it till it dies out, even if there are no humans left and it's just zombies walking the desert for fourty minutes a week.

Live Long and Blog!

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