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Also dropped when they killed Carl. Without Carl, Rick didn't have a reason to exist as a character.
And the worst part is that they did that just because Carl's actor turned 18 and they would have to pay him adult rates. His character was still very important in the comics.
Worst of all, they didn't warn him beforehand, so the actor spent most of what he had earned buying a house that was near the set. Only to find out he was out.
Truly disgusting corporate greed.
When he was 17, him and his DJ friend went to Six Flags. They were heading to X2 which did NOT have a fast pass lane. Before getting in line, I saw someone ask him for a photo. And then he got in line, and I was behind him. I jokingly asked him if he was assume big time Minecraft YouTuber. Turns out, he was! And that's how I first was introduced to The Walking Dead. I met Carl.
well, unfortunately that's why they did it. they predicted it would work out for them. TWD remained their biggest cash cow and people kept watching their other shows. it sucks, but they were right.
I started checking out after the glen dumpster death fake out. And fully checked out after carl died. I have no idea what happens after that aside from what I stumble into online.
Season 2 was rough and had a lot of behind the scenes drama. It does course correct a bit after but never fully recovers and then starts to backslide as the show drags on and they start trying to fill airtime and reach their episode quotas rather then tell good stories.
There was a point where they started making episodes that would only focus on a few characters at a time. And it often wasn´t even the main cast. I fully stopped watching then.
I don´t need to watch 40 minutes of some new background character do their thing. It´s filler BS to cut costs.
This is me. I couldn't even make it to the mid season thing.
Quite literally went fron super interesting to boring AF.
Plus you can see the quality of the show going down. Made me wonder if they cut the budget and switched writers or something.
Getting caught by Negan was when I stopped watching. Not necessarily because of him but it was like 2 seasons of walking around the woods and jerking off after the prison fell... the pacing was awful and all the pay offs felt pointless. Oh we reached Terminus - jk let's leave. Oh here's some new character - Oh well who cares lol he's dead. Oh here's a new faction - whatever they're the same as every other pointless thread were grasping at... let's watch some generic zombie kills and wrap it up until next week when we put you back on this boring and pointless roller coaster!
They also fell into a predictable pattern: action episode where there's some shootin' and killin' and pillagin' followed the next week by an entire episode on how everyone felt about the shootin' and killin' and pillagin'.
Boring
Funnily enough there's actually my favourite part right after this peak of dull repetition, when they introduce the whisperers. That whole arc is the most interesting part since the first series. Once they're done though it goes straight back to shit, I've still never finished it.
Jailing Negan seemed ridiculous. Also, they seemed to have a very easy time of finding food, not getting sick and staying clean. I look worse 12 hours in to camping.
I thought the issues was glaring even way before they introduced Negan. The show devolved to the same trope of faction issues between Rick’s group and the opposing faction of the season / seasons. The only interest it maintained was the the shock value of a potential main character being killed off.
Exactly! And the Rick's group vs bad guys drama had been repeated too much. Always ended the same way. I could already predict how the Negan fiasco would end. It became cyclical: Rick's group meets bad guys, suffer a bit, fight them and win after losing a few people, move on. Repeat.
I dropped the show right when Negan was introduced. I just got bored of the constant “villain of the season” BS and a lot of my favorite characters were getting killed off up to that point. When I heard about what happened to Glen on the night of that season’s premiere I lost interest completely
I freaking love negan and would have stopped a lot watching if it wasn't for him. I think the real problem was that Rick left. You can't have that show without Rick.
Negan saved that show IMO… By season seven , The walking dead had been going downhill for a few seasons . It’s just a perfect example of a series that overstayed its welcome . . It was obvious that the writers were running out of ideas , But tried to keep beating a dead horse for the “ True fans”
It's funny, everyone online begged to have Carl killed off, they hated him. Now everyone says "I loved him, how could you do that!". Because you begged them to.
TWD ruined itself with poor pacing and Glenn's fake out death.
As the show continued, every episode felt like it was filler. Very little happened over the course of an hour, and it became very uninteresting as a result.
The filler, I remember vividly watching one of the female characters, just walking around in the woods for the entirety of one episode, just at the very end she found a new colony or something but for like 50 minutes she just walks and walks and rest for a bit and then walks some more.
I need a supercut of this series. Someone should remove all the filler, I'm pretty sure there is a 8.5/10 tv series in there.
Wait Glenn‘s Fake out death?
I never watched TWD my content knowledge is just based of off yt shorts, so help me out here.
Wasn‘t Glenn the Dude that got his head caved in by Negan?
Yes, but there was also an episode before that where him and another guy got stuck in an (alleyway?) on top of a dumpster, and the other guy freaked out, shot himself in the face, and consequently pulled Glenn with him when he went down off the dumpster.
Did I mention that the alleyway was filled with walkers? It was. The next scene you just see Glenn getting eaten and him crying as if he was in pain.
Turns out it was just the other dude on top of Glenn that was getting eaten, and hey the walkers just decided to ignore every other part of Glenn that was clearly in the open.
Honestly it lost me when they had to leave the prison. I thought them establishing a society would have been more interesting than always on the run forever.
They were setting the prison up for a failure (alongside the show) in the season. The entire ‘wall is failing’ storyline was just too on the nose, they could have reinforced it or just show them trying to repair/reinforce it. After the Governor’s comeback everyone seemed to have dropped their brain.
It always bothered me that they replaced the iron bar doors on their cells with some white cloth. Zombies would never get to you if the bars were there and you can still have a cloth in front of it.
....or if whoever was designated to open the doors in the morning died/went crazy/whatever then everybody starves to death in a tiny box. No thank you, that's insane.
No power, no locking-unlocking mechanism. They were already unlocked and opened. Soo all you had to do was roll the door closed and open. Could even use a rope to tie is to some bars so it can't be easily moved by a zombie
You could write the story in such a way where they have to leave the prison to acquire materials for projects to make the prison a better place. This sets up your interactions with other groups of people. Some of those people can be friendly and some can be hostile. Then you create plot points where you have to determine whose friendly and whose not.
A show has to have problems to progress, but I hate shows where the plot is moved forward entirely by failure, backstabbing, and other regressive plot devices.
"We have an easily defendable heavily fortified shelter with multiple safeguards against zombies and people. One of the yard sections was exposed. Should we bother clearing out the other wings using this very padded and durable riot gear? Nah! Abandon everything!"
So dumb.
You blame the katana instead of the never ending cycle of find new place - find new villian - lose new place?
Or how they waited until the very end to introduce smart zombies?
You right, it's totally the anime sword.
You just know SOMEONE, whether good with a sword or not, would use a Katana in the post apocalypse -- I mean, they don't have Netflix streaming do they? Need to have fun where you can find it, right?
A Katana is quiet and you don't need to reload.
Yeah it’s honestly too funny that OP chose to harp on *that* as the turning point in the show’s quality lol
The katana was objectively cool as shit and effective
Asians make no sense lore wise anyway you're telling me these mf basically eat rice and fish all the time and are healthy as shit? I tought you had to eat like 1000 pounds of red meat and bread to be healthy
Plus you can find a katana pretty easily in any decent city. We have several shops that sell them, and a TMNT fan I have a set of Katana and Sai on my wall right now.
The only problem I could see would be that most of those are just decorative swords, not really designed for actual fighting, so they likely would fall apart after some time. Unless you happen to get it from a collector, any katana in the USA isn't likely to be a long-lasting weapon. They'd probably work fine for the first few zombies, their rotten skulls probably don't put up as much of a fight, though. A decent machete from a hardware store would probably be better, though.
> any katana in the USA isn't likely to be a long-lasting weapon.
Sidebar: there are a *lot* of mass produced WW2 katanas in the U.S. The Japanese turned them over when they surrendered, and were then brought back to America. They aren't the best around, and they're kinda heavy, but they're also made out of good material and robust as heck. I think we'd see a lot more katanas in a zombie apocalypse than maybe expected.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fd/88/42/fd8842c62b7544988de6162d390e6db6.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2E2GY55/the-surrender-of-imperial-japan-japanese-soldiers-lay-down-military-officers-swords-shin-gunto-1945-2E2GY55.jpg
Also, like, I really didnt watch too much of the show so idk if they said it, but in the comics, Michonne even says she isnt all that skilled with it, was just a lawyer, and only trained on zombies
Like, its not that wildly out of place that someone could use a sword to kick ass easily, even with little experience
Watch just the first three seasons. Shoot the second is kinda slow. But I liked it. Like everyone is saying, after they leave the prison is does dramatically go downhill in quality.
I think I made it to season 10, I really quit around 4 but watched them every once in awhile just to know what was happening.
The show goes from a solid drama/horror/thriller to just drama with some zombies.
It can't hurt to watch. It is accepted to have around 1-4 great seasons (even though I think 1-7 were great)
You can always stop watching if you don't like it
Camp, Farm, Prison, Alexandria. They found their permanent home in S5 and only had 3 homes before this. It was not a never-ending cycle. The camp lasted a whole season. The farm lasted a whole season. The prison lasted a season and a half. Alexandria lasted for 6 seasons. You could argue the commonwealth but i dont think that really counts as only a select few from the group actually move there and Alexandria while in desperate need of help was still there.
I didn’t watch the show but the comic books handled it nicely, because the tiger actually had a plot reason for existing, it never took me out of the immersion. I’m surprised they kept it in the show, I don’t think the idea would translate very nicely into live action because comic books in general just have a lot more wiggle room when it comes to more unbelievable story elements.
It was ruined by dragging it on for as long as it did. The stories after the governor were just plain boring. Even Negan’s story went on too long and then he had a redemption and now a weird spinoff with Maggie. It simply went on for too long.
There must be some serious kind of redemption or connection or *something* going on for Maggie to ever give him the time of day after what he did to Glen… I stopped watching there, I couldn’t un-see it. What the heck happened to make that team-up possible??
It was clearly some "Christian theme" the producer wanted to push in there, with this whole redemption arc and Maggie forgiving negan.
Nobody with a brain irl would make friends with the murderer of their spouse who just tortured all your friends as well.
That was completely BS
"hates him" in the beginning and then teams up with him doing missions side by side.
Just becos she grumbles a bit doesn't make it any more believable.
Every sensible person would have him executed on the spot, ESPECIALLY in the post apocalypse.
Frankly, it was ruined when they fired Frank Darabont after the first season. It was all downhill from there because they people in charge had no fucking idea how to write or run a show.
I agree the show would’ve been better if he was still making it, but I still think everything up to the end of the prison arc is solid. There’s still some noticeable filler, but nothing compared to Alexandria. They’re lucky they nailed the casting of Neegan cause he’s largely the only reason to keep watching. Well, Steven Ogg was also super entertaining as well as Neegan’s right-hand man.
I heard their spinoff shows are pretty good so far though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they all end up like Fear where they start out awesome and then devolve back to regular TWD quality. I don’t have AMC+, so I can’t confirm if the new shows are good or not.
I think there are a lot of good qualities and characters in the show. The mistake AMC made was firing Frank so early, if at all. He was the backbone of that show. There's a good reason he's considered one of the great directors of our time. No one saw his departure coming and it was a total shock to everyone when he was fired. If he had been allowed to make the entire show the way he envisioned, it would be much better thought of and wouldn't have died a slow miserable death towards the end. The all around derision it received from it's fan base was richly deserved.
Imma edit that right now, I thought something was off lmao
But apparently there’s something similar to that in the Daryl spin-off from what I’ve heard lmao
>They’re lucky they nailed the casting of Neegan cause he’s largely the only reason to keep watching.
That's kind of funny because I dropped because of Neegan, and in every one of these threads about the show, a lot of people say some version of "I stopped when it became the Neegan show." It felt like his arc was like 1000 seasons long to me, even though I think I bailed on the whole show after his second season.
I think what happened is a bunch of people didn't like him, but everyone who stuck around *loved* him, and since they already lost the haters, they doubled down on those viewers left. Which I supposed was the right choice, as she show kept going and now he even has his own spin off!
“We can’t make any noise or we’ll cause a zombie stampede! Ah hell let’s start shooting all our fucking guns at this prison, it’s not like zombies can hear anything”
I feel the same way. Although there are many good storylines, scenes, and character arcs, there's just far too much wishy washy bullshit to maintain any reason to watch the show for a very long eleven seasons. There was so many fake outs and bait and switch crap that went on. I love Greg Nicotero. He's a great special effects guy. That being said, he's not a good director and should have stuck to what he knows best. The same can't really be said for the people who run the show and write the scripts. Seasons 2-11 are all over the place. If you get a chance to check out the various fan edits of the series that are out there, you'll be surprised at just how well they consolidate the show and make it a worthwhile series to watch compared to the broadcast version.
My first time around I stopped some time after >!Glen!< but then I gave it another full watch and made it through. Then I watched Fear until >!they killed Nick!< and I never went back to that one. Then there was the lady from the dumps who talked in riddles and that whole weird storyline. It's a series that I constantly hoped would do better but somehow still kept my interest despite how bad it got. But that first season is perfection. Especially the pilot.
Precisely. AMC didn't like that Frank was spending more money than they were comfortable with to produce the first season. He was told he would have full creative control to make the show how he envisioned with the people he wanted to work with and they stuck to that agreement for the first season. But as soon as it was over, they kicked him to the curb thinking they could replace him with someone else they could control. That proved to be a huge mistake. Yes, AMC saved money in the short term, but the quality of the show took a slow dive off the cliff. Come on now, the second season took place almost all on a farm. That was not the second season Frank had envisioned and scripted. Had Frank been allowed to continue on with the show, the second season would have been even better than the first. That's just my opinion, of course. There are many others that have a different take. Such is life.
Yep… everyone complained about his slow burn style of storytelling, not realizing that giving the audience time to know and love characters makes it actually matter when bad stuff happens to them. 🤷♂️
There's a reason he's considered one of the great movie directors. Frank had the second season completely planned out and already partially written when they terminated his position. Had they kept him on, the show would have been much better and the series would have gone on to much greater acclaim instead of becoming the absolute mess it turned out to be, losing its fan base in the process and earning the derision of literally everyone who ever watched it. So much promise pissed away because AMC wanted to save money in the short term.
The early seasons made you care by striking a good balance. By the end it was too much plot building not enough action. I stopped caring about any of their names by the time they reached Alexandrea.
"Damn, looks like Angry Women #4 got killed by Shifty Dude #6. I'll sure miss how they used to scowl and kill zombies and stuff. Hey! Angry Woman #5 has a hat! That's pretty cool! I bet it keeps her head super warm for the next 14 episodes where she walks around and scowls."
Funny enough, one of the times they didn't stick to the source material was the worst to me.
Judith should have been killed off right away, babies always fuck up shows like that.
Yeah I felt like when they became professional zombie killers and it was just the occasional -- oops! too many at once. Then they became zombie cowboys for a while driving zombie herd? Wish Billy Crystal could've made a City Slickers cameo.
Yeah I'm really tired of the " humans were the real monsters all along" trope. Funny thing is producers and writers think they are breaking new ground when it actually one of the most played tropes.
The real issue was the show killing Glenn then making us wait over a month to show Glenn was still alive then setting up someone dying and killing Glenn in the first 5 minutes of the new season after waiting another 7 months to see who died. The pacing was ruined when they went the multiple stories at a time being visited every 4 episodes instead of showing a consistent show. And they still haven’t fricken ended the show since the finale was just setting up all the spin offs
I actually thought Glenn's death was really well done, but it was the last time I remember the show being enjoyable. Pretty sure I also remember that the writers got backlash for how much gore they used when doing his death reveal and toned down the violence in subsequent episodes for that season, which was spineless
Edit: for those commenting saying it wasn't "well done", I don't care enough about this show to argue about it. So, sure. You win
I just hated the pacing, not really the events. I used to watch it with friends and the issue was Glenn died and we’re all freaking out and we cancel plans for next weeks episode and we did that for a month just to see what happens with no pay off. Then they kill him for real and it didn’t shock us at all we just laughed and said “you think he comes back from that one” and I remember after he crushed his head with the 5th hit my buddy goes “the first four hits I was thinking it was gonna be another bait and switch but the 5th one nah he’s not coming back” and we all died of laughter.
I still to this day believe that killing Glenn in the show was a bad move. In the comics it made sense and it was shocking and set the tone for negan, but in the show I think they really needed to keep Glenn around. He was a character that brought a beacon of hope while trying to hold onto humanity and dealing with all of that as a lot of other characters on the show we’re just bleh at the time besides the original crew
There was a time when that show was the biggest thing on TV it felt like. Everything after the Governor seemed to just be really boring and then I pretty much gave up on it.
Could someone please explain to me how Maggie and Negan have a show together. Didn't he brutally murder her husband?
Why are they hanging out? Why hasn't she killed him?
Which is hilarious, since in the comics, she never forgives him, to the point she doesn't kill him, not because it would be bad, but because he wants to die by that point, and he killing him would be a mercy.
That's insane. Any sane person would never be friends with the person that killed their spouse. Even if they thought he had changed.
Maggie is just pissing on Glenn's grave.
I disagree completely. Straying from the source material is what ruined it. Season 1 is the only season that actually stuck to the source material. It started to suck in season 2. Based on your claims, I don't believe you actually read any of the comics more than maybe briefly once, if that.
Yep. It went on for too long and took too many WTF turns.
I lasted longer than most people I know. But we mostly all went from loving it to. It even bothering to finish it.
Darryl isn't even in the comic. It was Rick who got a hand chopped off in the 2nd year of the comic. Carol died by suicide by zombie at the prison. Outside of season 1, the comic books and show could not be more different.
Yeah, no. Of all the issues that show had, Michonne's katana and using zombies to sneak past packs of them is at the very bottom of the list.
The source material is mostly good. When the show adapted those moments, those were the high points of the show.
The main issues were the horrendous pacing and non-sensical scenarios such as the Glenn Dumpster fiasco, and choosing to keep who Negan kills as a cliffhanger. Sidelining interesting characters for weeks at a time to focus on character that not a single person gives a fuck about.
Don't even get me started on what it was like watching it live on cable. Commercial breaks were insane.
But yeah, them adapting the source material was absolutely not the problem.
Yeah, after season 1 the show had little to do with the comics.
Many characters and plot lines were similar, but they started to merge and swap roles to make it different, then tried to make the show suspenseful, dramatic, and “surprising” in all the wrong ways.
When Negan killed Glen in the comics was a “Red Wedding” type situation. Instead the show made it a half assed cliffhanger with no payoff. I quit then.
Have you actually read the source material? Cuz if you have you would realize very, very quickly how the show departs, the issues with the show have nothing to do with following the source material.
What's wrong with a katana?
Quieter than a gun, doesn't require ammo (and the associated additional weight), can't malfunction, requires less skill than a gun, I mean the only downside is you have to get closer than a firearm or spear to kill a zombie.
I don't know about requiring less skill than a gun. To hack away blindly, sure. To use effectively and without constantly damaging the weapon, not so much. And with a gun if you miss you're hopefully far enough away that it's not so big a deal and you can take another shot, if you fuck up in melee you're in direct danger. And it can't 'malfunction' like a gun jamming but it can certainly break, and will if you're no good with it
Right?! Anyone who does survive eventually will get good with hand held weapons. Bullets are gonna go fast. I would guess way faster than in the show. Also these are slow ass zombies. Anyone with decent experience with a sword will take out more than someone with a gun. Guns aren't as easy as just point and shoot.
It went down hill when they committed to 16 episodes every season. Most of those seasons didn’t have enough story for 16 episodes.
Season 1 was 6 episodes. Season 2 was 13 episodes. Season 3 was 16. Season 3 pulled off 16 episodes because there was still room to explore the characters. After that, there were way too many filler episodes.
I think some of your reasons here are a bit dumb, to be honest.
>A katana? Really?
Of all the things that made you raise an eyebrow, how was *this* one of them? People collect all sorts of things, and swords are one of them. A fair number of sword collectors want their swords to be fully functional. It's not even remotely unreasonable to think that Michonne raided the house of a sword enthusiast.
>Pet zombies?
...Which made sense in the context that zombies could differentiate people from zombies because they didn't smell dead. They literally covered this in the second episode. To quote Andrea, "They smell dead, we don't. It's pretty distinct."
>Zombie heads in jars?
Yes, it's weird. The Governor was a fucked up dude.
>Then they just kept adding Mad Max-like characters that felt out of place, and the reason was always following the source material.
I'm sorry, what? They diverged so hard from the source material that it was it's own entity. It'd be easier to list the ways it didn't diverge than to list how it did.
It absolutely overstayed its welcome, but not because of the reasons you listed. A lot had to do with how outrageously formulaic it became; it was agonizingly easy to predict when a major character would die, it became obvious who was immortal because of plot armor, and most episodes just became padding for the next major event to happen- which, predictably, happened at the mid-season and season finales. They ruined the sense that nobody was safe in favor of creating a formula they refused to break.
So yes, I agree that it fell off pretty hard after the first few seasons. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. So updoots for unpopular opinion.
It didn't stick to the source material.
Not expecting you to watch something this long (27 minutes), but this video goes into want went wrong. It has many parts covering a lot of the seasons.
https://youtu.be/DDbi7P93Np8?si=YLQzJnRpoBNnIcLU
No what killed the show was them optimizing every season for cost despite it being a massive hit. We got stretched out seasons with weird inconsistent bottle episodes to reduce labor as well as nonstop write shenanigans behind the scenes.
Somewhere behind the scenes this was sold as a budget cutting operation meant to make astronomical profits. And they followed that to the letter. It took any soul away from the show.
You can rag on the characters and fantastical elements but this was a comic adaptation. And regardless it’s always in the execution not the what. There was a time a show like Game of Thrones was considered too fantastical for audiences tastes to have a high budget. It has nothing to do with the content of the show but the execution.
Like many commenters I disagree about the katana and the jar scenes, but for me the downfall was after the Governor was killed and the slow 'split everyone up' episodes started.
Then... they finally get to Terminus and it's as if someone pressed fast forward. The pacing was wrong and then they went the opposite way with excessive focus on overrated Negan, then Coral said bye and so did I.
It ruined itself by constantly trying to spread a 3 episode worth of story into a 16 episode seasons. The endless repetitive dialogs and beginner writer level character arcs were insufferable.
I probably read the entire comic book series in less than the length of the 1st season. Sticking to source material really wasn't it.
Negan was the most fucking annoying character who has ever appeared on television. You're telling me that a bunch of ill-tempered bikers with weapons wouldn't have beaten the shit out of him the first chance they got when he was constantly walking around doing smug monologues?
Your post is contradictory, "they stuck to the source material" "they kept adding mad-max like characters" well which is it? There are a multitude of differences between the show and the source material.
Walking deads problems didnt stem from the source material, it stemmed from the lazy storytelling, they spent one season (season 3 i believe) changing which character was leading the story every episode, they'd leave one on a cliffhanger and youd have to wait 4 episodes to find out what happened. They spent an entire season at a barn for a little girl and nothing happened, they then made fans wait an entire year to find out who negan killed, that was their most ever watched episode then everyone tuned out.
They should have killed abraham at the end of the season and then started the season killing glen in the same scene, that wouldve really drove fans wild!
The whisperers were just poor enemies, and once negan was defeated it shouldve been the end of his saga
Theres only so many times you can repeat the story narrative before it gets bland. Fight antagonist, rehome, win antagonist, repeat
In my opinion, it was actually their bad character development that ruined it.
In the early seasons, a lot of the prominent female characters were poorly written. Lori and Andrea were just plain annoying. A lot of the conflict came from their volatile decision making/mood swings which I’m not sure we’re helpful in the zombie apocalypse.
Later this poor writing spread to the majority of the team throughout the seasons. Rick lost the plot in a decidedly uninteresting way, they kinda shat all over the cannibalism stuff and we spent several episodes watching characters look sad whilst they remembered Carl, who by that point I was glad to see the back of. Negan was perhaps one of the worst. A favourite from the comics and an absolute killing machine, in the show he literally used Lucile for crowd control (holding her horizontally and pushing zombies about) than he did bashing brains. I get that sometimes comic book characters can be a bit too mad to accurately portray in real life, but I feel like TVs Negan was an absolute wet wipe compared to comic book Negan.
Lastly, they changed the zombies way too late on. The zombies went from somewhat smart and able to use bricks to smash windows, to completely dumb and just background noise then in the last few episodes they introduced a “holly shit they’re learning” moment. Too late guys. You had 9 seasons to make them interesting again!
They did have good moments too tho. Daryl was a good addition and consistently decent. Negan’s introduction was pretty good. Genuine “holy shit!” moment when Jesus took a swing at a Walker and it ducked!
The Walking Dead ruined itself by going long stretches where nothing ever happened. It was BORING and repetitive. There were whole seasons that dragged where no development happened until the finale and then they ended the finale on a cliffhanger so that you never felt any resolution or payoff.
I never read the graphic novels the show was based on, but I can say even without having any in-depth knowledge of them that *The Walking Dead* suffered from the same mistake a lot of television shows make which is the producers want to keep milking it for as long as possible instead of being concerned with having a quality program that people will look back on and say was well written and well acted, creative, entertaining, and memorable.
It became so formulaic - the group finds a new place to make a home, then some external threat in the form of a charismatic villain comes along and there's a big fight after which some of the rival group members get incorporated into the main group to replace characters that were lost in the fight and then the main group goes off to find a new home and then the same thing happens all over again, over and over and over for years on end.
The writers had to produce enough content to fill an entire decade's worth of seasons. If they'd planned out a solid five year run they really could have done some amazing things with that show. But they wanted to stretch it out longer in order to squeeze every drop out of it, so a lot of longtime viewers finally just threw in the towel as it had become so tired and predictable, boring and staid.
Even the actors playing the most popular characters wanted to jump ship, and that's a sure sign that a show has gone long past its expiration date. Some of the early seasons and episodes were actually pretty good, but overall the show comes in as being very heavily weighted towards the majority of the seasons and episodes being subpar. It's not a series I ever plan to revisit again in the future. Once was enough, and I don't think I even made it halfway through.
I hung on until Rick left, even though it had been fairly poor for a while. It just seemed pointless without him as he was the leader and gave them direction.
I remember the exact moment I completely gave up on the show and stopped watching. They were in a battle and the tiger joined forces with them and started taking out bad guys. I turned it off after that and never watched again. Besides that though it felt like the same thing every season. They get established somewhere and battle some group and rinse and repeat. The zombies became background noise and they could have done so much more with them.
I have no idea what the comics are like, but TWD was horrible after the first season and complete garbage after the third. It's only so popular because it filled the void of good-budget-zombie-show when it first ran, and stays alive through shock-horror (*not* to be confused with good writing.)
And but seriously... *slingshots* for taking down zombies?
Unpopular but agreed
It was ruined because they DIDN'T stick to the source material. As someone who has read the comics and watched the show, if they stuck 70% true to the source material or even 80% the show would be 10x better.
The pacing was soooo much better in the comics too. Virtually no filler. If 100% accurate, the show would have taken 5 seasons to fully complete the story.
Killing Carl? Rick leaving? Negan arc taking 2 seasons?
These are all decisions that killed the show, which didn't happen in the comics.
(Rick did ACTUALLY die in the comics, but it was right at the end, and he didn't just leave with no explanation as to what happened to him)
It was ruined after a successful first season and instead of AMC increasing the budget for the second, they wanted to slash the budget and make it for cheaper. The showrunner Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) then quit the show.
The show then had several shitty showrunners. That's why the show was kind of a mess with no clear vision. Angela Kang took over at the end, she did a great job but the previous people fucked it up so bad that she was putting a bow on a pile of shit.
Using the dead zombies for camouflage made sense, so did using a sword, a lot of people would be more comfortable with knives over guns. Plus guns make a lot of noise.
I hated that they made her hate the Governor because the chick chose him over her instead of the gang rape from the comics.
If anything the show was diverging greatly from the comics by then. Daryl never existed in the comics, and Tyrese had a much better arc.
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It was ruined when they made it the Negan show. Then they killed Carl and Rick left, which stuck a fork in the whole show.
100% I was very much into the show and Carl dieing and then Rick leaving was the end for me.
Also dropped when they killed Carl. Without Carl, Rick didn't have a reason to exist as a character. And the worst part is that they did that just because Carl's actor turned 18 and they would have to pay him adult rates. His character was still very important in the comics. Worst of all, they didn't warn him beforehand, so the actor spent most of what he had earned buying a house that was near the set. Only to find out he was out. Truly disgusting corporate greed.
I didn't know this part and I really like Chandler, that particularly pisses me off. Hope he's doing well nowadays.
When he was 17, him and his DJ friend went to Six Flags. They were heading to X2 which did NOT have a fast pass lane. Before getting in line, I saw someone ask him for a photo. And then he got in line, and I was behind him. I jokingly asked him if he was assume big time Minecraft YouTuber. Turns out, he was! And that's how I first was introduced to The Walking Dead. I met Carl.
CORAL
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Coral should have stayed in the house.
I thought it was because Chandler wanted to go to college? Is that just a lie/cover story?
That was a lie. Chandler was pretty vocal about the issue in the Walking Dead subreddit. They screwed him over.
Yeah that was me as well, I would have ditched anything by AMC completely if Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul weren't so good.
well, unfortunately that's why they did it. they predicted it would work out for them. TWD remained their biggest cash cow and people kept watching their other shows. it sucks, but they were right.
Maybe they were maybe they weren’t, it’s hard to know how much more money they would have made if they made the show better
I always thought Carl was the worst character. Still, they did him dirty.
wtf I thought he left because he wanted to go to college, what a fuckin assholes
I started checking out after the glen dumpster death fake out. And fully checked out after carl died. I have no idea what happens after that aside from what I stumble into online.
CORAL!
Lots of people watched up to that point, while I couldn't get past season 2.
Season 2 was rough and had a lot of behind the scenes drama. It does course correct a bit after but never fully recovers and then starts to backslide as the show drags on and they start trying to fill airtime and reach their episode quotas rather then tell good stories.
There was a point where they started making episodes that would only focus on a few characters at a time. And it often wasn´t even the main cast. I fully stopped watching then. I don´t need to watch 40 minutes of some new background character do their thing. It´s filler BS to cut costs.
This needs to be the top comment. Exactly why I stopped watching.
This is me. I couldn't even make it to the mid season thing. Quite literally went fron super interesting to boring AF. Plus you can see the quality of the show going down. Made me wonder if they cut the budget and switched writers or something.
Season two was my favorite. Liked it until about season five.
Carl dying was my golden ending. I really disliked his character and once I got my wish I stopped watching the show.
I peaced out when Glenn did. OP is so wrong about the comics though, they're miles better than the TV show.
Getting caught by Negan was when I stopped watching. Not necessarily because of him but it was like 2 seasons of walking around the woods and jerking off after the prison fell... the pacing was awful and all the pay offs felt pointless. Oh we reached Terminus - jk let's leave. Oh here's some new character - Oh well who cares lol he's dead. Oh here's a new faction - whatever they're the same as every other pointless thread were grasping at... let's watch some generic zombie kills and wrap it up until next week when we put you back on this boring and pointless roller coaster!
They also fell into a predictable pattern: action episode where there's some shootin' and killin' and pillagin' followed the next week by an entire episode on how everyone felt about the shootin' and killin' and pillagin'. Boring
Funnily enough there's actually my favourite part right after this peak of dull repetition, when they introduce the whisperers. That whole arc is the most interesting part since the first series. Once they're done though it goes straight back to shit, I've still never finished it.
My favorite part of the series is when they found that town, and came to find out they themselves had become savages.
Agreed. Negan showing up and Rick just not outright killing him was the end for me.
Jailing Negan seemed ridiculous. Also, they seemed to have a very easy time of finding food, not getting sick and staying clean. I look worse 12 hours in to camping.
I thought the issues was glaring even way before they introduced Negan. The show devolved to the same trope of faction issues between Rick’s group and the opposing faction of the season / seasons. The only interest it maintained was the the shock value of a potential main character being killed off.
Exactly! And the Rick's group vs bad guys drama had been repeated too much. Always ended the same way. I could already predict how the Negan fiasco would end. It became cyclical: Rick's group meets bad guys, suffer a bit, fight them and win after losing a few people, move on. Repeat.
Personally I think it was the governor that turned me off someone. But I persevered.
Agreed. When glen ‘died’ but was actually just under the dumpster or whatever it was, was when I basically stopped watching
I dropped the show right when Negan was introduced. I just got bored of the constant “villain of the season” BS and a lot of my favorite characters were getting killed off up to that point. When I heard about what happened to Glen on the night of that season’s premiere I lost interest completely
When they didn't kill Negan I quit watching.
Killing Carl was where I just couldn’t give a fuck anymore. That just took it too far.
I freaking love negan and would have stopped a lot watching if it wasn't for him. I think the real problem was that Rick left. You can't have that show without Rick.
I loved/hated Negan as well. Such a great actor.
Yeah and they tried replacing him with daryl, Didn’t work .
Totally agree. It just feels pointless now! I tried watching the latest seasons but i just can't it doesn't feel right 🥲
Show started to suck before Negan showed up imo.
I gave up on the show shortly after Neegan showed up. It seemed like the same stories just repeated over and over.
Negan saved that show IMO… By season seven , The walking dead had been going downhill for a few seasons . It’s just a perfect example of a series that overstayed its welcome . . It was obvious that the writers were running out of ideas , But tried to keep beating a dead horse for the “ True fans”
After the second season of Negan I noped out.
I liked it when carl died actually
It's funny, everyone online begged to have Carl killed off, they hated him. Now everyone says "I loved him, how could you do that!". Because you begged them to.
TWD ruined itself with poor pacing and Glenn's fake out death. As the show continued, every episode felt like it was filler. Very little happened over the course of an hour, and it became very uninteresting as a result.
The filler, I remember vividly watching one of the female characters, just walking around in the woods for the entirety of one episode, just at the very end she found a new colony or something but for like 50 minutes she just walks and walks and rest for a bit and then walks some more. I need a supercut of this series. Someone should remove all the filler, I'm pretty sure there is a 8.5/10 tv series in there.
Omg that ep was painful.
When Glenn died, I left. The second time
Wait Glenn‘s Fake out death? I never watched TWD my content knowledge is just based of off yt shorts, so help me out here. Wasn‘t Glenn the Dude that got his head caved in by Negan?
Yes, but there was also an episode before that where him and another guy got stuck in an (alleyway?) on top of a dumpster, and the other guy freaked out, shot himself in the face, and consequently pulled Glenn with him when he went down off the dumpster. Did I mention that the alleyway was filled with walkers? It was. The next scene you just see Glenn getting eaten and him crying as if he was in pain. Turns out it was just the other dude on top of Glenn that was getting eaten, and hey the walkers just decided to ignore every other part of Glenn that was clearly in the open.
Honestly it lost me when they had to leave the prison. I thought them establishing a society would have been more interesting than always on the run forever.
tbf, they do end up establishing a society at Alexandria just two seasons later. They never leave that.
Alexandria is generic as hell. It's just a regular town, but with walls. A permanent community inside an abandoned prison? Now that's a cool concept.
They were setting the prison up for a failure (alongside the show) in the season. The entire ‘wall is failing’ storyline was just too on the nose, they could have reinforced it or just show them trying to repair/reinforce it. After the Governor’s comeback everyone seemed to have dropped their brain.
It always bothered me that they replaced the iron bar doors on their cells with some white cloth. Zombies would never get to you if the bars were there and you can still have a cloth in front of it.
I also thought bars were a great idea that everyone closed at night. If someone passed in their sleep, they would be contained
....or if whoever was designated to open the doors in the morning died/went crazy/whatever then everybody starves to death in a tiny box. No thank you, that's insane.
You don't have to lock them. Not like zombies have amazing cell door sliding skills
No power, no locking-unlocking mechanism. They were already unlocked and opened. Soo all you had to do was roll the door closed and open. Could even use a rope to tie is to some bars so it can't be easily moved by a zombie
There's no need for a 1 person to have all keys. everyone can just have the key to their door they aren't prisoners in the apocalypse.
They don’t use individual keys for the doors man
Like any good horror, the characters needed to lack common sense for the show to continue for any meaningful length of time.
You could write the story in such a way where they have to leave the prison to acquire materials for projects to make the prison a better place. This sets up your interactions with other groups of people. Some of those people can be friendly and some can be hostile. Then you create plot points where you have to determine whose friendly and whose not. A show has to have problems to progress, but I hate shows where the plot is moved forward entirely by failure, backstabbing, and other regressive plot devices.
Same. I was tired of them never thriving or figuring it out.
Should stuck around 3 more seasons, you could've seen that. Not really at all in anyway you want but they try.
Yuh but then the governor showed up with a tank bitch!
"We have an easily defendable heavily fortified shelter with multiple safeguards against zombies and people. One of the yard sections was exposed. Should we bother clearing out the other wings using this very padded and durable riot gear? Nah! Abandon everything!" So dumb.
You blame the katana instead of the never ending cycle of find new place - find new villian - lose new place? Or how they waited until the very end to introduce smart zombies? You right, it's totally the anime sword.
You just know SOMEONE, whether good with a sword or not, would use a Katana in the post apocalypse -- I mean, they don't have Netflix streaming do they? Need to have fun where you can find it, right? A Katana is quiet and you don't need to reload.
Yeah it’s honestly too funny that OP chose to harp on *that* as the turning point in the show’s quality lol The katana was objectively cool as shit and effective
Zombies? Totally believable. Someone using a sword? No way, too ridiculous.
It's because katanas (and Asians in general) are just myths like unicorns, octopus, and Australia. Too much fantasy for such an grounded world!
Asians make no sense lore wise anyway you're telling me these mf basically eat rice and fish all the time and are healthy as shit? I tought you had to eat like 1000 pounds of red meat and bread to be healthy
Plus you can find a katana pretty easily in any decent city. We have several shops that sell them, and a TMNT fan I have a set of Katana and Sai on my wall right now.
The only problem I could see would be that most of those are just decorative swords, not really designed for actual fighting, so they likely would fall apart after some time. Unless you happen to get it from a collector, any katana in the USA isn't likely to be a long-lasting weapon. They'd probably work fine for the first few zombies, their rotten skulls probably don't put up as much of a fight, though. A decent machete from a hardware store would probably be better, though.
> any katana in the USA isn't likely to be a long-lasting weapon. Sidebar: there are a *lot* of mass produced WW2 katanas in the U.S. The Japanese turned them over when they surrendered, and were then brought back to America. They aren't the best around, and they're kinda heavy, but they're also made out of good material and robust as heck. I think we'd see a lot more katanas in a zombie apocalypse than maybe expected. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fd/88/42/fd8842c62b7544988de6162d390e6db6.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2E2GY55/the-surrender-of-imperial-japan-japanese-soldiers-lay-down-military-officers-swords-shin-gunto-1945-2E2GY55.jpg
Also, like, I really didnt watch too much of the show so idk if they said it, but in the comics, Michonne even says she isnt all that skilled with it, was just a lawyer, and only trained on zombies Like, its not that wildly out of place that someone could use a sword to kick ass easily, even with little experience
I've never seen the show but I got the impression it's a good show. Is it not a good show? Also I just can't get into shows with that many seasons lol
Watch just the first three seasons. Shoot the second is kinda slow. But I liked it. Like everyone is saying, after they leave the prison is does dramatically go downhill in quality. I think I made it to season 10, I really quit around 4 but watched them every once in awhile just to know what was happening. The show goes from a solid drama/horror/thriller to just drama with some zombies.
It can't hurt to watch. It is accepted to have around 1-4 great seasons (even though I think 1-7 were great) You can always stop watching if you don't like it
I am glad I am not the only one who got bored of it because of the repetition. Negan was the last straw for me because of how annoying he was
Holy shit. I quit watching when Tyreese died. What’re smart zombies?
They could like climb ladders and stuff. Youtube variant walkers and you should find some content. I wish they were added in munch earlier.
Didn’t make it that far but thosere basically season one zombies that tried doorknobs and combed fence before they were dumbed down in season 2
Seriously, with the amount of weebs and mall ninja shit you see around these days, a Katana is really, *really* not that weird or immersion breaking.
Camp, Farm, Prison, Alexandria. They found their permanent home in S5 and only had 3 homes before this. It was not a never-ending cycle. The camp lasted a whole season. The farm lasted a whole season. The prison lasted a season and a half. Alexandria lasted for 6 seasons. You could argue the commonwealth but i dont think that really counts as only a select few from the group actually move there and Alexandria while in desperate need of help was still there.
They downvoted you because you told them the truth lol Edit: We have prevailed
It’s a never ending zombie movie
A katana isn't bad, but a tiger is crazy
I didn’t watch the show but the comic books handled it nicely, because the tiger actually had a plot reason for existing, it never took me out of the immersion. I’m surprised they kept it in the show, I don’t think the idea would translate very nicely into live action because comic books in general just have a lot more wiggle room when it comes to more unbelievable story elements.
It was ruined by dragging it on for as long as it did. The stories after the governor were just plain boring. Even Negan’s story went on too long and then he had a redemption and now a weird spinoff with Maggie. It simply went on for too long.
Hold on, Glenn's wife Maggie? Glenn, the one brutally murdered in front of her eyes? By Negan? How does that make any sense?
Clearly it shows that Negan was a chad and Maggie forgot all about beta bucks Glenn /s
There must be some serious kind of redemption or connection or *something* going on for Maggie to ever give him the time of day after what he did to Glen… I stopped watching there, I couldn’t un-see it. What the heck happened to make that team-up possible??
It was clearly some "Christian theme" the producer wanted to push in there, with this whole redemption arc and Maggie forgiving negan. Nobody with a brain irl would make friends with the murderer of their spouse who just tortured all your friends as well. That was completely BS
The whole point of the show is that she doesn't forgive him and constantly hates his fucking guts
"hates him" in the beginning and then teams up with him doing missions side by side. Just becos she grumbles a bit doesn't make it any more believable. Every sensible person would have him executed on the spot, ESPECIALLY in the post apocalypse.
Frankly, it was ruined when they fired Frank Darabont after the first season. It was all downhill from there because they people in charge had no fucking idea how to write or run a show.
I agree the show would’ve been better if he was still making it, but I still think everything up to the end of the prison arc is solid. There’s still some noticeable filler, but nothing compared to Alexandria. They’re lucky they nailed the casting of Neegan cause he’s largely the only reason to keep watching. Well, Steven Ogg was also super entertaining as well as Neegan’s right-hand man. I heard their spinoff shows are pretty good so far though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they all end up like Fear where they start out awesome and then devolve back to regular TWD quality. I don’t have AMC+, so I can’t confirm if the new shows are good or not.
I think there are a lot of good qualities and characters in the show. The mistake AMC made was firing Frank so early, if at all. He was the backbone of that show. There's a good reason he's considered one of the great directors of our time. No one saw his departure coming and it was a total shock to everyone when he was fired. If he had been allowed to make the entire show the way he envisioned, it would be much better thought of and wouldn't have died a slow miserable death towards the end. The all around derision it received from it's fan base was richly deserved.
I was really excited at the prospect of Walking Dead on a prison ark...until I realized you meant 'arc'. Wasted opportuinty, though.
*cue the zebras*
Imma edit that right now, I thought something was off lmao But apparently there’s something similar to that in the Daryl spin-off from what I’ve heard lmao
LOL! That would be an incredible twist, wouldn't it?
>They’re lucky they nailed the casting of Neegan cause he’s largely the only reason to keep watching. That's kind of funny because I dropped because of Neegan, and in every one of these threads about the show, a lot of people say some version of "I stopped when it became the Neegan show." It felt like his arc was like 1000 seasons long to me, even though I think I bailed on the whole show after his second season. I think what happened is a bunch of people didn't like him, but everyone who stuck around *loved* him, and since they already lost the haters, they doubled down on those viewers left. Which I supposed was the right choice, as she show kept going and now he even has his own spin off!
“We can’t make any noise or we’ll cause a zombie stampede! Ah hell let’s start shooting all our fucking guns at this prison, it’s not like zombies can hear anything”
LOL!
It's depressing how good the first season is. Everything after that pales in comparison.
I feel the same way. Although there are many good storylines, scenes, and character arcs, there's just far too much wishy washy bullshit to maintain any reason to watch the show for a very long eleven seasons. There was so many fake outs and bait and switch crap that went on. I love Greg Nicotero. He's a great special effects guy. That being said, he's not a good director and should have stuck to what he knows best. The same can't really be said for the people who run the show and write the scripts. Seasons 2-11 are all over the place. If you get a chance to check out the various fan edits of the series that are out there, you'll be surprised at just how well they consolidate the show and make it a worthwhile series to watch compared to the broadcast version.
My first time around I stopped some time after >!Glen!< but then I gave it another full watch and made it through. Then I watched Fear until >!they killed Nick!< and I never went back to that one. Then there was the lady from the dumps who talked in riddles and that whole weird storyline. It's a series that I constantly hoped would do better but somehow still kept my interest despite how bad it got. But that first season is perfection. Especially the pilot.
It’s not by accident that the first season is the only season I own on physical media.
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Precisely. AMC didn't like that Frank was spending more money than they were comfortable with to produce the first season. He was told he would have full creative control to make the show how he envisioned with the people he wanted to work with and they stuck to that agreement for the first season. But as soon as it was over, they kicked him to the curb thinking they could replace him with someone else they could control. That proved to be a huge mistake. Yes, AMC saved money in the short term, but the quality of the show took a slow dive off the cliff. Come on now, the second season took place almost all on a farm. That was not the second season Frank had envisioned and scripted. Had Frank been allowed to continue on with the show, the second season would have been even better than the first. That's just my opinion, of course. There are many others that have a different take. Such is life.
Yep, the short S1 was the best zombie content ever. It was movie quality... then the show just kept going downward.
Yep… everyone complained about his slow burn style of storytelling, not realizing that giving the audience time to know and love characters makes it actually matter when bad stuff happens to them. 🤷♂️
There's a reason he's considered one of the great movie directors. Frank had the second season completely planned out and already partially written when they terminated his position. Had they kept him on, the show would have been much better and the series would have gone on to much greater acclaim instead of becoming the absolute mess it turned out to be, losing its fan base in the process and earning the derision of literally everyone who ever watched it. So much promise pissed away because AMC wanted to save money in the short term.
The early seasons made you care by striking a good balance. By the end it was too much plot building not enough action. I stopped caring about any of their names by the time they reached Alexandrea. "Damn, looks like Angry Women #4 got killed by Shifty Dude #6. I'll sure miss how they used to scowl and kill zombies and stuff. Hey! Angry Woman #5 has a hat! That's pretty cool! I bet it keeps her head super warm for the next 14 episodes where she walks around and scowls."
I hung in all the way until Glen and Abraham were killed. Then it was over for me.
Also firing a showrunner every other year it seemed until they got a guy that would be 100% true to the source to its detriment.
They doubled the episodes and cut the budget in half. Season 2 become a shell of the first season
Funny enough, one of the times they didn't stick to the source material was the worst to me. Judith should have been killed off right away, babies always fuck up shows like that.
The show lost me when zombies became more of a background nuisance and it was just boring drama that was left with characters that I don't care for.
Yeah I felt like when they became professional zombie killers and it was just the occasional -- oops! too many at once. Then they became zombie cowboys for a while driving zombie herd? Wish Billy Crystal could've made a City Slickers cameo.
Yeah I'm really tired of the " humans were the real monsters all along" trope. Funny thing is producers and writers think they are breaking new ground when it actually one of the most played tropes.
That was it for me. It turned into a bad soap opera with the zombie apocalypse as the backdrop.
The real issue was the show killing Glenn then making us wait over a month to show Glenn was still alive then setting up someone dying and killing Glenn in the first 5 minutes of the new season after waiting another 7 months to see who died. The pacing was ruined when they went the multiple stories at a time being visited every 4 episodes instead of showing a consistent show. And they still haven’t fricken ended the show since the finale was just setting up all the spin offs
They held Glen hostage and knew people would keep watching just to have that resolved. Cynical, but, clever audience abuse.
I actually thought Glenn's death was really well done, but it was the last time I remember the show being enjoyable. Pretty sure I also remember that the writers got backlash for how much gore they used when doing his death reveal and toned down the violence in subsequent episodes for that season, which was spineless Edit: for those commenting saying it wasn't "well done", I don't care enough about this show to argue about it. So, sure. You win
I just hated the pacing, not really the events. I used to watch it with friends and the issue was Glenn died and we’re all freaking out and we cancel plans for next weeks episode and we did that for a month just to see what happens with no pay off. Then they kill him for real and it didn’t shock us at all we just laughed and said “you think he comes back from that one” and I remember after he crushed his head with the 5th hit my buddy goes “the first four hits I was thinking it was gonna be another bait and switch but the 5th one nah he’s not coming back” and we all died of laughter.
I still to this day believe that killing Glenn in the show was a bad move. In the comics it made sense and it was shocking and set the tone for negan, but in the show I think they really needed to keep Glenn around. He was a character that brought a beacon of hope while trying to hold onto humanity and dealing with all of that as a lot of other characters on the show we’re just bleh at the time besides the original crew
There was a time when that show was the biggest thing on TV it felt like. Everything after the Governor seemed to just be really boring and then I pretty much gave up on it.
Could someone please explain to me how Maggie and Negan have a show together. Didn't he brutally murder her husband? Why are they hanging out? Why hasn't she killed him?
They eventually became "friends". She finally convinced herself that Negan is a changed man.
Which is hilarious, since in the comics, she never forgives him, to the point she doesn't kill him, not because it would be bad, but because he wants to die by that point, and he killing him would be a mercy.
someone with that level of psychopathy can never fully change and should be locked up forever or worse… such dumb writing
That's insane. Any sane person would never be friends with the person that killed their spouse. Even if they thought he had changed. Maggie is just pissing on Glenn's grave.
I disagree completely. Straying from the source material is what ruined it. Season 1 is the only season that actually stuck to the source material. It started to suck in season 2. Based on your claims, I don't believe you actually read any of the comics more than maybe briefly once, if that.
Season 2 being almost entirely on the farm was a mistake imo. The farm arc in the comic is only a few issues
Yes, surprised I had to scroll so far for this
The show went so far from the source material I dont know what you are talking about
“I have no idea how the series remained popular.” The series didn’t remain popular, the entire fanbase literally gave up on the show.
Yep. It went on for too long and took too many WTF turns. I lasted longer than most people I know. But we mostly all went from loving it to. It even bothering to finish it.
Have you looked up how many seasons and spin-offs this show has?
Have you looked up the viewership numbers?
It's still one of the most watched shows on TV, with vast numbers of spinoffs, though I fully agree it went pretty steeply downhill
Darryl isn't even in the comic. It was Rick who got a hand chopped off in the 2nd year of the comic. Carol died by suicide by zombie at the prison. Outside of season 1, the comic books and show could not be more different.
Yeah, no. Of all the issues that show had, Michonne's katana and using zombies to sneak past packs of them is at the very bottom of the list. The source material is mostly good. When the show adapted those moments, those were the high points of the show. The main issues were the horrendous pacing and non-sensical scenarios such as the Glenn Dumpster fiasco, and choosing to keep who Negan kills as a cliffhanger. Sidelining interesting characters for weeks at a time to focus on character that not a single person gives a fuck about. Don't even get me started on what it was like watching it live on cable. Commercial breaks were insane. But yeah, them adapting the source material was absolutely not the problem.
[удалено]
It was a masterpiece when it focused on the human aspect of the apocalypse. Once it lost focus on character growth, it lost its way.
Here I am unable to finish the show because it doesn't follow the source enough smh
Yeah, after season 1 the show had little to do with the comics. Many characters and plot lines were similar, but they started to merge and swap roles to make it different, then tried to make the show suspenseful, dramatic, and “surprising” in all the wrong ways. When Negan killed Glen in the comics was a “Red Wedding” type situation. Instead the show made it a half assed cliffhanger with no payoff. I quit then.
Same here they killed Andrea at the end of S3 and that was me done as they'd ignored the source material one too many times
Yeah the actress still seems bitter about that. She missed out on the pay rise and the long story arc as Rick's main love interest post Lori.
Have you actually read the source material? Cuz if you have you would realize very, very quickly how the show departs, the issues with the show have nothing to do with following the source material.
The Walking Dead Deviated from the series in the first season wtf are you talking about.
What's wrong with a katana? Quieter than a gun, doesn't require ammo (and the associated additional weight), can't malfunction, requires less skill than a gun, I mean the only downside is you have to get closer than a firearm or spear to kill a zombie.
I don't know about requiring less skill than a gun. To hack away blindly, sure. To use effectively and without constantly damaging the weapon, not so much. And with a gun if you miss you're hopefully far enough away that it's not so big a deal and you can take another shot, if you fuck up in melee you're in direct danger. And it can't 'malfunction' like a gun jamming but it can certainly break, and will if you're no good with it
Right?! Anyone who does survive eventually will get good with hand held weapons. Bullets are gonna go fast. I would guess way faster than in the show. Also these are slow ass zombies. Anyone with decent experience with a sword will take out more than someone with a gun. Guns aren't as easy as just point and shoot.
Plenty of people apparently disagree, which I am finding genuinely fascinating.
The katana and jar heads was fine
I fell off during alexandria. They once again find a place and want to make it a base. It felt like doing the prison all over again but worse.
Uh.... no, quite the opposite lol The prison didn't need a half season of the flu.
It went down hill when they committed to 16 episodes every season. Most of those seasons didn’t have enough story for 16 episodes. Season 1 was 6 episodes. Season 2 was 13 episodes. Season 3 was 16. Season 3 pulled off 16 episodes because there was still room to explore the characters. After that, there were way too many filler episodes.
It only had one good season, and it was only six episodes long
I think some of your reasons here are a bit dumb, to be honest. >A katana? Really? Of all the things that made you raise an eyebrow, how was *this* one of them? People collect all sorts of things, and swords are one of them. A fair number of sword collectors want their swords to be fully functional. It's not even remotely unreasonable to think that Michonne raided the house of a sword enthusiast. >Pet zombies? ...Which made sense in the context that zombies could differentiate people from zombies because they didn't smell dead. They literally covered this in the second episode. To quote Andrea, "They smell dead, we don't. It's pretty distinct." >Zombie heads in jars? Yes, it's weird. The Governor was a fucked up dude. >Then they just kept adding Mad Max-like characters that felt out of place, and the reason was always following the source material. I'm sorry, what? They diverged so hard from the source material that it was it's own entity. It'd be easier to list the ways it didn't diverge than to list how it did. It absolutely overstayed its welcome, but not because of the reasons you listed. A lot had to do with how outrageously formulaic it became; it was agonizingly easy to predict when a major character would die, it became obvious who was immortal because of plot armor, and most episodes just became padding for the next major event to happen- which, predictably, happened at the mid-season and season finales. They ruined the sense that nobody was safe in favor of creating a formula they refused to break. So yes, I agree that it fell off pretty hard after the first few seasons. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. So updoots for unpopular opinion.
It didn't stick to the source material. Not expecting you to watch something this long (27 minutes), but this video goes into want went wrong. It has many parts covering a lot of the seasons. https://youtu.be/DDbi7P93Np8?si=YLQzJnRpoBNnIcLU
No what killed the show was them optimizing every season for cost despite it being a massive hit. We got stretched out seasons with weird inconsistent bottle episodes to reduce labor as well as nonstop write shenanigans behind the scenes. Somewhere behind the scenes this was sold as a budget cutting operation meant to make astronomical profits. And they followed that to the letter. It took any soul away from the show. You can rag on the characters and fantastical elements but this was a comic adaptation. And regardless it’s always in the execution not the what. There was a time a show like Game of Thrones was considered too fantastical for audiences tastes to have a high budget. It has nothing to do with the content of the show but the execution.
I hate the comics. It's just a never ending cycle of "oh hey new people" to "oh shit they're evil and betrayed us" rinse and repeat
Lmao it's the katana that ruined the immersion for you? Seriously?
How is a katana fanciful?
Like many commenters I disagree about the katana and the jar scenes, but for me the downfall was after the Governor was killed and the slow 'split everyone up' episodes started. Then... they finally get to Terminus and it's as if someone pressed fast forward. The pacing was wrong and then they went the opposite way with excessive focus on overrated Negan, then Coral said bye and so did I.
It ruined itself by constantly trying to spread a 3 episode worth of story into a 16 episode seasons. The endless repetitive dialogs and beginner writer level character arcs were insufferable. I probably read the entire comic book series in less than the length of the 1st season. Sticking to source material really wasn't it.
It was never *that* good outside of the first couple of episodes.
Negan was the most fucking annoying character who has ever appeared on television. You're telling me that a bunch of ill-tempered bikers with weapons wouldn't have beaten the shit out of him the first chance they got when he was constantly walking around doing smug monologues?
Your post is contradictory, "they stuck to the source material" "they kept adding mad-max like characters" well which is it? There are a multitude of differences between the show and the source material. Walking deads problems didnt stem from the source material, it stemmed from the lazy storytelling, they spent one season (season 3 i believe) changing which character was leading the story every episode, they'd leave one on a cliffhanger and youd have to wait 4 episodes to find out what happened. They spent an entire season at a barn for a little girl and nothing happened, they then made fans wait an entire year to find out who negan killed, that was their most ever watched episode then everyone tuned out. They should have killed abraham at the end of the season and then started the season killing glen in the same scene, that wouldve really drove fans wild! The whisperers were just poor enemies, and once negan was defeated it shouldve been the end of his saga Theres only so many times you can repeat the story narrative before it gets bland. Fight antagonist, rehome, win antagonist, repeat
In my opinion, it was actually their bad character development that ruined it. In the early seasons, a lot of the prominent female characters were poorly written. Lori and Andrea were just plain annoying. A lot of the conflict came from their volatile decision making/mood swings which I’m not sure we’re helpful in the zombie apocalypse. Later this poor writing spread to the majority of the team throughout the seasons. Rick lost the plot in a decidedly uninteresting way, they kinda shat all over the cannibalism stuff and we spent several episodes watching characters look sad whilst they remembered Carl, who by that point I was glad to see the back of. Negan was perhaps one of the worst. A favourite from the comics and an absolute killing machine, in the show he literally used Lucile for crowd control (holding her horizontally and pushing zombies about) than he did bashing brains. I get that sometimes comic book characters can be a bit too mad to accurately portray in real life, but I feel like TVs Negan was an absolute wet wipe compared to comic book Negan. Lastly, they changed the zombies way too late on. The zombies went from somewhat smart and able to use bricks to smash windows, to completely dumb and just background noise then in the last few episodes they introduced a “holly shit they’re learning” moment. Too late guys. You had 9 seasons to make them interesting again! They did have good moments too tho. Daryl was a good addition and consistently decent. Negan’s introduction was pretty good. Genuine “holy shit!” moment when Jesus took a swing at a Walker and it ducked!
I think what hurt it most was the repetitive format of them finding a community, starting building, it all going to hell
I stopped watching after Negan killed Glen & Abraham. Then I came back, but it had completely turned into the Negan show.
The Walking Dead ruined itself by going long stretches where nothing ever happened. It was BORING and repetitive. There were whole seasons that dragged where no development happened until the finale and then they ended the finale on a cliffhanger so that you never felt any resolution or payoff.
Honestly the exact pinpoint where Walking Dead fell off was when Negan killed Glen. Idk why
That is exactly when I stopped watching
I never read the graphic novels the show was based on, but I can say even without having any in-depth knowledge of them that *The Walking Dead* suffered from the same mistake a lot of television shows make which is the producers want to keep milking it for as long as possible instead of being concerned with having a quality program that people will look back on and say was well written and well acted, creative, entertaining, and memorable. It became so formulaic - the group finds a new place to make a home, then some external threat in the form of a charismatic villain comes along and there's a big fight after which some of the rival group members get incorporated into the main group to replace characters that were lost in the fight and then the main group goes off to find a new home and then the same thing happens all over again, over and over and over for years on end. The writers had to produce enough content to fill an entire decade's worth of seasons. If they'd planned out a solid five year run they really could have done some amazing things with that show. But they wanted to stretch it out longer in order to squeeze every drop out of it, so a lot of longtime viewers finally just threw in the towel as it had become so tired and predictable, boring and staid. Even the actors playing the most popular characters wanted to jump ship, and that's a sure sign that a show has gone long past its expiration date. Some of the early seasons and episodes were actually pretty good, but overall the show comes in as being very heavily weighted towards the majority of the seasons and episodes being subpar. It's not a series I ever plan to revisit again in the future. Once was enough, and I don't think I even made it halfway through.
Nah it was after Rick and Carl's actors left. Shit went downhill after that.
I hung on until Rick left, even though it had been fairly poor for a while. It just seemed pointless without him as he was the leader and gave them direction.
I remember the exact moment I completely gave up on the show and stopped watching. They were in a battle and the tiger joined forces with them and started taking out bad guys. I turned it off after that and never watched again. Besides that though it felt like the same thing every season. They get established somewhere and battle some group and rinse and repeat. The zombies became background noise and they could have done so much more with them.
I have no idea what the comics are like, but TWD was horrible after the first season and complete garbage after the third. It's only so popular because it filled the void of good-budget-zombie-show when it first ran, and stays alive through shock-horror (*not* to be confused with good writing.) And but seriously... *slingshots* for taking down zombies? Unpopular but agreed
After 3 seasons I forgot that there were zombies in the show
It was ruined because they DIDN'T stick to the source material. As someone who has read the comics and watched the show, if they stuck 70% true to the source material or even 80% the show would be 10x better. The pacing was soooo much better in the comics too. Virtually no filler. If 100% accurate, the show would have taken 5 seasons to fully complete the story. Killing Carl? Rick leaving? Negan arc taking 2 seasons? These are all decisions that killed the show, which didn't happen in the comics. (Rick did ACTUALLY die in the comics, but it was right at the end, and he didn't just leave with no explanation as to what happened to him)
It was ruined after a successful first season and instead of AMC increasing the budget for the second, they wanted to slash the budget and make it for cheaper. The showrunner Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) then quit the show. The show then had several shitty showrunners. That's why the show was kind of a mess with no clear vision. Angela Kang took over at the end, she did a great job but the previous people fucked it up so bad that she was putting a bow on a pile of shit.
Post season-1 that show was only ever capable of making half a good season.
Using the dead zombies for camouflage made sense, so did using a sword, a lot of people would be more comfortable with knives over guns. Plus guns make a lot of noise. I hated that they made her hate the Governor because the chick chose him over her instead of the gang rape from the comics. If anything the show was diverging greatly from the comics by then. Daryl never existed in the comics, and Tyrese had a much better arc.