I have noticed a real aversion in myself to start watching any long-running show because I know the writers are going to run out of plots or the producers are going to interfere or whatever*. And I feel this way about the Walking Dead.
Late to the party as I always am, I’ve started watching this. But I’ve only watched about a half a dozen episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s an amazing show.
But I just know, in the deepest of my soul, that at some point it’s going to start sucking, and the characters I’m just beginning to like, I’m going to hate. Someone’s going to whine all the time. Someone’s going to do something stupid. Someone will want to save someone they shouldn’t.
Can anyone reassure me? Or maybe give me a set point to watch until and then stop watching? Maybe “just watch seasons 1 and 2 and then stop”.
Please?
*In some ways shows that have been cancelled, like Firefly, have some advantages. They are forever crystallized when they were still good. They never had a chance to get bad, and guaranteed they would. I also prefer shows that have a finite ending, like Fringe. I don’t know why we think shows should go on forever.
I don’t watch this specific show, but yeah it’s a real risk for shows that go on for a number of years. Some have done well (e.g. Breaking Bad or the Sopranos). It must take discipline to end the thing you love while it is still going strong and earning money.
I’m quite fond of the anthology shows I’ve seen recently (e.g. Fargo or True Detective), where each season is a self contained story with its own characters and setting. It contains the damage if things go bad. In my opinion this happened with True Detective, where the second season was much weaker than the first. But the weakness didn’t bleed into the first season, where characters you appreciated weren’t tainted by future silly behavior or bad writing or my inability to suspend my disbelief.
Also a season of around ten episodes is a perfect length for a story too complex to fit into a 90 minute film, and allows for planning interesting arcs from the beginning without resorting to making stuff up just to keep it going.
As with any long(ish) running drama there will be ups and downs as the writers try to create on-going drama to keep the story going. Sometimes it is really forced drama and it hurts the show. TWD is one of those weird shows where if you want to find forced drama it is certainly there as the seasons go on. The real bitch is that then TWD will turn around and do an episode, or series of episodes, that are so damn good it keeps you watching in spite of the stupid shit the writers do that drives you nuts.
Season 1 is fantastic, in my mind the best season of them all.
Season 2 starts to drag a bit at the farm but the mid-season and season finale deliver some incredibly memorable moments that makes it worth while.
Season 3 introduces some new characters that become fairly central to the story over the next few seasons and our first real “bad guy”.
Season 4 was my least favorite season. Too many new characters which had no depth to them.
Season 5 seemed to me to be kind-of all over the place. Lots of locations, plot directions, etc. Not to say it was bad per-se as there are definitely some very significant developments and moments that hit you in the chest. But it also seemed like a bunch of mini-plot lines going all over the place without a cohesive story to tell. The season got the characters from Point-A to Point-D with some good bits here and there. Point-D being the central location for the next two seasons
Season 6 & 7 - To me the introduction of a lot of characters over the last couple season who do not have much depth to them really starts to hurt the show. As less of the “original” characters are around and more of the new ones who are not as well fleshed out it became less interesting to me. I could care less of Black Guy #7 got killed because we only knew him as Black Guy #7. That said, the show gets set in a new location that changes a lot of things for the main characters.
I think the first two seasons really do a great job in setting the world of the show and introducing some very strongly developed characters. It also does a very good job in created some very interesting moral dilemmas to discuss/think about. (Hello, Shane debate anyone?) The weaker newer characters later in the show are what has hurt the show more than anything in my opinion.
IMO The Walking Dead does go through what you are talking about but it comes out the other side. I really like the last two seasons. Yeah there were problems but overall I’m very glad I stuck with it.
Since you can power watch through them and not have to wait for the next show I’d definitely say stay with it.
I found that after the fourth season, the show became more repetitive and, thus, boring. From that point to present, it seems there have been two or three good episodes per season, occasionally even great, but not worth the time investment. The only reason that I continue to watch is because my wife still enjoys it.
Part of my problem is I don’t like a lot of the shows everyone else liked. I hated Breaking bad for example. Why would I want to watch a show about some stupid middle aged white guy doing stupid shit and wrecking his whole life, and everyone else’s around him? I watched about four episodes and couldn’t stand it. But I understand I am distinctly in the minority here. I also know that’s ok - I don’t have to watch a show just because everyone else liked it!
That being said, Breaking Bad had a story and a finite end to it. That’s the best kind of show. I should go away wanting more, not tired of the characters and their misery. Supernatural, I’m looking at you.
But I agree, 22-24 episodes are way too much for a show. Then you have stupid filler episodes. Ten episodes, maybe 15 at the most.
I will try to watch TWD for about 3-4 seasons. I doubt I will get much past that. But thank you all for the reassurance!
I binged the first couple seasons or so. That was nice. You don’t have to wait for cliffhangers to be resolved. I let this whole last season pile up and then binged again.
The show really hasn’t changed much. It’s about as entertaining as it always was. It hasn’t jumped the shark or anything. Every season they try to make the big bad even bigger and badder than the last season. I suppose eventually they’ll run out of ways to come up with something even badder and scarier, but so far it hasn’t reached that point.
Without referencing TWD specifically, TV has never gotten the concept of “always leave them wanting more”. The best ideas for series become wildly popular, then become bad as they run out of creative steam.
The only show I can think of that got better in it’s final year was ST:Enterprise and there’s reasons for that.
I never even got past the very first episode of Lost. When I saw all of the men efficiently doing things, helping, rescuing people, and the women reduced to screaming banshees, I knew it wasn’t the show for me. That was, like, in the first fifteen minutes! First impressions are everything!
You seem to have very specific tastes, so I am not sure recommendations mean much. That said, TWD has, throughout its run, been entertaining at the very least. The areas where there has been a decent amount of variance is with plausibility, realism, and character depth. You will be annoyed by the stupidity of the characters and the repetitiveness of some things, but most of that is balanced by good things. Especially since you don’t have to wait weeks or months between episodes, I think the show is worth watching.
TWD doesn’t just decline over time, the quality/enjoyability seesaws from one season (or episode) to the next. If you’re in a bad spot, the good news is that it will get better in a little bit… if you’re in a good spot, the bad news is that it will get worse in a little bit. I watched it consistently until the Governor arrived. Now I catch an episode here and there. Sometimes there’s a payoff and I want to keep watching and other times I change the channel and find something else.
Personally, I enjoyed the first 3 seasons the most. Seasons 4-5 started feeling like more of the same, but the plot tension was enough to pull me along. I gave up in Season 6 when it felt like more of “our heroes meet some new people in a new place… will it be good, bad, or complicated?”
And the nonstop herds of zombies with all the gore. I realize it’s a zombie show, but it just gets so tiresome to see a skull get skewered every 2 minutes.
I’ve posted many times how much the sheer stupidity of the survivors (yes, I know, it’s the writers who are to blame) makes the show almost unwatchable for me. As does the notion that a two week Zombie Apocalypse with something below 1% survival somehow depleted all the world’s resources, so that every shitbox Kia and rusting deer rifle is an irreplaceable treasure. So… stories and drama and all, the show pretty much went bad from the start. IMHO.
That said, there’s only one ending. Our Heroes have to die one by one is some protracted and cataclysmic battle, along with the bad-guy humans. When the last two do each other in, pan back and up and show the millions upon millions of walkers still shambling around. Smash to black.
I only watched the first season. It seemed excellent. They were doing a good job with the characters, with the world, with everything, and suddenly the last one or two episodes hit and everything switched from figuring out how to survive the zombie apocalypse to extreme soap opera and the world’s dumbest reveal on the medicine of the zombie plague.
If, as some have said, it returns to quality from season 3, I’d be interested in continuing (if anyone wants to give me a rundown on what I would need to know from S2). But I ran away quickly after the S1 finale.
