Great TV Shows With Terrible Storylines

The Walking Dead: Farmville

It’s one thing to have a bad side plot pop in obtrusively when the backbone of a show is still great, but having a terrible narrative core as well is almost unforgivable. Fans and critics of The Walking Dead found the shortcomings of the show’s first season mostly tolerable, considering there was nothing else quite like it on TV, but season two proved just how much more the show depended on its undead cast than its living one.

Shifting the setting away from the zombie-infested streets of Atlanta to a quiet little ranch out of a Andrew Wyeth painting, and then stretching the season arc over thirteen episodes instead of the previous six, slowed the once frenetic pace down to a crawl, and weeks would go by where you forgot you were watching the zombie apocalypse, not Survivor: Rural Georgia. Unsurprisingly, the best episodes took place away from the narrative quicksand that was the farm, where the characters could actually go get something done, instead of just standing around bickering all day.

These daytrips didn’t happen nearly enough though, and the pressure cooker of a pasture brought out the worst in all the characters: Dale become psychic in his paranoia, Carl would wander off whenever convenient, Shane turned into a hairless, mustache twirling villain, and Lori waxed obnoxiously philosophical, when not tied up with being an all-encompassing shrew. Excuses could be made for the arc functioning as a necessary transition from abruptly fired showrunner Frank Darabont to Glen Mazarra – who’s already gotten the show back on track – but that didn’t make the complete destruction of the farm during the season finale any less cathartic.

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