No, seriously. The Walking Dead has become too big to fail, and Gimple’s informational hold is a surefire way to set yet another record when Season 7 premieres. You, a lone viewer, are done with the show’s backstabbing, disrespectful neglect of its audience’s trust? So you’re NOT going to tune in when the show returns in October? Right. No, I really believe you! [Insert wanking motion]
Here I am, twenty hate-tweets later after Sunday night, confessing that my own curiosity is still too strong. I’ll be part of the record-setting premiere, and undeserved new high score, but, either way, the masses will flock, and AMC will boast yet another tremendous personal achievement. The network is ensuring its own success, and we’re all too helpless to say no.
The Walking Dead is no mere show – it’s a cultural phenomenon. This is coming from a long-time reader of the comic series, a zombie lover, a horror fan, and admitted believer in Season 1, but I never understood why America fell so hard into The Walking Dead. And you know what? I don’t think AMC did either.
All AMC knows is that people are still tuning in for torn flesh every Sunday night, on unprecedented levels, and they have to capitalize before the walkers start turning around. Just look at the 90-minute Season 6 finale, where more time was spent watching Chris Hardwick pimp Talking Dead than Rick’s defense of Alexandria.
Of course Gimple couldn’t get around to showing Lucille’s victim – AMC needed crucial air-time to promote their new The Walking Dead fan-art contest! Commercials this, product placement that, and Season 6 ended with an hour-and-a-half finale that could have been wrapped in a third of the time.
The show’s current vision is nothing but fan-service, down to every carefully curated hashtag. I’m not the only one who believes #WhoIsIt is just one large AMC conspiracy, right? There’s some poor intern locked away in the channel’s headquarters, sifting through digital pleas to keep their favorite characters alive (DON’T KILL ABRAHAM, YOU SONS OF BITCHES).
It’s genius, really. Introduce a cataclysmic plot-shifting event, but then leave the details wide-open, so storyboarding can retroactively minimize viewership backlash. Zero commitment with maximum reward – and an absolute lack of sincerity or conviction. In order for fans to invest, a show must believe in its own actions. It’s a shame the fade-to-black represents The Walking Dead slinking away into a shadowy treeline instead of standing its ground, firmly with pride.
So, the moment of truth. Why, after my confession of feeling insultingly slighted by a fake television program, do I keep watching it? “Just turn your TV off, it’s simple.” Well, like I said – this is an addiction. And, like a proper addict, good times are remembered forever, while the bad gets blocked out. An alcoholic doesn’t think of the nights spent puking in a gutter, just like I buried Dale’s astonishingly butchered TV adaptation somewhere never to be unearthed again. A gambler always thinks luck will improve, like how I convince myself The Walking Dead could never be worse than Season 2 (right so far).
As a comic fan, I’m just too damn invested to stop learning how Kirkman strays away from his existing narrative (Denise gets the arrow death, not Abraham), and how our favorite characters are personified (Andrea becomes an older soldier/Eugene becomes an MMO character). Plainly put, like so many other hate-watching fans, I’m just too invested to stop caring now, mainly because it’s not all bad. I swear! It’s not ALL bad, just, every now and then, The Walking Dead reminds us how utterly unimportant we are, only to come back with flowers and chocolates, promising it’ll never do us wrong again.
Then the screen cuts to black, and we’re left waking our neighbors up by screaming the top of our lungs. Sorry internet. Many of us, including myself, are stuck in an extremely abusive relationship with a show we just can’t quit, and you’re going to have to deal with us.
That may not be the answer you want, or the analysis you were expecting, but The Walking Dead isn’t going anywhere. It’s a mediocre show that found success too quickly and too massively, and here’s the result – a passionate audience who demands the best, and suffers through the bad with vocal conviction. It’s our therapy. This is an apology, and admittance, and a deafening cry for help, but there’s no end in sight. Especially with a close to Season 6 that could be the show’s most heinous, crowd-despising act yet.
It’s too late for me. But maybe, JUST maybe, time will heal all wounds if we let it… *Starts analyzing Negan’s final scene for the fifteenth time today*
