Once upon a time, there was a groundbreaking AMC show called The Walking Dead, which did what no media property in the zombie genre had done before. It gave viewers an intimate look at the breaking pieces of its characters’ lives and let them live long enough for viewers to watch it all fall apart. As the journey of TWD‘s merry band of misfits carried on looking for clusters of hope wherever they were to be had, we watched families come together only to be torn apart by the circumstances dealt them, and all was good.

For a season or two I watched, spellbound as Rick, Shane, Lori, Carl, Andrea, Dale, Glenn (Yes I am going to name them all, you can skip along to the next sentence if you’d like), Daryl, Carol, Sophia, T-Dog, Maggie, Hershel, and all the rest of the crew running from the Zed-Zoo (Okay, too many even for me, I gave up) held together a weak alliance, feigning ignorance towards the truth and pretending that salvation was to be found just one step further than they’d already gone. The merry band would find a pocket of safety, then cling to it and the illusion of normalcy it provided until the truth could no longer be denied, then they would simply wash, rinse, and repeat.

Toward the end of the first season, this pattern had already started to wear thin, however, TWD also kept viewers in suspense by knocking off semi-important characters every so often. Unfortunately for me, this veneer was too thin, and by the end of the second season, I lost interest in the show.

So here is my biggest issue with The Walking Dead, which lead me to walk away from the show: the core characters are too safe.

Isn’t she just the sweetest thing?

For me, everything wrong with TWD stems from this problem. The central characters are often in danger, but not life-threatening danger. Sure, the peripheral characters are certainly not safe from a gruesome ending, but it seems to me that the worst of the chaos never really reaches the core crew.

To be clear, I believe that the core characters of this story are Rick and Carl and that the story is ultimately one of how a father and son face the end of the world. Other characters like Daryl, Glenn, Shane, Lori, and Andrea are also fairly central to the story but only insofar as they serve a purpose for Rick and Carl. As such, it is sad but not unimaginable for them to die once they serve their purpose. AMC seems to be banking on the loss of these characters to distract viewers from the fact that Rick and Carl essentially remain untouched, in the eye of a violent storm.

Now, while they have both lost significant people in Lori and Shane, Rick and Carl are still essentially free to continue doing what they have done consistently since the start of the show: be horrible people. Finding his nuclear unit intact, Rick was free to assert his dominance with confidence and assume the alpha role. Shane was no longer a brother, colleague, or friend; he was a threat to Rick’s dominance and had to go. Carl, on the other hand, should have learned to be a strong-willed kid, but missed that memo and took all of Shane’s (admittedly abhorrent) mentoring as a sign that he ought to become somewhat of a recalcitrant meat head. To top it all off, since his real father returned he had no need for the substitute and so again, Shane had to go. Lori was also a source of division and it is made abundantly clear that Carl has no need of a mother figure, so she’s clearly disposable. Hell, he even did the job himself, what more is needed to prove that point?

Welcome to the Ricktatorship, Bro – Now get the f-*BEEPS*-k out!

Neither of these characters truly express remorse for their actions nor regret over their losses. Even Hershel was so moved by the loss of his loved ones that he kept them locked away instead of killing them once they became zombies – displaying genuine emotion. Rick and Carl are emotionally disconnected from their experience and therefore cannot grow stronger.

Perhaps TWD should look towards other shows for inspiration – Dexter being one, and AMC’s own Breaking Bad, another. In these shows, they kill truly important people, whose loss has significant effects on the central characters and the direction of the story itself. They change the game up, which TWD does in a sense, but I feel that Walt, Jesse, and Dexter are forced to evolve, abandon their principles, and grow as humans, for better or worse, learning more about themselves along the way. Rick and Carl, on the other hand, just keep walking in place. Where Dexter and Breaking Bad transform their scumbags into likable filth, TWD just leaves their scumbags as unredeemable scumbags.

Finally, in what I find to be an affront to the zombie-horror genre in general, TWD just won’t end. One of the greatest parts of  zombie art is that almost everyone dies at the end. It’s absurdist, unexplained death, with no escape. It ties into our deepest fears as humans about the breakdown of the social contract and our inability to control the will of others. Excepting a handful of modern hybrid zombie films that parody the genre, the common point is that all hope is gone. Rick and Carl have been around for too long, and really, they just need to die, or I’m not going to be satisfied.

You two schmucks really need to die, now.

In fact, out of every character on TWD, the only one who really deserves to survive is Glenn. Because I like him, so what. Not even Maggie should make it. No Daryl either, although he’s a pretty good guy, so I’d say he should be the last one to die, and do so protecting Glenn. Even then, Glenn, bearing the pain of losing everyone that mattered to him should be unstable, and it should be unclear as to whether he will choose to live on or kill himself. Or if he’ll even survive the ever worsening zombie onslaught.

So let’s just go back in time a bit, and pretend that nothing after the first half of season three happened. Here’s how The Walking Dead should have crescendoed :

After losing his best friend and his wife, both of whom having been eventually shot by Carl, Rick realizes that in this new world his son is swiftly becoming a monster, and he begins to unravel at the thought of losing the last vestige of his old life. Perhaps Carl even goes ahead and kills his little sister, Judith, believing that her weakness and vulnerability was too much of a liability for them. This final act proves to be the catalyst that hastens their mutual demise.

Don’t- push – us, ‘cuz – we’re – close – to – the – edge —

While traveling to their next safe zone, walking through the woods, or perhaps along a road, Rick begins to have visions; hallucinations of the monster inside of Carl and what he might do. He sees Carl shoot people in cold blood, become increasingly violent, unstable, and uncontrollable, and all but lose his sense of morality. Rick’s visions continue to intensify until he can no longer tell the difference between the images in his head and reality. Even though Carl hasn’t yet become as bad as the Carl he envisions, Rick is convinced that eventually his son will become that Carl. Suddenly, without warning, he pulls out that huge Colt Python and *BLAM* plants a bullet in the back of Carl’s head then watches him drop to the floor. Cradling him as he dies, crying and murmuring, Rick utters, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry..He made me do it…I’m so sorry, Why did you make me do it?! I’m Sorry…” the entire time.  

Maybe for Rick, the guilt of losing his family is too much, and he puts a bullet into his own head to join them someplace ‘better’ or maybe, one of their companions views Rick’s loss of touch with reality and subsequent actions as a threat to the group and shoots him down out of an abundance of cowardice and caution. No one is spared in this world, and nothing makes sense.

Bam! The camera drops to the ground next to the lifeless bodies of Rick and Carl, and through it, we see the remainder of the group walk off, continuing on to their next point of false salvation, future corpses just floating about in the machinations of an absurdist system (or lack thereof). Fade to black, show over, hooray, job well done!

Now that, folks, would be good television. That is how zombie fare should be done. 

-Namakemono