5 Reasons It's Time To Let The Walking Dead Die

5. The Festering Corpse of Season 2

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that season 2 of The Walking Dead was the worst season of TV I have ever seen (and that's saying something - I suffered through every single episode of The River). Season 1 was too short to set the world on fire, but it was efficient at introducing us to its world, its rules, its characters and its conflict. After Rick and co. fled from the CDC into a bleak and seemingly hopeless horizon, viewers were left with many lingering questions on which to dwell as they were forced to wait ten agonizing months for answers: Would Andrea decide she ultimately wanted to live or die? At what point would the conflict between Rick and Shane boil over? Was Lori the worst ever? What would an entire season of atrophied circle jerking look like? Apparently confused in the wake of Frank Darabont's firing, the writers focused their efforts on resoundingly answering the last of those questions, camping the protagonists in a farm and keeping them there for five damn months while absolutely nothing happened. Well, it would be unfair for me to say nothing happened - Carl did get shot early in the season and the road to his recovery was paved with the stones of Shane's decent into the show's best villain so far. On top of that, Lori complained about doing laundry, Andrea tried to have sex with everyone that breathed, Dale condescendingly invited himself into everyone's conversations, Sophia disappeared, everyone went looking for Sophia (a lot), nobody ever found Sophia (a lot), Carl never stayed in the house, and Lori got into a car accident just because. Did I miss anything important? Whether it's because the writers were trying to bridge awkwardly from Darabont's original blueprint to the new one Glen Mazzara was trying to implement, or because nobody had any legitimate clue as to what they were doing, season 2 contained about six episodes worth of content but took thirteen episodes to get there discarding progress or logic along the way. Half of "Cherokee Rose" was spent on an ultimately losing battle of trying to get a blaoted walker out of a well. Did the well have any significance in the story moving forward? No, they just needed 20 minutes of runtime to kill. Was there any reason for Lori to go out driving after her husband in "Nebraska," an event that subsequently led to an accident putting her out of commission? No, they just needed a vehicle (pardon the pun) for Shane to reveal to the group (inadvertently) through a later confrontation that Lori was pregnant. Was there a reason Carl NEVER stayed in the damn house? No, they just needed him to conveniently be there when Shane meant to murder Rick. In season 2, logic was completely discarded for the sake of progressing the narrative from Point A to Point B whether it made sense or not. The plot (for lack of a better word) that arose from season 2 did not so organically, but was instead manufactured, a Connect-the-Dots series of episodes that were determined to complete the picture no matter how sloppily drawn it may have been. "Beside the Dying Fire" ultimately saw the group abandon the totally secure farm house in an effort to find a secure place to stay, but the comics demanded that the group get to the prison, so dammit, that's where they were going to go. In the process, some red shirts died despite no one ever being aware of their existence and we're led to believe that that added stakes to the show. Speaking of red shirts...
Contributor
Contributor

I've reached that point in my life where I can comfortably say that if you're not into watching movies, I just really don't want anything to do with you. I'm not saying you need to be able to give me a thesis on gender politics in Michael Haneke films (in fact, if you do, I might punch you in the mouth), but if you've never heard of Groundhog Day, I'm gonna punch you in the mouth. "Kevin Smith is a great filmmaker!" - Guy Getting Punched in the Mouth (By Me)