The Walking Dead vs…. Me
Hey, here’s a funny one for you. It’s Monday morning, the day after the next-to-last episode of the second season of The Walking Dead aired on AMC, and I’m writing something about the show without having seen that episode. If you’re reading this AND you saw the show last night, you might have one on me - below, I’m gonna promise to watch at least the last two episode of this season, and you’ll know even before I do what my reaction’s gonna be. So read on and enjoy your little taste of foreknowledge.
The television adaptation of The Walking Dead has bothered me ever since the end of the 5th episode of season one, when the group of survivors went into Atlanta and walked into the CDC. At first, I thought my problems with the show extended from the fact that the show’s producers were deviating wildly from the plot of the comic book series, of which I’ve been a fan for maybe seven years. As the CDC story arc panned out and the season came to an end, I was a little irritated that Shane was still alive and that they’d gone into Atlanta as a group - two things that simply didn’t happen in the comic. You can see some of my thoughts on these topics in this review.
That said, I still found the show interesting, the characters compelling. And I trusted Bob Kirkman enough to wait him out. Even the comic goes through rough spots, but he always leaves me both devastated and satisfied.
By the time the second season started, I’d forgiven the deviation from the original. One thing I DON’T like is hater fan boys who turn their emo faux-intellectual noses up on anything that claims to draw from a source material they’re already familiar with, even if the adaptation is good. And… since I don’t care much for people like that, it concerned me that I was thinking in those terms.
Ordinarily, I don’t: I LIKED Zach Snyder’s Watchmen movie, even if it wasn’t as earth-shattering as Alan Moore’s original comic. As much as I like Philip K. Dick, I think the movie Blade Runner is waaaaay better than Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Also, as the Walking Dead survivors came across Hershel’s farm, with Shane somehow alive and no sign of the awesome comic book character of Tyrese ever showing up, I was still starting to become intrigued with the conflict Shane’s presence was creating. I started thinking, “You know, this is interesting. This is something that must have occurred to Kirkman AFTER he killed Shane off in the original. He’s exploring a ‘what if’ that he can never go back to in the comic, and he and the show’s producers and writers are doing a great job of it. This is pretty good, if not great, television.”
So I watched. I forgave some hambone, asinine scenes like “Glenn in the Well” and “Andrea’s Crotch Grab” and “Only Otis Knew Who Exactly Was in the Barn.” And the tension between Shane and Rick grew - exacerbated in good measure with Dale’s distrust of Shane and Hershel’s misguided authority over them all.
Now I’m 11 episodes in, and I grow weary, and I’m wondering why I’m increasingly less enamored by such a critically-acclaimed, highly regarded series. I went to Facebook last night, and there was a scatter-shot of “Holy crap!” and “That was intense!” and “OmiGod!” from my Facebook friends regarding the episode which had just aired. I’m sad, because I haven’t felt very excited by the show for the last three episodes.
Before writing this, I sat down for a while and tried to figure out why, and I think I’ve got it.
It has nothing to do with the deviation from the original, although the deviation DOES contribute to what IS wrong. It has nothing to do with the occasionally shoddy writing. (What was up with that scene between Carl and the stuck zombie last week? Carl’s not stupid, and they’ve been teaching him how to hold a gun.)
Very simply, it’s this: with only two ironic exceptions, I don’t LIKE any of the characters very much. And in a character drama - which is what The Walking Dead essentially is - that’s a problem.
Specifically, I think they’re all coming across as weak, or if they ARE strong, as douchebags. I KNOW I’m not supposed to like Shane, but I’m tired of not liking him - I want his soulless evil to come to a head, please. And I want him to die when it does.
Trouble is, I also think Carl’s a bit of a douchbag, too. As is Andrea, and in a weird sort of way, Carol.
On the flipside, there are the weak characters. Lori Grimes is little more than wasted space. Maggie’s fun to look at, but she hasn’t done much beside give Glenn grief. Hershel’s other family are non-entities whom I assure you will eventually get killed. As for Glenn and Hershel, well, think about it: Glenn was the brave go-to guy when they needed runs into Atlanta, but he’s freaked out by runs into the sleepy town near Hershel’s farm? Three episodes ago, Hershel was a patriarch of strong convictions and resolve, but now he’s deferring to Rick and soaking his sorrows in booze? Really?
And Dale. Well, Dale’s a whiny bitch, and if he were really concerned about Shane’s evil, he would have put a bullet into Shane’s chest and been done with it. Except he’s a whiny bitch and couldn’t.
And finally, there’s Rick. For those of you who haven’t been with Bob Kirkman and his character of Rick Grimes for seven years, let me tell you - the conflicts Rick feels WITHIN himself are essential to what makes The Walking Dead comic book work, and some combination of Andrew Lincoln’s inability to convey those conflicts effectively as an actor, as well as the hit or miss material he’s been given to work with, leaves something to be desired.
In fact, all of the acting, though initially powerful, has become - in a word - tedious. You could make a drinking game out of it. You have to drink every time Rick looks off into the distance as if considering something important. Drink every time Shane turns his head away in that certain manner he uses and says something despicably profound. Drink every time Carol tears up. Drink every time Glenn gets that hang-dog look on his face. Drink every time Andrea does something with a pistol besides shoot it. Drink every time Dale flares his hairy-ass nostrils and starts to pontificate.
The only characters I’m not tired of are T-Dog and Daryl. And here’s some irony (or IronE if you know what I mean): they aren’t even characters in the comic series. They’re new. They’re deviations. And I still like them.
Which brings me to part of WHY I think my displeasure in the show is stronger than other people’s, and why people who haven’t read the comic might not feel the growing disdain I feel with the TV show personas. You see, in the comic book, I LOVE these characters. I’ve already said that Rick’s internal conflicts drive the book. It’s powerful stuff, and I don’t think it’s as evident in the show.
Additionally, there are things going on with Carl in the comics which would blow your mind - and they’re only hinted at in the show. Andrea is a BADASS without being such a bitch. Dale is still a conscientious guy, but he has a backbone and a heart of gold that makes you love him. Glenn is essentially the Glenn of the first season, without all the worry. He’s also funny.
And Shane is dead.
I’ve decided that I’m going to watch the last two episodes of this season despite my misgivings, and I’ll keep watching next season if these last two episodes can convince me to like even ONE of the characters I don’t like now (or at least kills a few of them). Like I said, you might already know if this is the case or not, based on last night.
I’ll probably watch that episode either tonight or tomorrow, and I’ll let you know.
Three Tales of Terror for Halloween
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
For the uninitiated, that’s a quote from the beginning of Night of the Living Dead. But I’m not talking about zombies coming to get you, or coming to get Barbara either. I’m gonna let Robert Kirkman and Max Brooks bring the zombies to the masses for the time being.
What’s coming from me to get you is three scary stories, soon to be available on your closest haunted Kindle, Nook, iPad, or computer. They have a few things in common - like the simple fact that they’re all horror stories - but otherwise they’re all very different. I announced them a few weeks ago, in the hopes that the finished products would be available by Halloween, and, well, I’m on track. Unless something unexpected like a zombie holocaust occurs between now and then, I’ll be able to tell you next Monday to go get them.
Just as with The Giant/The Littlest Goblin package I got published last May, they’re only .99 cents and only available as an eBook. This time, though, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck: there’s THREE stories, and they’re generally longer than the first two.
Without revealing too much, here’s a little bit about each of the new stories.
The One That Got Away is a bit of horror/comedy - something along the lines of Stephen King’s first Creepshow or Tales from the Crypt. I got the idea several years ago when I heard that a girl I’d hooked up with a couple of times in college had died really young from some rare and vicious cancer. I know, I know - that’s not funny - and neither is the ultimate ending of the story. But as I wrote the initial scenes (which coincidentally take place in my favorite bar The East Point Corner Tavern), I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. The main character, Evan, and his best bud, Stan… well, they’re a couple of idiots. You gotta love them, but it’s hard not to chuckle at their alcohol-fueled antics.
I’ve mentioned The Thrall of Fate before. It’s an ode I wrote in 2009 to commemorate the birthday of one of my literary heroes - Edgar Allan Poe. Poe himself is the main character of the story - but he’s a very different Edgar Allan than the one who died in a gutter in 1849 of some strange and terrifying malady. I had to take some liberty with the details of Poe’s early life, so consider this an alternate history piece, with a twist and a finale I sincerely hope Poe himself would approve of.
I wrote Killing The Messenger with the sole intention of creating a monster from an unexpected source. And I don’t mean like the shit monster Kevin Smith created in Dogma or the meat monster from David Wong’s John Dies at The End.
You know, though, as I think about it, Messenger actually has TWO antagonists - one the monster I created, and the other, an amorphous, mysterious other. This other entity is responsible for doing what the title suggests, over an over again. But the visceral effect of my “monster” may be the thing you’re more likely to take away from the story. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Anyway, Killing The Messenger was also partially inspired by the lyrics to a strange song by a musician named Jude, who had a few small hits back in the 90s. On his album No One Is Really Beautiful, there’s this song called ‘George’, and the beginning goes like this:
“George died in the fifth grade/no one ever knew why
He was out selling lemonade/on the Fourth of July, and he died
Sister Claire said that he was/an angel on Earth/She stood there and she told us
She had clearly rehearsed/Every verse/Of the lies that tie you down”
That’s it. I’ll leave you with that. That ought to keep you until Monday, I think.
On Monday, they’re coming to get you.
Two Zombie Tales: One Really Good, One GREAT
I hope I don’t pidgeonhole myself into being a “zombie book” reviewer, although that seems to be the kind of book nowadays that makes me want to sit down and TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT. Take my negative review of this insipid little (best-selling) nugget here for instance. It just seems that, although I read everything from sci fi to the Booker Short List, from George R.R. Martin to Herman Melville, I only want to share tales of unholy mobs of flesh-eating terror with you.
Oh, what the hell. I can think of worse things to get pidgeonholed for. And the two books I’m about to tell you about absolutely deserve the attention I’m giving them - they deserve, in fact, far more attention than the book I mentioned above.
First, there’s Bob Fingerman’s post-apocalytic horror-comedy, Pariah. Set in the months immediately following the annihilation of New York City by the undead, Pariah follows a group of survivors who’ve holed up in an Upper East Side apartment complex. They’ve been there for months, unable to get to the grocery store that’s just across York Avenue, because of the hordes of zombies which tenaciously swarm the streets below them. They’re simultaneously starving to death and going just a little crazy, until a woman named Mona walks up - literally walks up - with the zombies recoiling away from her in utter disgust. That’s right - there’s something that disgusts even zombies, and Mona’s it.
Fingerman’s story uses a number of zombie conventions, but rather than seeming redundant - a rehash of familiar zombie tales - it comes across as fresh and evocative. It takes talent and a true passion for the zombie genre to get a story as familar as this one right, and Fingerman nails it. Pariah is dark, violent, sometimes disturbing, and often hilarious - a well-told survival narrative that’s worth checking out.
It’s the “Really Good” from the title of this post.
John Adjivde Lindqvist’s Handling The Undead is the “GREAT” from the title of this post.
You probably know Lindqvist’s work already - he’s the writer of both the novel and the screenplay Let The Right One In, a Swedish vampire film remade adequately enough in America as Let Me In. If you haven’t seen the Swedish version of the film, look for it - especially if you can find the subtitled version (the English-language dubbing kind of detracts from the original Swedish).
What Lindqvist did for vampires, he now does for zombies, although it’s quite possible that his unconventional take on the zombie genre might be even more original than his spin on the vampire legend.
Here’s what I can give you of Handling The Undead’s plot.
In Stockholm, something strange and awful is happening: electrical appliances won’t turn off and everybody’s got a splitting headache. Then, suddenly, it stops. Everything’s normal. Except that the recently dead - those who’ve died in the past two months or so - have all come back to life. The incident is limited to just Stockholm, and the undead only number about 1200 people, and that’s all I think I can comfortably tell you, because not knowing what’s going on is a driving force behind the power of the novel. There’s a mystery here that you, as the reader, must uncover.
Here’s what I will tell you: Rarely do books affect me the way Handling The Undead did, and certainly no book in the horror genre. The moment I read the last page, though, I closed my eyes and began bawling like baby in need of a diaper change. I couldn’t stop for several long, uncomfortable, yet cathartic minutes.
There will be those who no doubt won’t be as affected as I was because of their beliefs. Atheists will have to accept certain theological premises, and if they can’t, they won’t get it. Ironically, neither will some religious adherents, who’ll have to accept a certain “looseness” in their dogma regarding exactly what happens after someone dies.
But for those of us who believe there just might be something “after” and also accept that we can’t genuinely know exactly what that something is, Handling The Undead can be transforming.
And as a parent, even more so. I was a wreck for days after I finished it. All I wanted to do was be with my children.
That’s a horror novel, everyone, that made me feel that way.
Specifically, a zombie novel.
Zombies Attack My Pride and Exacerbate My Prejudice
Toot toot toot my own horn: I’m fairly well read. Not as well read as a lot of people, and certainly not as well read as I’d like to be, but pretty well read. Somehow, though, I’ve never managed to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I read Sense and Sensibility and even Northanger Abbey in college, but somehow missed out on what many claim is Austen’s masterpiece of class relations, romance, and wit.
Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) changed all that. Thanks to that particular best-selling piece of complete crap, I have finally read a book which I should have read a long, long time ago.
I also thank my friend Matt Link, who said he was going to read both books simultaneously - an idea which I promptly copied, rushing out to the bookstore to buy the classic novel as well as the supposedly zombie-infested parody/update. For the last couple of months, I’ve lain in bed at night and read a couple of chapters at a time of Austen’s classic, followed by the corresponding chapters of the zombie version. Yes, it was slow-going: I’m not a slow reader, but slogging through both books (while also reading Bill Willingham’s Fables AND War and Peace) was a bit of a chore - and not because of Austen’s book.
You see, Jane Austen penned a book which more than deserves its revered status as a literary classic - the book transcends time to deliver character-driven humor and romance in a way that those of us writing today would be hard-pressed to emulate and repeat. When you think about it, characters like Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy, Lydia Bennet, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, William Collins, and Lady Catherine have become archetypes that we all know and anticipate in every comedy and romance we see or read in this modern era. Their situations have become universal. Their circumstances are immediately recognizable and fascinating at the same time. And the book they come from is almost 200 years old!
In contrast, Seth Grahame-Smith’s book came from an idea that Grahame-Smith himself didn’t even HAVE. Instead, the concept of doing a mash-up of zombie horror and a classic book in the public domain came from Quirk Books’s editor Jason Rekulak, who called up Grahame-Smith one day, told him the idea, and then left him to run with it.
Now, it is never my policy to say that so and so sucks as a writer (except for Dan Brown, who does indeed suck as a writer), so I looked into some of Grahame-Smith’s previous works to see if there was anything notably bad there, and there really isn’t. Grahame-Smith is a good writer, in fact, who got presented with an interesting but daunting project and handled it… adequately.
But handling something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies only adequately means that he fell short of achieving something I really wished he’d have achieved - the book jacket claims that he transformed “a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.”
Not even close.
Naturally, as both a writer and a fan of zombie horror, I can’t just make that claim without substantiating it by telling you what I would have done differently - which is to say, here are the places where I feel Grahame-Smith failed.
First of all, he stuck too closely to the original. I don’t know where in the process he decided to hold back and let the original’s plot remain mostly intact, and I’ll grant that anyone would be walking a fine edge by letting too much of his own voice and style leak into the story - approaching it that way would mean a lot more work, and if you went too far, you could lose just enough of the original that it would cease to be the intended parody and instead become an animal all its own. But there are sooo many places where Grahame-Smith could have cut loose and just had fun with the horror, devastation, and violence of an 18th century zombie holocaust, and he just… didn’t. The problem is pretty basic, actually: you have a comedy about provincial British manners and a tale about a zombie infestation, and in the hands of Grahame-Smith, the two simply didn’t mix. Could someone else have done a better job? Perhaps.
The sheer language of the older book felt like a weight whenever Grahame-Smith inserted his deviations into the plot. For instance, there’s a passage late in the novel where two main characters have duel - in the original they “sparred” with words; in this version, they use swords and ninja kicks (more on this in a minute), and the whole scene, which should have been filled with hair-raising, high energy action, just wasn’t, because Grahame-Smith wrote the whole thing in passive voice. You just can’t write an action scene in passive voice and succeed. Austen herself didn’t really fall into the passive in the original - not much - but it’s easy for someone who’s trying to imitate “old” prose to slip into writing that way and think it’s okay.
Most importantly for me, though, and I’ve read other critics of the book who have said just about the same thing: if Grahame-Smith is a true fan of zombie fiction and zombie movies, it isn’t evident here. Man, I was wanting mayhem: guts spilled all over the place, decapitations, lumbering hordes of the undead surrounding people in their houses and bringing all holy hell down on those chumps living in the British countryside. Unfortunately, save for a few choice scenes, this doesn’t really happen. Grahame-Smith so modestly interspersed the “zombie” bits throughout the book that, for someone like me who gobbles this stuff up like candy, he might as well have not even bothered.
What he did insert a WHOLE LOT OF was a bunch of ninja/Asian martial artist bullshit. Elizabeth Bennet is not just a headstrong, stubborn girl - she’s a kung fu master and a vicious killer. Darcy isn’t just a reticent, dour elitist - he’s a crack shot and an expert swordsman. On pretty much every page, there’s some reference to martial arts. In fact, so many of the characters are so proficient in “the arts” that there’s little fear of any of them getting devoured by zombies - the zombies don’t stand a chance. And THAT, my friends, is the largest single failing of this book. There’s no tension in regard to the zombie outbreaks and attacks. They’re incidental to the plot and quickly passed over. The ninja stuff, however, is everywhere. Annoyingly so: the name of the book ISN’T Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Ninjas.
The thing that truly amazes me about this book is this: it turned out to be such a huge seller that now there’s a movie deal for it and a whole bunch of follow-ups and prequels planned. Still, I guess that’s not SO surprising, consider the state of Hollywood, the insanity of the bestseller market, and the low standards of mainstream America. Let me be one to tell you, though: the classic novel Pride and Prejudice deserves every accolade ever given to it, and I’m grateful to the updated parody for enticing me to read the original.
As for the new book: Don’t believe the hype.
The Zombies of South Beach
The Zombies of South Beach
What I’m Thinking About, 2nd Edition
My previous “thought process” post went over so well, you know there had to be a follow-up. Here are some more random thoughts that have occurred to me since the last post. This time, not only am I sober, but it’s 6:30 in the morning and I woke up thinking about this.
- Does anyone else hear a frightening similarity between North Korea’s current “diplomatic” posturings and Nikita Kruschev’s “bury you” rants?
- We need less gun control because how else will the common man defend himself against a zombie holocaust….
- Text message I saw recently: fuckin A dude. Now, should there be a comma or not? Ah, the power of proper punctuation.
- I don’t and never have liked Tom and Jerry cartoons. They’re sadistic and mean-spirited without being clever. On the other hand, I think sadism and mean-spiritedness can be okay as long as you’re clever.
- You can skip class because of a hangover. You can call in sick to work if it’s too, too bad. But when your kids want breakfast, by God, you better get your hung-over ass up and make waffles.
- It takes a certain amount of arrogance to point out how arrogant someone is.
- Henry Louis, Bill, and Defense Secretary Robert: Just six more Gates to go!
- Every religious person should have a crisis of faith. If your faith survives, I can guarantee it’ll be stronger.
- A zombie holocaust could never happen, unless it took place in a nation of complacent, self-involved, lazy whiners.
- I think I’m sometimes vulgar because my parents always told me that vulgarity was indicative of stupidity, and I’m trying to prove them wrong. Is it working? Well, fuck it.
- I spent a lot of money on my lawn so I wouldn’t have to spend so much on toys.
- If you’re a writer, then I recommend the movie Adaptation. A critic once said it was “Too smart to ignore but a little too smugly superior to like….” I think he missed the point.
- With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Digg and the like, mailing lists are becoming less important. So saying “please take me off your mailing list” just doesn’t pack the punch it used to.
- Michael Jackson isn’t dead. Neither are Elvis and John Lennon.
- Why does War and Peace have to be so LONG?
Walking Dead vs. Game of Thrones
The past year was a perpetual hard-on for me as far as potential TV shows were concerned.
I’ve been reading Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s Walking Dead comic since some issue in the mid 30s - in other words, for about five or six years. I played catch-up reading the trade paperbacks, and being the collector I am, I’ve started seeking out and scooping up all the back issues I missed.
I’ve also been reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series for just about as long, impressed with the power of his “low fantasy” vision, the intricacies of the enormous plot, the depth and development of the characters. Plus, all the sex and violence are cool.
Imagine how giddy I was then, knowing that BOTH of these incredible stories would be adapted to the small screen, the first on AMC and the second on HBO - two networks that have blown me away in the past with original series which were NOT, in fact, adapted from material that I was already familiar with and in love with. Can you say Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and Breaking Bad?
Well, the first season of both have come and gone, and now the second season of Walking Dead looms before us. I am absolutely thrilled that Walking Dead starts again on Sunday, and you can bet I’ll be parked in front of the television with a beer in hand, ready to get my zombie scare on.
But I have to admit - Walking Dead has disappointed me. And if a certain thing doesn’t happen within the first couple of episodes of this season, AMC and the producers of the Walking Dead may lose me for a while, until they get back on track. Kirkman and Adlard won’t lose me buying the genius comic book, but, well, I’m a stickler for at least TRYING to stick to the source material, and in that regard, Game of Thrones gets an A- and Walking Dead gets a big, fat D.
SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON.
Now, I understand the difficulties in adapting a large work to the screen. In work that’s worthy of adaptation, there’s bound to be a lot of details that don’t translate well, or distract from the gist of what’s going on, or are so elaborate that they’re practically unfilmable. There are parts of The Greatest Adaptation Of All Time, AKA The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which were changed or left out altogether. Glorfindel and Arwen are NOT interchangeable. And who’s Tom Bombadil? Oh. Yeah. Him. As another example, think about how many decades of comic books Marvel and Walt Disney have truncated into roughly seven films as they adapt The Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor to the big screen.
HBO’s Game of Thrones did that… a little. But if you read the book from which the television series came, you’ll agree with me - not a whole lot was left out.
Walking Dead didn’t leave out a lot either. What they did, though, was even more egregious. You leave stuff out because it’s difficult to adapt. But why would you ADD stuff?
I know, I know - maybe they needed to flesh out a few things. In fact, Kirkman vowed while writing Walking Dead that he would never use the old comic book devices of the “thought balloon” and the “caption.” So whenever there’s a need for exposition, he does it through Adlard’s expressive art or through dialogue. Perhaps to get certain points across, the writers and producers of Walking Dead felt the need to “stretch things out”. And I’m okay with that to certain extent.
But the characters of T-Dog, Daryl, Jacqui, and Merle were unnecessary and superfluous. And the whole triangle between T-Dog, Daryl, and Merle just seemed so contrived to me - was it a commentary on race and racism, perhaps? I don’t know. It bothered me. It wasn’t in the comic book - THEY weren’t in the comic book, and I didn’t see the need for them in the TV show. Even so, I’m willing to forgive even that - it might have been bothersome and unnecessary, but there were some great moments in that particular story arc, however extraneous. And I’m still left wondering where the hell Merle is.
Go one step further and there’s the fourth episode, Vatos, in which the survivors encounter another group of survivors who are holed up in a nursing home in Atlanta. I can forgive THAT episode as well, chiefly because Kirkman himself wrote it - and he did promise there would be some nice surprises for those of us who “knew everything” already.
More unforgiveable was the last episode of season one - something that series developer Frank Darabont and the writers seemed to just pull out of their collective asses. You see, the comic book is approaching issue 90 as we speak, AND ROBERT KIRKMAN STILL HAS NOT GIVEN US EVEN THE SLIGHTEST CLUE AS TO WHAT CAUSED THE ZOMBIE OUTBREAK. We don’t know if it’s viral, if it’s manmade, if it’s Biblical.
And granted, in the television show, we don’t know any of that either. The difference is that in the comic, the survivors never went to the CDC or ever got to Washington D.C. - two goals that they sort of toyed with but got diverted from. So in the comic, we don’t know if ANYBODY knows what happened, or how. It’s all about just surviving it, whatever the cause.
In the last episode of the first season, the survivors made it into Atlanta and visited the CDC, and the producers shot a great big wad that they could have held onto for a long, long time. The characters went in, they found a CDC scientist who told them what he knew (which wasn’t much), and then the season ended explosively when the CDC’s defense mechanisms blew the entire complex to hell. So much potential for intrigue and guesswork and mystery, gone.
I THINK the writers and producers “went there” before they were absolutely sure the show would get picked up for a second season. I want to believe that. I want to believe that they were thinking in terms of giving viewers closure, should the show not make it past the first experiment. If I hold onto that, even if it’s not true, maybe even then I can forgive Walking Dead for diverging SO MUCH from the source material, so MANY times.
I cannot, however, forgive the fact that Shane is still alive.
You see, the season finale SHOULD have been the story arc wherein the titular character, Rick Grimes, gets confronted by his best friend, Shane, and finds out that Shane is over the edge, and pretty much as dangerous and deadly as the zombies in the next valley. In the comic - at the very end of the first trade paperback in fact - Shane ends up getting killed, and it tears Rick apart in so many ways. And it’s fucking brilliant.
In the TV show, we know that Shane is dangerous. We know a confrontation is coming. But it hasn’t yet, and the way the show has handled his continued existence makes me wonder if his demise will EVER happen, and if it does, whether or not it will be as powerful as it was in the comic book.
There are, of course, all sorts of defenses that AMC, Darabont, Kirkman, and the rest of them can put forth to defend Shane’s “extra life.”
“We didn’t feel Shane had reached his full potential.”
“Jon Bernthal (the actor who playes Shane) turned out to be too popular with viewers.”
“We couldn’t fit it in, because we had so much other material to cover.”
That last reason is bullshit, for the reasons I’ve already cited: leave that extra stuff out and give me Shane getting his brains blown out, please.
The other possible reasons, I will answer in two words, which will sum up once and for all why I am more satisfied with the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones than I am the AMC adaptation of Walking Dead. Shane’s continued existence is unforgiveable, the reasons for said continuation are null and void, because…
Eddard Stark.