7:46 PM V: Sadly, `The Walking Dead' is as stupid and occassionally repulsive as ever
It's all plot-based but the plotting and writing are very weak
7:51 PM It is also pretentious: it thinks its a platform for discussing serious issues on the human condition, but it aggressively shies away from having any real opinion or approaching any topic with any depth
7:58 PM The show is also totally oblivious
8:00 PM Why does it just happen that, for a show set in the deep south, there is no attention paid to any of the minority characters, and that all the attention is paid to the white male characters?
Who knows!
8:01 PM Why is the Asian guy an errand boy who has to prove his masculinity to the group, at which point he is rewarded with a white girlfriend?
Who knows!
The show is also fundamentally boring
8:02 PM There is, for example, a settlement of humans living safely under the control of an insane dictator
8:03 PM But this character is just a regular crazed villain, like an Indiana Jones Nazi
This is an opportunity, however, where the show could delve into power structures
8:04 PM Instead of this bland one-dimensional villain, it could try something more clever and more thoughtful
8:05 PM For example, it might suggest something more fundamental about power structures: maybe this megalomania or this paranoia is actually a product of the circumstances or some necessary component of human organisation under such stressed conditions
8:06 PM Nope! He's just a mustache-twirling bad guy
8:07 PM And he's not even particularly smart in his evilness, and he's surrounded by the same old incompetent, cruel henchmen
8:08 PM One other problem with this entire genre is, well, what next?
We have seen the devastation and gruesomeness of the zombie aftermath, great
And this show's appeal is, supposedly, that any character could die at any time
So what's the point? What is it building to?
8:09 PM It's like a soap opera: a new love interest appears, lingers for a few episodes, a couple of shocking revelations, then suddenly meets tragedy just in time for the next plotline to start
8:10 PM Of course, I don't think the writers really think these things through at all
It's all very last minute, thrown together, soap operatic plotting
8:11 PM What does the world look like five years after the appearance of zombies?
What about ten years?
Clearly, this band of travellers running around schtick will have gotten very old, and either everyone would have died or some people would have survived.
8:12 PM How do the survivors create a new world with all the existing structures of our world destroyed?
8:13 PM This is a very interesting topic, but it's beyond the capabilities of these writers to imagine and design
8:15 PM You can see how exceptionally boring this show is in its insistence on the most trivial plot points
It's like an Archie comic with a comet hurtling toward earth?
Who cares if Archie goes on a date with Betty or Veronica when the world is ending on page 10?
8:16 PM How utterly trivial and pointless
