The Walking Dead

[Kermit IV]

I'm still watching this show, but it's 40 minutes of boring writing and terrible acting wrapped around 10 minutes of awesome zombie porn.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Ah, the old "wrong opinion" theory.  It's every single tired zombie movie cliche (the guys at the high school didn't hear 50 zombies ten feet away until one of them slammed into a chain-link fence?), but now it's strung out over three seasons instead of 90 minutes.  That leaves for an awful lot of down time, whining, and repetitive dialog.  The only interesting character in the whole bunch is the Boondock Saints guy, and they've hardly spent any time on him.  I find every one of the other characters to be grating, whether it's because of the bad writing, bad acting, or bad accents.  Again, the 10 minutes of solid zombie action per week is entertaining, and has obviously kept me watching.  But bad drama is bad drama, whether there are zombies involved or not.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I'm still watching this show, but it's 40 minutes of boring writing and terrible acting wrapped around 10 minutes of awesome zombie porn.

I guess I can see that.

I'm definitely starting to hate a few characters this season. Hopefully they stop just standing around bitching so much or Daryl might have to start crossbowing the shit out of the living, too.

I have faith, though, that Merle's return will liven things up nicely.

As I've said in the SBox, Skinny Bitch is really the worst character on the show.  I feel that Rick is becoming a less likable character too.  Nevertheless, Bohunk and Daryl have been outstanding of late.  Andrea is tolerable for now.  I have to think that she and Bohunk are going to get it on soon.

Oh, Lori's useless.

I'm not sure I can stand much more of Shane, though, particularly now that he's going the "dark brooder" route. Greasy bohunks should know better than to try to get philosophical.

Maybe now that Andrea has her precious gun she'll stop bitching and moaning about not having her gun. And maybe they'll find Sophia and we'll get to stop giving a shit about Sophia's mom's fee-fees.

I like Dale. But he's not really much more than window dressing.

But it looks like Merle's coming back. And Daryl's still with us. And Maggie's got some nice sideboob on her. Good on ya, Glen.

[Kermit IV]

I'm still watching this show, but it's 40 minutes of boring writing and terrible acting wrapped around 10 minutes of awesome zombie porn.

How do you find the time?

I missed this place so much.

[flannj]

I'm still watching this show, but it's 40 minutes of boring writing and terrible acting wrapped around 10 minutes of awesome zombie porn.

How do you find the time?

I missed this place so much.

So, you finally LOOKED IN THE FUCKING MIRROR and decided to come back?

[Wheezer]

I frankly can't even remember the glue that led to Mission to Respirator Parts, but I will note that in the last episode of October, Callies protests with an explicit version of the Weak Death in Life Principle.

[Gilgamesh]

I am so thankful that Andrea has such shitty aim.

[Bort]

I am so thankful that Andrea has such shitty aim.

This.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I am so thankful that Andrea has such shitty aim.

This.

I'll be especially thankful if this signals the end to her bitching and moaning.

[Yeti]

Hopefully they'll just ditch the fucking kid. Maybe my not having a kid has somethig to do with that, but the kid has been missing quite a while in a zombie apocalypse. I think its dead. Given my firing predictions, she will show up next week.

So, why keep all the zombies in the barn? Is it cause Doc is too sentimental to kill them? Are they friends of them? Or maybe the original farm owners?

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Dale's a real fucking mindreader, huh?

[Richard Chuggar]

Dale's a real fucking mindreader, huh?

The sooner that annoying fucker and the wife get bitten, the better.  All they do is whine.

[Slaky]

Someone has to get Kerm's back, here. This is a lot of wasted potential right here. Instead of killing off all of these unlikeable characters we're spending each week finding out just how right we were that they're irredeemable pieces of shit.

I like Glenn because he's useful and I like Maggie but really, only because she's hot. The scene where she suddenly got all worked up about Glenn being a leader and not realizing it yet was an After School Special kind of hokey out-of-nowhere melodrama. "Listen Glenn, we've known each other for three days and you may have fucked me because I let you because I thought we were going to die and also I loved zombies until that one tried to eat my arm but you killed it and I LOVE YOU. DONT YOU GO DYIN ON ME!"

Damn, and I liked Maggie.

Also, Horse Doctor and his Psycho Farm is getting real fucking old. These people should be on the run trying to find out if there is any hope outside of Buttfuck, GA but instead they're sitting around trying to find Susan Powter's fucking daughter. Shane said it himself: in the regular, civilized world they give up on this kid after 72 hours. They think she survived out there? And they're all getting crippled while they try to find her. They'd save a lot of time if they'd just have Bohunk put a live chamber in Ms. Powter's skull, leave her behind for zedhead bait and hit the fucking road. Think of all the gas they could  get from the cars along the road.

Plus think of how much more interesting it would be if they were traveling rather than spending time playing hide and go seek with a dead girl.

I'll keep watching, though.

[R-V]

Someone has to get Kerm's back, here. This is a lot of wasted potential right here. Instead of killing off all of these unlikeable characters we're spending each week finding out just how right we were that they're irredeemable pieces of shit.

I like Glenn because he's useful and I like Maggie but really, only because she's hot. The scene where she suddenly got all worked up about Glenn being a leader and not realizing it yet was an After School Special kind of hokey out-of-nowhere melodrama. "Listen Glenn, we've known each other for three days and you may have fucked me because I let you because I thought we were going to die and also I loved zombies until that one tried to eat my arm but you killed it and I LOVE YOU. DONT YOU GO DYIN ON ME!"

Damn, and I liked Maggie.

Also, Horse Doctor and his Psycho Farm is getting real fucking old. These people should be on the run trying to find out if there is any hope outside of Buttfuck, GA but instead they're sitting around trying to find Susan Powter's fucking daughter. Shane said it himself: in the regular, civilized world they give up on this kid after 72 hours. They think she survived out there? And they're all getting crippled while they try to find her. They'd save a lot of time if they'd just have Bohunk put a live chamber in Ms. Powter's skull, leave her behind for zedhead bait and hit the fucking road. Think of all the gas they could  get from the cars along the road.

Plus think of how much more interesting it would be if they were traveling rather than spending time playing hide and go seek with a dead girl.

I'll keep watching, though.

I agree with everything in this post. The writing on this show is awful. If you've got writers of Mad Men or Breaking Bad quality you can have entire episodes of people sitting around with their thumbs up their asses and it'll still be entertaining, but that's not the case on this show.

At this point the only way they could redeem the wheel-spinning Sophia search is if she walks into camp as a zombie and her mom blows her head off. That's the kind of depraved action I'm jonesing for.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I like Glenn because he's useful and I like Maggie but really, only because she's hot.

Apparently among the normal rules of ordinary life in civil society that went out the window in the zombie apocalypse was "don't stick your dick in crazy."

Plus think of how much more interesting it would be if they were traveling rather than spending time playing hide and go seek with a dead girl.

Would it, though?

I mean, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with staging so much of the season around the search for Sophia in and of itself. At this point she's almost incidental to what's actually been going on. A sort of MacGuffin,

Would the show automatically be more interesting if they were running into zombies On The Road To Ft. Benning rather than on excursions away from Maggie's Farm?

Would the school full of FEMA zombies or Daryl hallucinating about Merle be more awesome, or would Lori be less irritating, if only everyone had just piled into Dale's Winnebago first and hit the road?

The problem, as RV says, is the writing itself. The dialogue is stolid, the characterizations often dull.

So far it looks like the total overhaul of the writing staff over the summer hasn't really paid off.

EXCLUSIVE: Glen Mazzara has closed a deal to join AMC's breakout hit The Walking Dead as a writing executive producer and No.2 to creator/ executive producer/ director Frank Darabont for the show's upcoming second season. He is in the process of putting together a staff of about 5 writers.

The move comes 3 months after the writing staff for The Walking Dead's first season was disbanded, including then-No. 2 to Darabont, writing executive producer Charles "Chic" Eglee (most of the writers were let go, Eglee joined another project, FX's Powers). At the time, Durabont was exploring the idea of forgoing a writing staff altogether in favor of using freelancers. In the end, the show is reverting to the traditional writing staff model with a staff comparable or a little bigger in size to Season 1 whose order was for 6 episodes vs. 13 for Season 2. One of the 6 episodes of Walking Dead's first season was written on freelance basis by Mazzara. The Shield alum Mazzara recently served as showrunner on the first season of Starz's Crash and the second season of Hawthorne.

I feel like Darabont and Kirkman should just take over and write every fucking episode themselves at this point. That, or poach some writers from Justified.

On the plus side, here are a few things that I was afraid the writers were going to totally fucking drag out:

1) Lori's secret pregnancy

2) Lori's Shane issue

3) Shane's Otis/evil bohunk issue

And all three were more or less tackled head on by the end of last night's episode. So, hopefully we can forget about Lori's Rick drama now, and maybe Shane's life as not-a-good-dude can actually start to go places as the Bohunk Darkness overtakes him.

But someone really needs to die soon.

Dale's a real fucking mindreader, huh?

The sooner that annoying fucker and the wife get bitten, the better.  All they do is whine.

He shouldn't be more than a background character but, whining aside, I kind of like Dale.

Kill Lori. Kill Sophia's mom. Hell, kill Sophia.

[Slaky]

I like Glenn because he's useful and I like Maggie but really, only because she's hot.

Apparently among the normal rules of ordinary life in civil society that went out the window in the zombie apocalypse was "don't stick your dick in crazy."

Plus think of how much more interesting it would be if they were traveling rather than spending time playing hide and go seek with a dead girl.

Would it, though?

I mean, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with staging so much of the season around the search for Sophia in and of itself. At this point she's almost incidental to what's actually been going on. A sort of MacGuffin,

Would the show automatically be more interesting if they were running into zombies On The Road To Ft. Benning rather than on excursions away from Maggie's Farm?

Would the school full of FEMA zombies or Daryl hallucinating about Merle be more awesome, or would Lori be less irritating, if only everyone had just piled into Dale's Winnebago first and hit the road?

The problem, as RV says, is the writing itself. The dialogue is stolid, the characterizations often dull.

So far it looks like the total overhaul of the writing staff over the summer hasn't really paid off.

EXCLUSIVE: Glen Mazzara has closed a deal to join AMC's breakout hit The Walking Dead as a writing executive producer and No.2 to creator/ executive producer/ director Frank Darabont for the show's upcoming second season. He is in the process of putting together a staff of about 5 writers.

The move comes 3 months after the writing staff for The Walking Dead's first season was disbanded, including then-No. 2 to Darabont, writing executive producer Charles "Chic" Eglee (most of the writers were let go, Eglee joined another project, FX's Powers). At the time, Durabont was exploring the idea of forgoing a writing staff altogether in favor of using freelancers. In the end, the show is reverting to the traditional writing staff model with a staff comparable or a little bigger in size to Season 1 whose order was for 6 episodes vs. 13 for Season 2. One of the 6 episodes of Walking Dead's first season was written on freelance basis by Mazzara. The Shield alum Mazzara recently served as showrunner on the first season of Starz's Crash and the second season of Hawthorne.

I feel like Darabont and Kirkman should just take over and write every fucking episode themselves at this point. That, or poach some writers from Justified.

On the plus side, here are a few things that I was afraid the writers were going to totally fucking drag out:

1) Lori's secret pregnancy

2) Lori's Shane issue

3) Shane's Otis/evil bohunk issue

And all three were more or less tackled head on by the end of last night's episode. So, hopefully we can forget about Lori's Rick drama now, and maybe Shane's life as not-a-good-dude can actually start to go places as the Bohunk Darkness overtakes him.

But someone really needs to die soon.

Dale's a real fucking mindreader, huh?

The sooner that annoying fucker and the wife get bitten, the better.  All they do is whine.

He shouldn't be more than a background character but, whining aside, I kind of like Dale.

Kill Lori. Kill Sophia's mom. Hell, kill Sophia.

Lori is unbearable. Her facial expressions as she tries to appear tortured are more excruciating than the actual anguish she's trying summon. That said I think she's in it for the long haul. A main character needs to die soon to add some uncertainty hear. A Ned Stark-type death.