讨论 The Walking Dead

I'm not the only one who misses Shane, am I?

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He brought much needed drama to the second season. Still I don't know how he would be used since his while stitch was Laurie. I guess he could join Negan or Rick has more flashbacks and visions of him

In what sense do you miss him? I'll give that he was a compelling character, but he was way too damaged for there to be any real chance of him surviving through all 7 seasons.

Probably not...but I don't.

The show is missing a loose cannon like Shane. He brought instability and uncertainty to a group already in chaos.

@Dark_Sithlord said:

The show is missing a loose cannon like Shane. He brought instability and uncertainty to a group already in chaos.

"Instability and chaos" - Negan doesn't fill the bill here?

Or how about Dwight? (Spoilers ahead for those who still haven't finished watching season 7). Dwight sought Rick's trust despite the uncertainty from Dylan and Tara; got it, and it provided to destabilize their efforts.

Same can be said for how things went down with Jadis.

I dunno, I think there's plenty of instability and chaos. At this stage in the show, Rick's core group couldn't possibly still have people among them who aren't crystal clear in their allegiance. Rick's group is postured as the sympathetic protagonist group, a group that is, essentially, good. They want to trust others, and the tension between when it helps and when it hurts is all the instability and uncertainty I need. But, that's just me.

DRDMovieMusings:

Do you really think the show is as strong now as it was in Season 2? If so, I beg to differ. Among other things, there's been a consistent downward slide in the show's villains.

Shane was an interesting character because he was partially sympathetic, he had conflicted feelings, and in many ways he had a clearer-eyed understanding of the things you needed to do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world than Rick did at that point.

After that the show moved to the Governor, who was a relatively more conventional villain but who still had a lot of human moments, as in the scene where he sobs over the corpse of his zombified daughter, or his interactions with the family he moves in with at the beginning of Season 4.

Then the show gradually started to give us more familiar cinematic types, from the cannibals to Dawn (who was basically a Nurse Ratched type, and that whole sequence in the hospital had a distinct Cuckoo's Nest vibe to it).

Negan is just your typical, campy, over-the-top supervillain from countless action thrillers. He might be fine on a different show--he might even work in a campier zombie apocalypse drama--but not this one. He gives entirely the wrong tone for this material. The show has jumped the shark.

@Kylopod You might be right. But, I'm not sure. It is debatable whether or to what degree the show is better or worse now than it was at the beginning. I won't digress to argue either way, I think it's immaterial to this discussion.

The question at hand is, do we miss Shane? My problem is, after all they've been through, I don't see a Shane-type fitting into the story so, given where they all are now, I don't miss him. That itself may be part of what those who think the show is worse might point to as evidence. But, the son of the leader of Alexandria was very quickly killed off as soon as his character emerged as one who could not be trusted.

They even tried to paint Father Gabriel with some sense of uncertainty when he packed up the car and left. Yet, there he remains, taking up arms to wage war with Rick's group against Negan and the Saviors. No, it's been settled, Father Gabriel is one of them, there is likely to be no further uncertainty about it.

If Shane was still with them, I might imagine him willingly joining the Saviors, even more willingly than Eugene did. But that turn was filled by Eugene. Sasha gave her life for the group (such as it was, she'd struggled a long time with an eroding will to live, but at least she dispatched herself in an attempt to fight for the group). What Rosita does or becomes is likely to be interesting. Carol and Morgan have gotten over their issues sufficiently to recognize it's time to fight. King Ezekiel, too. Daryl never gave in to Negan.

No, the show is moving towards a galvanizing certainty amongst the core. After all they've been through, why should we expect continued uncertainty about the core, who they are, what they stand for? The challenge here then, is that each group (Saviors, Alexandria, Hilltop, The Kingdom, The Heapsters) are comprised of hardcore devotees of their respective ways. As each group galvanizes, it makes it increasingly difficult to trust other groups (as evidenced by the situation with Tara and Oceanside). That growing issue of trust is the fulcrum on which pivots the drama now, not internal weak links threatening from the inside....or, at least, as far as I gather it.

And, we could not possibly have had these layers in the beginning. All we had in the beginning was the gore porn and the beginnings of personalities and relationships. Those personalities and relationships have developed, and the human elements that make life worth living, worth fighting for, can be explored in more detail, at a slower, more deliberate pace.

Have they lapsed into some recycled plot devices and cliches? Sure. Am I 100% positive the show is better now than it was? Nope. But I most assuredly can see compelling elements now that simply could not exist at the beginning - imagine the Abraham/Glenn deaths in season 1, episode 2 - who'd care?

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@Dark_Sithlord said:

The show is missing a loose cannon like Shane. He brought instability and uncertainty to a group already in chaos.

"Instability and chaos" - Negan doesn't fill the bill here?

Or how about Dwight? (Spoilers ahead for those who still haven't finished watching season 7). Dwight sought Rick's trust despite the uncertainty from Dylan and Tara; got it, and it provided to destabilize their efforts.

Same can be said for how things went down with Jadis.

I dunno, I think there's plenty of instability and chaos. At this stage in the show, Rick's core group couldn't possibly still have people among them who aren't crystal clear in their allegiance. Rick's group is postured as the sympathetic protagonist group, a group that is, essentially, good. They want to trust others, and the tension between when it helps and when it hurts is all the instability and uncertainty I need. But, that's just me.

No, I don't count Negan, nor Dwight because they are not a part of Rick's group.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: I was referring to "instability and chaos" within Rick's group. Shane was especially guilty because he already had Rick's trust from the onset. They were partners. That kind of brotherhood only made Shane's betrayal more damning.

However, overall, you are correct about Negan and Dwight being shit disturbers.

DRDMovieMusings:

I'm not asking for the show to create a copy of Shane, I'm simply observing that as the show has gone on, it's given us increasingly one-dimensional villains. At this point, Morgan is a great character. He may be one of the few reasons I keep watching. But the main plotline is dominated by a baddie who says things like "Hot diggity dog" and "Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

The zombie genre, ever since Romero invented it in the 1960s, has always centered around the way humans behave in an apocalypse--how the situation exposes what kind of person you really are. It's a great terrain for antiheroes, for complex moral dilemmas, for probing of people's psychological states. TWD used to be strong on that front, and Shane was an excellent example of how it explored those themes. It's turned increasingly into an action drama, in which it's just lazily assumed that whatever Rick's group decides to do (like ambushing another group and stealing their weapons) is moral and virtuous. Sometimes the show seems to forget that it's a story about zombies; it was striking that the season finale had only one walker in the entire episode, for just a few seconds.

So, in sum, it's not that I miss Shane, it's that I miss a show that's centered around believable and complicated characters having to face genuine moral dilemmas as they try to survive and make a life for themselves.

@Kylopod said:

DRDMovieMusings:

I'm not asking for the show to create a copy of Shane, I'm simply observing that as the show has gone on, it's given us increasingly one-dimensional villains.

I hear you. I think, though, that, by this time, we should be able to extrapolate that each "villain" is "just another Rick", for all intents and purposes, just some person thrust into leading a group of survivors in some pretty gut-wrenching (pun intended) circumstances. From the latino group that took Glenn way back in season one, to Herschel's farm and the barn of family walkers; to the Governor and his daughter...each group leader has a sympathetic side.

Even Negan has a backstory (those into the comics know a lot more about him than we TV-only people do). And, to so many of the other groups, Rick is just another guy whose actions are interpreted by some to be bad/evil. It's just that we as viewers/readers are watching/reading a story that positions Rick and his group as the protagonist group, so we naturally are more inclined to sympathize with them, and understand the morals of their actions.

At this point, Morgan is a great character. He may be one of the few reasons I keep watching.

Morgan has been an intriguing character since the very beginning, episode 1 season 1. His overture to Rick was the first to set the tone for how Rick relates in the new world. And it has taken from that first episode all the way down to the last episode of season 7 for his arc to arrive at the next level of clarity about how to get on in this world (Carol, too). I'm getting the impression season 8 should be awesome, with Rick, Morgan, Carol, Daryl, Maggie, Michonne, Carl, Tara and Rosita utterly clear and united with Aaron, Jesus, Gabriel and Ezekiel to seriously smack down the Saviors and Heapsters.

But the main plotline is dominated by a baddie who says things like "Hot diggity dog" and "Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

I agree, Negan's shtick has become annoying. But how long can this show go on? It appears to me all villains aforemorentioned and otherwise were just leading up to this final conflict with the ultimate villain ("I'm everywhere, everyone one of my people is Negan" - oy, give me a break). I would expect that season 8 will be the show's last, resolving how Rick's group will triumph and go on to live out their lives, such as they are, in this new world.

The zombie genre, ever since Romero invented it in the 1960s, has always centered around...

Ah, you're not wrong here, but I had to cut you off, with all due respect! I've read that TWD is not in our universe, but set in an alternate universe, one in which Romero's conceptualization of "a zombie" never happened, does not exist. This is, in part, why, of all the creative names used to describe the reanimated dead, no one has used the term "zombie". (I could provide links but there are plenty of articles discussing this, I'm not telling any tales out of school here). As such, while our expectations about how to cope in a zombie landscape have been informed to a great degree by Romero (as you are here citing), the TWD world has not. So, it's probably not the best idea to judge TWD based on that expectation.

It's turned increasingly into an action drama, in which it's just lazily assumed that whatever Rick's group decides to do (like ambushing another group and stealing their weapons) is moral and virtuous.

Yep, I've touched on that play on morals and perspective a few bullets above...

Sometimes the show seems to forget that it's a story about zombies; it was striking that the season finale had only one walker in the entire episode, for just a few seconds.

It was striking indeed, but I'm not so sure the show is "about zombies"! Frank Darabont, who has turned more Stephen King books into movies than anyone else, worked on King's The Stand, that started during a virus outbreak that killed everybody but a few, and went off on a tale about the forces of good vs. evil. I think many, myself included, started reading out of fascination for a depiction of what such an apocalyptic outbreak might be like.

I think that's where Darabont got the idea to make a story more about the zombies and less about a spiritual dimension. As such, in the beginning of TWD, during those first two seasons Darabont was involved and, more importantly, before we knew any of the characters and had formed emotional bonds to them, we didn't know enough about any of them for emotional/relationship stories to have much traction. Remember when they went back for Merle and found only his hand and the cuffs...Daryl cried out "no" a bunch of times and it rang hollow, we hadn't spent enough time caring about Daryl to feel any of his pain. Contrast that to the impact (pun intended) of the deaths of Abraham and Glenn.

The show has become about the people, which is itself a statement about the fight to retain shreds of humanity in this world gone mad. And, I think that's a good thing. Each zombie was once someone somebody loved (which drove so much tension early, from Morgan and his wife juxtaposed against Rick shooting that half walker woman after saying sorry to her even though he did not know her, or putting down his former cop mate, whom he didn't like very much but "couldn't leave him like this"...) If we approach TWD as some kind of violence/gore porn, a free-for-all in which we can enjoy target practice against walkers like they weren't humans with dignity before, is it not making a statement about the state of our own humanity?

So, in sum, it's not that I miss Shane, it's that I miss a show that's centered around believable and complicated characters having to face genuine moral dilemmas as they try to survive and make a life for themselves.

Gotcha. I'm just still convinced that "believeable and complicated characters having to face a geniune moral dilemma as they try to survive and make a life for themselves" is still very much what we have by the end of season 7. Question - would you have offed Dwight like Tara and Daryl thought they should? See how Rick still wants to extend trust and believe that "people can change", and how it turned out bad for them? How will that further concretize their resolve not to trust any knew additions to their group? But, had they taken such a hard line in the past, we might not have Aaron with us, or Tara, or Rosita, or Jesus, whom they picked up from other groups....

I think, though, that, by this time, we should be able to extrapolate that each "villain" is "just another Rick", for all intents and purposes

I get that. But I don't think the show is truly confronting that dichotomy. It's Cowboys and Indians. Whatever we (the audience) may extrapolate about the relative morality of the protagonists and antagonists, the show isn't getting into any of that--it's a war between two teams, and we're on Rick's team, or at any rate we're expected to be. I don't give the show any credit for simply giving us heroes that do morally questionable things--we've seen decades of Hollywood action heroes who do morally questionable things.

From the latino group that took Glenn way back in season one, to Herschel's farm and the barn of family walkers; to the Governor and his daughter...each group leader has a sympathetic side.

And the show took pains to make each of those groups sympathetic. The sequence with the Latino group was basically a fake-out--an attempt to toy with audience expectations of common TV cliches about Latino gangs. Herschel never seemed like a villain. (He was more in the category of the woman leader of Alexandria--someone who may not see eye to eye with Rick, but we never doubted they were decent people.) The Governor was a definite bad guy, but he was depicted in human and believable terms, not as a cartoon.

I agree, Negan's shtick has become annoying. But how long can this show go on? It appears to me all villains aforemorentioned and otherwise were just leading up to this final conflict with the ultimate villain

It all depends on how it's approached. In a way it reminds me of what they've done on "Game of Thrones." After a show filled with complicated, ambiguous antiheroes, where the very concepts of "hero" and "villain" become hopelessly muddled, the sixth season finally centered around Ramsay Bolton, who is basically your standard, unambiguously evil, sadistic, smirking, teeth-gnashing villain. The battle against him was great television (in fact it's one of the best-staged battles I've ever seen in a fantasy series), but it felt like a step backwards for the show.

Even then, however, GoT to this day continues to do an excellent job of building sympathy for characters on different sides of the war, so that we're never sure whose side we're supposed to be on. That's something TWD did to a limited degree in the past, and now not at all.

I've read that TWD is not in our universe, but set in an alternate universe, one in which Romero's conceptualization of "a zombie" never happened, does not exist.

I've read about that too. I think it's an attempt to handle what TV Tropes calls the Celebrity Paradox, defined as the contradiction between the things that exist in a fictional universe and the things that ARE fictional in OUR universe. For example, in a James Bond movie, it's implicitly assumed there's no fictional Bond series; for all intents and purposes Ian Fleming doesn't exist in the Bond world. In superhero movies, it's typically (though not always) implied that the entire superhero genre doesn't exist. If Batman is a real person and Gotham City is a real place, then it can get awkward to acknowledge the existence of DC Comics.

In most fiction about vampires (including "I Am Legend," one of the main inspirations for "Night of the Living Dead"), the characters are familiar with the vampire legend. But that's because it concerns folklore that has existed for centuries. It isn't easy to get away with having a modern character who has never heard of a vampire. (How would you explain vampire bats, for instance?) But the modern conception of the zombie as a reanimated corpse (as opposed to the older meaning of the term) simply goes back to Romero, a man who was still alive until a month ago. Because the reference point is so recent, it's more akin to a superhero movie acknowledging the superhero genre. Furthermore, Romero's original film (inadvertently) established a precedent of zombie movies in which the characters never use the word "zombie."

As such, while our expectations about how to cope in a zombie landscape have been informed to a great degree by Romero (as you are here citing), the TWD world has not. So, it's probably not the best idea to judge TWD based on that expectation.

In terms of my criticism, I don't think it makes a difference whether the zombie genre exists in the TWD universe. What I'm describing about the genre isn't a meta convention, and it doesn't require the characters to be familiar with zombie fiction. I was simply observing that serious stories about zombie apocalypses tend to deal with characters having to confront difficult moral situations. This is true whether the characters themselves are aware of the history of the genre or not.

It was striking indeed, but I'm not so sure the show is "about zombies"! Frank Darabont, who has turned more Stephen King books into movies than anyone else worked on King's The Stand

When? I don't see it in his filmography, and I don't see his name attached to either the 1994 miniseries or the possibly upcoming adaptation.

As for the King adaptations he did do: two were prison dramas, and the third was The Mist, which in many ways served as a template for his work on TWD. At least three of the actors in that film went on to join the cast of TWD, and Thomas Jane, the star, was the original choice to play Rick Grimes. The controversial ending that he appended onto the King story was very much an example of what I described, in which the characters in an apocalypse are forced into a horrible moral quandary. (I don't think the ending worked, but that's another subject for another time.) There was also a subplot about evil--the religious fanatic woman who creates a little cult in the supermarket (which is a very Stephen King-ish plot development). But at bottom I still think it was a story about survival, not a story about good guys vs. bad guys.

Question - would you have offed Dwight like Tara and Daryl thought they should?

I have no idea what I'd do, but I can tell you that scene was painfully predictable and forced.

@Kylopod Good stuff! I'm retracting that Darabont was involved with The Stand, it appears he wasn't. Although, given his relationship to Stephen King and his material, I'm still willing to bet that the idea of The Stand, even from arm's length, was some inspiration that germinated The Walking Dead.

Having said that, your continued assertion - that zombie apocalypses thrust protagonists into moral dilemmas that are absent in TWD - leaves me a tad befuddled. I see all kinds of moral dilemmas being dealt with in it, from the first time Rick decides to go back for Merle, much to the chagrin of everyone except Daryl, through the wiping out of one of the Saviors' satellites, through Tara's dealing with revealing the weapons at Oceanside, all the way down to whether to trust Dwight...and many more, how do these situations not meet your criteria?

Having said that, your continued assertion - that zombie apocalypses thrust protagonists into moral dilemmas that are absent in TWD - leaves me a tad befuddled.

That isn't what I said. Let me quote my comment from before, which sums up my feelings:

"[The zombie genre is] a great terrain for antiheroes, for complex moral dilemmas, for probing of people's psychological states. TWD used to be strong on that front, and Shane was an excellent example of how it explored those themes. It's turned increasingly into an action drama, in which it's just lazily assumed that whatever Rick's group decides to do (like ambushing another group and stealing their weapons) is moral and virtuous."

@Kylopod said:

Having said that, your continued assertion - that zombie apocalypses thrust protagonists into moral dilemmas that are absent in TWD - leaves me a tad befuddled.

That isn't what I said. Let me quote my comment from before, which sums up my feelings:

"[The zombie genre is] a great terrain for antiheroes, for complex moral dilemmas, for probing of people's psychological states. TWD used to be strong on that front, and Shane was an excellent example of how it explored those themes. It's turned increasingly into an action drama, in which it's just lazily assumed that whatever Rick's group decides to do (like ambushing another group and stealing their weapons) is moral and virtuous."

Well, I must differ with you here. There's plenty of conflict as to what the "right thing to do" is. That's been present throughout the series.

But, I will say, I better understand what you're trying to say about Shane - not Shane the person, but Shane as a device for instability. I was reviewing seasons 1 and 2 and saw a pattern with Shane; when he's rejected or set straight by Lori, he lashes out, beating the crap out of Ed, or shooting up Herschel's barn of familial walkers. He was a repressed, inadequate, over-compensating, covetous, self-centred guy who alienated all around him. He was no leader, certainly no Rick. Nobody would "fight for him, fight with him."

Yet still, I disagree. When Gabriel disappeared, we wondered "what did he do now?" The hothead behaviour that Daryl displayed, precipitating Glenn's gruesome demise, was just the sort of thing that Shane might have done, just the sort of thing the group does not need, but got anyway. The waiting for Carol and Morgan to get clear, the about-face from Ezekiel...the struggles Heath was experiencing just before Tara fell off the bridge, the struggles at Oceanside as to what to do with Tara....the struggles Tara experienced in deciding to tell the group about Oceanside...the deal made with Heapsters...there's been plenty of uncertainty and instability and exploration of morality.

I think what Shane represented, in terms of compelling story-telling, was uni-dimensional, there's no way the group could go on with his type (or, Andrea's type, for that matter). Daryl easily replaces Shane's muscle and grit but recognizes he needs a leader, he won't disrupt the power structure, he's secure in his position as part of the core leadership and quite okay with the deference required to maintain the structure, and loyal to the death, as proven by how he kept himself during his time with Negan and did not break down.

And, I think that Shane was a part of the journey of the group such that, they've been through so much since him, that device isn't needed anymore. The group trusts itself, sees itself as good, and any among them still undecided or undeclared would just be unbelievable. Even newbies like Tara and Sasha demonstrated more loyalty and integrity to the group than Shane ever did.

When Gabriel disappeared, we wondered "what did he do now?" The hothead behaviour that Daryl displayed, precipitating Glenn's gruesome demise, was just the sort of thing that Shane might have done, just the sort of thing the group does not need, but got anyway. The waiting for Carol and Morgan to get clear, the about-face from Ezekiel...the struggles Heath was experiencing just before Tara fell off the bridge, the struggles at Oceanside as to what to do with Tara....the struggles Tara experienced in deciding to tell the group about Oceanside...the deal made with Heapsters...there's been plenty of uncertainty and instability and exploration of morality.

I don't think any of that individually was as intriguing as the Rick/Shane conflict, and in any case it's mostly at the periphery of the story, not the center. Like most TWD fans I like Daryl, I understand why he's such a fan favorite, but... he's never been a hugely complicated or multidimensional character. He's basically a Han Solo type--the loner/drifter who's got a gruff exterior but is clearly a softy when push comes to shove. And his best moments were several seasons back, like the long sequence with him and Beth in the forest. He's become increasingly predictable. Yes, his hotheaded impulsiveness is what gets Glenn killed, but we never doubt his basic sincerity or morality at this point; it wasn't surprising that Maggie was so quick to forgive him.

Another thing which I alluded to earlier is that the characters and situations have become increasingly campy and cartoonish. The Scavengers have gotten a lot of flak in this regard, but in many ways Ezekiel and Oceanside are just as bad. These elements are the very definition of "jumping the shark," where a show increasingly incorporates weird, gimmicky elements that wildly do not fit the tone of what came before. (And for readers of the comics, I don't care which of these elements is faithful to the comics and which is original to the show--I'm just commenting on the effect they have on the show on its own terms.) The idea of a community composed entirely of women with guns who shoot any outsider on sight is like something out of a 1970s exploitation flick. And Tara's whole struggle on whether to keep the secret was so utterly predictable--you knew exactly where the situation was leading and what the ultimate outcome would be, one way or another.

As I mentioned, Morgan is still by and far one of the best characters the show has developed, and his story remains fascinating. I like Carol, too (though I admit her "I hate fighting but I'm still a lethal one-woman army" shtick is starting to get a little old; maybe part of the problem is that even the best characters are starting to seem like caricatures of their former selves). In any case, what I've been discussing isn't the individual characters, but the central villains. Shane wasn't just another character; he was THE main antagonist of Season 2. Whether he's a villain or antihero is up for debate, but the struggle between him and Rick is the source of the primary emotional and psychological side of the story at that point.

By now, Season 7, and presumably (since he hasn't died yet) Season 8, the main antagonist is Negan, a largely one-dimensional cartoon bad guy, and for all the subplots involving alliance-building, who can be trusted and who might sell them out, the basic conflict is pretty simple: Negan is a menace and has to be defeated. I would have less to complain about if the individual elements of how Negan is presented and the rival communities weren't so campy and contrived, but it calls attention to how little the show has to work with. It's become less confident about allowing the conflicts to arise naturally out of the characters and the situations it faces, and it feels the need to present us with artificial ones.

I'm not asking for a copy of Shane; as I mentioned at the start of the thread and which you seem to agree, the character wouldn't really make much sense at this point (especially since Rick has increasingly adopted much of Shane's outlook). I am merely using him to illustrate how the show was once able to create a genuinely complicated and human conflict, and how it has increasingly sacrificed those things in the service of gimmicks.

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