Some great points and I hope the writers/directors listen to this.
It was the unity-family connection that always made the film, along with background stories on people good and bad. The Atlanta family/crew that came to Alexandria were tight, connected, hopeful, and that has been taken away. I'm glad for Sonequa but I like Sasha, her dying why/the way she did I didn't care for. Glenn being gone is a huge bummer

The Walking Dead has been experiencing a serious ratings and critical slump for the past few weeks. Entertainment Editor Drew Dietsch and Fan Contributor Danielle Ryan sat down to discuss what might be causing the show to go astray, as well as their ideas on what needs to be done to get the show back on track. SPOILERS for The Walking Dead will follow.

DREW: With The Walking Dead registering its lowest ratings in years, fans are starting to wonder why this once gargantuan show is starting to slip in popularity. If there is one thing you could blame this on, what would it be? My pick is for an ever-expanding cast. The show has become so bulky and bloated with characters. Unfortunately, the only way the show knows how to deal with such a problem is through murder.

DANIELLE: I think the show’s primary problem is that it’s repetitive in its plots. The crew walks around, they meet a new group, someone dies horribly. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s turned into a “who will die next?” scenario instead of actual character development. I think a lot of fans finally realized that with the season premiere.

DREW: Agreed. The lack of surprise in terms of the show’s narrative structure has made the formula stale after so many years.

You wrote a great piece about shock value and how The Walking Dead doesn’t seem to understand how to properly use it. With the impact of the premiere out of the way, does it feel like the show is just meandering between big shock moments?

DANIELLE: It really does. It feels like The Walking Dead is trying to build up more tension for more shocking moments, but at this point viewers are numb. There comes a point in media where consumers become desensitized to those kinds of shocks. I remember when the Saw films were beyond shocking, but there were kids to in the theater by the time Saw VI came out. Torture films had become mainstream.

By now viewers of the show have to be at least somewhat desensitized to it all. That means the creators have to go even bigger for new shocks. How big can they possibly get besides killing Rick or Daryl? (The latter will never happen because fans would riot.)

DREW: On that subject, the fans have definitely embraced Negan as something of a secret protagonist. His popularity would seem to represent aspects of the show that fans enjoy: theatricality, viciousness, and suffering. That’s interesting to me because The Walking Dead didn’t start off that way. It was a much more atypical bit of contemplative apocalyptic fiction. The big reveal at the end of season one – everyone is infected – actually felt consequential and thoughtful (in a disturbing way). Has the show lost track of that and is that why people are deserting? Or has the misery simply become too overbearing without strong enough character work to back it up a la Game of Thrones?

DANIELLE: The misery without reason is just too much. Negan is fascinating to watch (and Jeffery Dean Morgan is killing it) much like GoT‘s Cersei. He’s interesting and slightly more developed than someone like Ramsay Bolton. Negan is that guy who longed for an apocalypse. He thrives on chaos and disorder. At this point, he may be the most interesting character on the show. Everyone else is just slowly suffering, and the moral questions at play early in the series seem to have been answered; after the world ends, only evil can thrive.

DREW: That’s a good observation. Maybe The Walking Dead just doesn’t have much to say anymore. Last week’s episode had the audience sit through a tired discussion about whether it’s better to be selfish or work together in the apocalypse. How can such a question be brought up when you’re seven seasons into a story like this? It’s lazy and way past due to be contemplating such trivial concepts.

Every week in my episode reviews, I point out the “zombie gore gag of the week.” The effects on this show have always been top notch – Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger are industry legends – but has the novelty of the gore also worn off?

DANIELLE: To a degree. There are still some incredible gags. Glenn‘s face will haunt me for years. American audiences have grown used to gore. Just look at the shows that would have caused a furor ten or twenty years ago: The Walking Dead, Hannibal, Preacher, Justified, etc. Violence has dominated American televisions since the Vietnam war, though it ramps up every decade or so. Gore will never get old, not entirely.

DREW: Is there anything The Walking Dead CAN do at this point to course correct? There are at least two more seasons left and probably more than that being planned just in case. What would it take to get fans back on the wagon again? Again, I feel like the enormous cast is a factor. If they could shave down the story to maybe six or seven key players, things might be able to even out.

DANIELLE: They need to focus on a handful of important characters and actually give them a chance to develop. If they introduce new characters, it needs to be a limited number and they need to have actual plots to focus on. When Abe was killed, it was sad but didn’t have nearly the impact of Glenn’s death because he hadn’t been developed. The show needs to give Maggie, Rick, Carl, Michonne, and Daryl a chance to really shine instead of just torturing them week after week.

DREW: If the only protagonists were the characters you just mentioned, I’d be hyped for the show every week.

Have an opinion? Tweet @getfandom, @DrewDietsch, and @danirat and let us know what you think!

http://fandom.wikia.com/a...wikia-rail

Personally, I think when you walked into the show you had a big hope factor, now it's just a continuous cycle of things being ripped apart with no end or answers in sight, there is no hope it's just surviving just to survive.

it's repetitive and not going anywhere but bigger and bigger fights. the characters used to survive as a group, but now we get entire hours of just one character.

i miss the days of 'team Rick'.

i'd love it if they broke from the comics and tossed in a sci-fi twist but i sense it will continue in the same vein

The show's been going in circles with the "Big Bads." The Governor. Terminus. Negan. The existential threat of the walkers has been put in the background.

It's boring maybe?

I have no problem with the show.I still enjoy it.However,I wanna see Negan get killed The season finale was great,except for the fact that they didn't kill him.They had a chance to do but they let him get away?!

namepeace said:

The show's been going in circles with the "Big Bads." The Governor. Terminus. Negan. The existential threat of the walkers has been put in the background.

Not much variety in the plots, as much as i love the show, next season should be the last one. At the end they reveal that Rick after his hospitalization he ended up with some mental issues, so irevealed everything was just a creation of his mind.

[Edited 4/27/17 15:35pm]

morningsong said:

Personally, I think when you walked into the show you had a big hope factor, now it's just a continuous cycle of things being ripped apart with no end or answers in sight, there is no hope it's just surviving just to survive.

This sums it up for me. Death and misery for the sake of death and misery get old. I don't even understand why anyone would want to survive in that universe.

Plus, Andrew Lincoln has been shaving his chest for years.

[Edited 4/26/17 15:54pm]

Lammastide said:

morningsong said:

Personally, I think when you walked into the show you had a big hope factor, now it's just a continuous cycle of things being ripped apart with no end or answers in sight, there is no hope it's just surviving just to survive.

This sums it up for me. Death and misery for the sake of death and misery get old. I don't even understand why anyone would want to survive in that universe.

Plus, Andrew Lincoln has been shaving his chest for years.

[Edited 4/26/17 15:54pm]

Without giving too much away, if they follow the comic storyline there's more hope coming. I think we just have to follow Rick through this really sh*tty period to get there.

How they resolve the Negan problem is a really interesting prospect ... I just hope they try and give him some more depth next season and dial back the catchy line spewing Joker-esque side of his personality. He worked so well on the page because he was right on that cusp of 'is he good or is he bad'. Alot of the stuff he does you can almost see his point.

DaveT said:

Lammastide said:

This sums it up for me. Death and misery for the sake of death and misery get old. I don't even understand why anyone would want to survive in that universe.

Plus, Andrew Lincoln has been shaving his chest for years.

[Edited 4/26/17 15:54pm]

Without giving too much away, if they follow the comic storyline there's more hope coming. I think we just have to follow Rick through this really sh*tty period to get there.

How they resolve the Negan problem is a really interesting prospect ... I just hope they try and give him some more depth next season and dial back the catchy line spewing Joker-esque side of his personality. He worked so well on the page because he was right on that cusp of 'is he good or is he bad'. Alot of the stuff he does you can almost see his point.

Could you provide an example, Sir?

214 said:

DaveT said:

Without giving too much away, if they follow the comic storyline there's more hope coming. I think we just have to follow Rick through this really sh*tty period to get there.

How they resolve the Negan problem is a really interesting prospect ... I just hope they try and give him some more depth next season and dial back the catchy line spewing Joker-esque side of his personality. He worked so well on the page because he was right on that cusp of 'is he good or is he bad'. Alot of the stuff he does you can almost see his point.

Could you provide an example, Sir?

SPOILERS ...





... the introductory coming together is a good example ... Rick killed a group of Negan's men, ten or twenty. By 'rights' Negan could have killed that whole group in the clearing but he only killed two as payback.

A number of the Saviours are b*rstards, granted, but some of them are just decent folk caught up in the whole thing. Whose to say Rick's group didn't kill people like that at the Outpost? And without even trying to speak to the Saviours first to get their side of things ... Rick just took Hilltop's word as gospel.

And then Carl shot more of Negan's men and Negan just brought Carl back unharmed without retaliation because he knows that wouldn't help the relationship he's trying to build with Rick.

Sure, Negan is being a bit of a d*ck about it to Rick, but the basics of the agreement are sound ... you give them half your stuff, the Saviours will keep you safe.

DaveT said:

214 said:

Could you provide an example, Sir?

SPOILERS ...





... the introductory coming together is a good example ... Rick killed a group of Negan's men, ten or twenty. By 'rights' Negan could have killed that whole group in the clearing but he only killed two as payback.

A number of the Saviours are b*rstards, granted, but some of them are just decent folk caught up in the whole thing. Whose to say Rick's group didn't kill people like that at the Outpost? And without even trying to speak to the Saviours first to get their side of things ... Rick just took Hilltop's word as gospel.

And then Carl shot more of Negan's men and Negan just brought Carl back unharmed without retaliation because he knows that wouldn't help the relationship he's trying to build with Rick.

Sure, Negan is being a bit of a d*ck about it to Rick, but the basics of the agreement are sound ... you give them half your stuff, the Saviours will keep you safe.

my feelings toward Team Rick have changed a bit over this, Team Rick seem more ruthless than Negan

The first and second (and even thrid) season also had "the walking dead" as a major evolving part of plot. In other words they were discovering how you might changew, and they seemed to be headded towards discovering why it all happened, and if there was a way to stop it.

They kind of dropped that heart of the plot.

ufoclub said:

The first and second (and even thrid) season also had "the walking dead" as a major evolving part of plot. In other words they were discovering how you might changew, and they seemed to be headded towards discovering why it all happened, and if there was a way to stop it.

They kind of dropped that heart of the plot.

Maybe its been too long now. The timeline in the show has always been a bit sketchy but maybe so much time has now passed that there's no fixing it and this is how things are now. How it happened is probably a moot point for most folks.

Still ... it would be interesting to find out how it happened. They haven't explained it in the comic though so I'm not expecting the TV show to go there.

I always pictured the show finishing with Rick's group settling on an island off the coast ... be easy to set up and defend, and a nice way to finish things.