The Walking Dead Season 3

I took a huge shit on The Walking Dead Season 2. Let’s face it, that was a womans TV show.  Secret affairs instead of zombies.  Secret crushes instead of tension.  Secret pregnancies instead of horror.  Will she, won’t she?  Gossip.

Bullshit.

I took the words from the indestructible Dirk Benedict (What, you didn’t know he kicked cancers ass before even being cast in the A-Team, using his own remedy?!) literally, “The Feminisation of TV is complete”.  TV these days is increasingly a woman’s domain, and Season 2 of this series wanted some of that good ad revenue, so the script was tailored as such.  It didn’t help that Darabont packed up his shit and left either.  This approach though didn’t pass without a negative reaction, so they decided to shake things up for Season 3. But I’m not fooled by the occassional ‘action’ scene inserted to try and cover old problems.  Because while it attempts to, it doesn’t cover the fact that this is still 80% shitty (I mean that, who said good soap opera never existed?) soap opera, 15% action and 5% horror.  Not good enough.

But whle it is a mild improvement, another problem is that it still isn’t a zombie TV show. What made Romero’s movies and the original Resident Evil games cool?  First and foremost, peoples backs were against the wall and zombies were everywhere – the things were in charge.  Here, while Season 3 ups the action ante, zombies really don’t mean shit.  It’s just another post-apocalyptic gang-feud with heavy, heavy melodrama.  Zombies are sparse, few and far between.  There is no real difference between The Walking Dead Season 3, and the TV show Jericho (2006).  In fact, TWD Season 3 shares some striking similarities to that show, 7 years its senior:  Post apocalypse, two towns ran by two strong figureheads.  One is good, the other guy is bad.  Both are about to collide.  I’ve seen this shit before.

“This ain’t no goddamned picnic, people”, said Captain Rhodes.  Well, it is here. The lack of zombies leads to a lack of tension and horror.  This show isn’t scary – the cast are annoyingly ‘in charge’ of the occasional zombie, rather than being overwhelmed and pushed to breaking point.  I mean, the military unit in Day of the Dead had to hold regular meetings on how to survive, yet  here, gay looking little shits and hormonal bitches have the situation licked. That’s irritating.  And it leads to a lot of downtime and a lot of shitty exposition between people who pretty much annoy me (The Asian guy and his girl, the kid…).  This isn’t ‘six-pack of bud and pizza’ TV.  It’s ‘Facebook the girls’ about the latest drama… TV.  Get whatI mean? While not that bad, it’s just blown potential.  So what’s next for Season 4?  More strolls around the Georgian countryside looking for the next group to have a hormonal spat with?

I’d say there’s a few seasons left in this yet.  Take my advice… fire someone and fix this now.  If I found myself in Season 3, I would’ve sided with that Governer – and taken over North America.  But to some, that kind of thing isn’t as interesting as weemin’s gossip.

6/10