There’s something about zombies. I’m not sure if it’s the palatable idea of flesh-eating corpses or the escapism that a zombie apocalypse offers citizens of a government shutdown, but Americans just can’t get enough of The Walking Dead. Apparently, we like it even more than Sunday night football. This is a big deal for me, since I’m the kind of quintessential American that knows exactly what those cactus-shaped posts on either side of the field are for and wouldn’t dream of ignoring the Super Bowl until Beyoncé comes on. In short, zombies are huge.
I know this, of course, because I checked out the TV ratings recently. I’m not sure if you’ve ever done this, but it’s a surefire way to make you depressed about the State of the Arts in 2013. I recognize that’s the kind of snobby hipster nonsense statement that probably makes you envision me wearing a lot of scarves and bemoaning the decline of culture over wine, so I’ll counter it with a slightly different assertion: I feel lonely, America! I want to understand! Enlighten me about the wonders of NCIS and the irresistible drama of Duck Dynasty. Explain to me why Dancing with the Stars and The Voice are such a big deal. I mean, all I can do is imagine Russell Crowe dancing in a glittery leotard yelling, “Are you not entertained?!”
For a while, The Walking Dead was an exception for me. It was a show that garnered both insanely high ratings and followed an undeniably riveting narrative. The premise was enough to hook me, but the intriguing way that the series married ordinary life with the extraordinary circumstances of a zombie apocalypse was bizarrely alluring in its contrast to the exaggerated drama of every other zombie-related form of entertainment I’d ever seen.
Obviously, there are still incredibly high stakes involved, but there’s also a sense of community and normalcy added to the mild stresses of regularly occurring life-and-death situations. The very first scene of the season premiere captured this odd combination perfectly, as Rick casually strolls out to the backyard of his prison home while listening to some country music on his unexplained MP3 player.
A gaggle of zombies mills outside the gates, but the flippancy with which he shrugs them off leads you to think he’s just a regular guy going through his morning routine, rabid monsters in close proximity aside. There’s evidently a comic element in the absurdity of the situation, but it highlights a natural human propensity to adapt to even the strangest and most challenging circumstances. These quiet, revealing moments are barely enough to make the show worth watching, however, simply because it has so clearly lost sight of what makes a good story.
Characters, after all, are minimal considerations in a series that plays like a video game. The rising death count is the main source of consistent drama, simply because the writers seem to have a hard time finding other ways to drive the plot forward. That is, of course, until they find a way to incorporate a tyrant with an eye patch into the mix or introduce some minor character with a bizarre virus that induces zombie-dom.
Most characters on the show feel like a caricature of some sort, not people with real nuance. Rick is the greatest example of all, since he comes off as some kind of saint-like cowboy just trying to care for his family on the frontier of Zombieland. There are few sides to him other than his brief bouts of insanity in the last season. The female characters are even less relatable. Although Michonne is the ultimate badass and my hero in both life and a hypothetical apocalypse, she doesn’t nearly get enough screen time to visibly develop and doesn’t seem to show very many hints of sincere weaknesses. Don’t even get me started on the non-white characters.
It’s easy to see why Americans are so in love with The Walking Dead because it has so many of the recurring features of popular television. If you throw people into a difficult situation with a lot of external tension, you have easy entertainment. It doesn’t matter if the characters are flat and much of the conflict feels forced, because the persistent sense of danger is all that matters.
If such a show affirms traditional social conventions of gender, race, and morality in the process, then the danger it presents remains trapped within the boundaries of narrative. It’s both safe and exciting, like watching gladiators fight in a pit below you. It’s not that I don’t understand the allure. It’s just that I wish we could see beyond bread and circuses.
