The Walking Dead Sputters to an End

I watched The Walking Dead finale last night. (No spoilers if you haven't seen it.) My expectations were fairly low as I've been underwhelmed for the past couple seasons, so that was good, because the finale matched my expectations. 

It's a shame, because The Walking Dead started out so, so great. The pilot episode was one of the best pilots ever and set up this wonderful world with a great lead character. It just did so much right, and then the rest of the short first season just knocked it out of the park. Second season was just as strong, in my opinion, and the third, fourth and fifth seasons were almost as good. The characters and the writing were spectacular. There was a sense of danger as any of the main characters were at risk of dying at any time.

But the show began to falter in later seasons for whatever reason. Partly the cast became too big and it was hard to follow so many different people over the lengthy season breaks. And the risk factor went away for the most part. For example, the series finale saw the loss of, what, two or three minor characters and one longer-term character? Really? I guess you can't kill people off if you are planning a bunch of spin-offs featuring those characters! Money over concept integrity.

I blame the writing and leadership (showrunner), but there's other issues at work such as maintaining the concept over 11 seasons. There's a great article here titled The Walking Dead Didn't Survive It's Own Success that does a great job of outlining the history of the show and some of the problems it encountered as it aged.

I won't go into a lot of detail because I don't want to spoil anything for those who may be interested in watching. I talked to someone recently who was watching the first seasons. My advice would be to watch through season 5 maybe. Sure, there were some good episodes after that, but the decline story-wise was noticeable. 

I'm sure there's some application or takeaway to this, but I can't think of it right now, other than to say that any narrative has to have a clear theme and guiding hand and not just keep going for the sake of making a buck. Sorry, Walking Dead. I'll remember the good first half of your run, and the rest can be a cautionary tale.