The Walking Dead: Shambling and Shambolic

Hmm. The Walking Dead, how you consistently disappoint me. I mean, you fail on so many counts. Your characters are bland, uninspiring, and numerous. That's the real problem, trying to make people see that what works in one medium (graphic novels) doesn't work in another (TV). The Walking Dead comics are wonderful line drawings with no embellishment, representing a bleak world, pared down to it's simplest form: to survive. I'm not saying literature can't be be used to inspire or base shows on. In fact, Game of Thrones is a very faithful adaptation of the original piece and works exceptionally well as a series. True Blood is a good example if where a novel is used as a jumping off point, but accepts the fact that innate flaws and differences of a vista painted in your head cannot transport to TV. Obviously those last two are HBO shows, who take a lot of care in their work, injecting good money, great talent, and a lot of creative control into their pieces.

Above all, the story lines they have picked for The Walking Dead are too thin and diluted compared to the action you'd expect from an episode. Translating one issue, sometimes less, into one episode, is just too little. Along with this, the adjustments they've made to the plot (not complaining, as I said it's a good think to adapt correctly) and characters only detracts rather than strengthened as it dilutes further from the excitement. Andrew Lincoln as Rick also mistakes beige for intense and boring for steely determination. And because they want to keep using Kirkman's source material, any deviations need to be corrected or ignored with alacrity, sometimes either reducing them to ignoring significant change (as if they were a 1970's sitcom) or leaving the audience feeling like they are back at square one, making no progress at all at the end of an episode.

Also, how is their hair so grease-free? How are they so clean without water? How is Ricks shirt always freshly ironed? All of these oversights and Americanised media requirements for classically pretty people or full blown stereotypes just turn me off.

And yet, just as the Zombie's seem to limp on surprisingly quickly, I keep watching in the hope it gets better, knowing residingly that it won't.

Sucks to be me.