When you think of popular TV shows, two usually came to mind, HBO’s Game of Thrones and AMC’s The Walking Dead. The latter, a popular zombie apocalypse series on AMC, has fallen off the deep end this season, and is in a massive five year low in viewer decline. Here are some reasons that the show is heading this direction:

1. Source Material is dragging the show down the wrong path.

The drama has followed the comic’s source material somewhat, being very loosely used in the first five years, following plot arcs and including characters from the comic strip the television series is based on. In the first five seasons of the series, we followed Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) who awoke from a coma in the zombie apocalypse and sought out to find his family, which he does. From there the story progresses with Grimes as the leader of the group from the first season onward.

What does this have to do with the series now? The series then followed, as I have previously stated, plot arcs from the comic series of The Walking Dead, often swapping characters out and putting them into these new twists and arcs; a perfect example is when Hershel Greene (played by Scott Wilson) has his leg cut off after being bit by a walker, this is similar to what happens to Dale Horvath (played by Jeffrey DeMunn in the television series) in the comic series. Another example using Wilson’s Hershel was his death by decapitation at the hands The Governor, which was originally given to Tyreese in the comics. However, in the show, Dale was already dead at this point. While the show followed the comics in some cases or swapped out things, they did not follow it to the letter, a problem that has surfaced in this season and the last season of the show. For example, Michonne in the show has adopted Andrea’s story in the comics to a big extent, from developing a relationship with Rick, to working on her shooting with a sniper rifle, to even making very similar remarks and saying lines Andrea has in the comics. There is a huge difference between swapping things in like they have in the past and still continue to do in the show, and copying the comics largely, which is exactly what they do now.

There is a difference between the swapping of plot arcs then between the two universes and the way they do it now, when most of the story itself now is based on most of the comics.

One things that made the first few seasons great was the brand new characters, the ones who never existed in the comics, like Sasha WIlliams, Daryl Dixon and Merle Dixon. This season tried that with Jadis and her group, but never tapped into what made the three mentioned above impacting. Instead Jadis is just a creepy girl who leads a group that lives in a junkyard. She has strange dialogue and her character seems very out of place, but she and her people are overall very, very flat and boring characters, which leaves us scratching our heads as to why they even exist. Sasha had a very long and eventful story for being a purely made up character (Sonequa Martin-Green originally auditioned for Michonne. Danai Gurira was given the part but Sonequa was offered the role of Sasha, a part made just for her), from watching several people close to her bite the dust to then stepping up and taking on a more “Carol-like” mindset of killing everything. Sasha grew up and fast, but towards the start of season six, her story started to drag and it got even worse in season seven, after Abraham died and it seemed to be a rinse and repeat process of what happened with Tyreese and Bob earlier in the series, she never let go of his death.

Merle was a purely original character, he wasn’t made for any specific actor, but he was given to Michael Rooker, who was the racist and, often times, cruel redneck who was only out for himself and his little brother Daryl. Merle stayed the same, stuck in his ways, but he was always a wild card, so he was fun to watch. Daryl, Merle’s brother, was the tough guy. He quickly rose to popularity, above that of any other character, including that of main protagonist, Rick Grimes. Daryl started off as an idiot, but later changed, making brotherly bonds with the aforementioned Grimes and Glenn Rhee. Daryl’s popularity has kept him alive (due to the merchandise, which Daryl’s popularity sells tons of it), but the price of that is the character has started to get boring, taking unnecessary risks and grieving over people close to him dying, like Beth Greene back in season five. While Merle and Sasha are both dead now, Daryl and the other original characters are proof of what changes can do and that’s not a bad thing, they just need depth and a connection to the audience, like the aforementioned three did.

2. Backstories are nonexistent.

In season seven, we were introduced to a ton of major groups and major characters. Some examples of this: Oceanside, Cindy, Natanya, Rachel, The Kingdom, King Ezekiel, Richard, Benjamin, Shiva, The Scavengers, Jadis, Tamial, The Saviors, Dwight, Sherry, Simon, Dr. Emmett Carson, The Hilltop, Gregory, Dr. Harlan Carson, and any other extras we have met. Sure it’s nice to meet new survivors, but not when the show introduces us to these characters only to give the characters we have come to love a way out of their “Negan problem.” On top of these horrible introductions, the show never shows us the backstories, but rather tells us them, which in my opinion at least, is a cheap way to do it. It deprives the characters we just met of the depth they need so we as an audience connect with them.

While I’m not opposed to seeing this many characters or even places, I am against the lack of depth and connections formed with these new characters as the story progresses.

A prime example of this is the deaths of Benjamin and Richard in “Bury Me Here” (season 7, episode 13). Benjamin was close to Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and we saw the two training once, twice, maybe three times, but only in the background at most. The same goes for the characters, we know virtually nothing about Benjamin except what we can pick up on by the shows’ visual cues or by the word of mouth of the characters themselves or those around them. The things we know about Richard only matter after he dies and his character has little to no depth before he dies because of how his story goes. We know he hates The Saviors, but who doesn’t at this point, right? We later find out that his wife and daughter died… hmm… that reminds me of an episode shortly after the introduction of Abraham Ford (played by Michael Cudlitz) where we saw Abraham beforehand and we saw what happened to his family before he meets Rosita Espinosa (portrayed by Christian Serratos) and Eugene Porter (portrayed by Josh McDermitt), or the episode with The Governor (played by David Morrissey) when he met Tara Chambler (played by Alanna Masterson) and her family, which is where her “past” really takes shape. But now we only get verbal histories and in a season with so many new characters but a very slowly moving plot (war literally only happens in the last episode of the sixteen episode season), that is a slap in the face. Both Benjamin and Richard die without much of an impact to the audience, except now we know that Ezekiel will lead The Kingdom into war now, which even then is foolish and idiotic.

The backstories were things that had driven the characters we have come to know now, like Carol

Jadis and her group, The Scavengers, kidnap Father Gabriel Stokes (played by Seth Gilliam), were introduced as the strange and stupid new group that has apparently never heard of proper English or complete sentences. Her and her group make a deal with Rick to take down The Saviors. Not only is Rick naive and stupid enough to believe it, but he gives these people, which he knows virtually nothing about, guns. Not only is Rick dumb enough to give them guns, but he has these people go to their home in Alexandria and help them fight Negan and his people, when they end up betraying him and his group, it comes as no surprise to audiences and it shouldn’t be. We know nothing about these people besides that they speak in broken English and use the junkyard as their home. Their betrayal means nothing to any of us and it shouldn’t because they have no depth and we didn’t see any of their backgrounds so therefore we had no reason to trust them and neither did Rick, who foolishly did anyways.

Another example is Dwight. Dwight shares many similarities to Daryl, because apparently Daryl was based off of Dwight. Dwight’s background has been purely verbal with no real depth, which is a shame since Dwight is popular in the comic series. While most of his character arc has been like his comic self, some of it has changed, such as killing Denise Cloyd with a crossbow instead of Abraham Ford like in the comics. Regardless of these changes, many hate Dwight, which I guess is the point, but when his character swaps sides to kill Negan and end “The Saviors,” then the audience should at least have a connection with him beforehand, rather than after, but this really isn’t the case.  

In the premiere, rather than focus on Negan’s kills, the focus should’ve been Negan himself (which it was, but not in the way that I mean). The episode should’ve shown us the good moments of the survivors being washed out by the awful moments to come. They also could have shown us Negan’s life before the apocalypse because all we have been left with is mere speculation over anything. Had they shown us more about the man, shown us his struggle or why he does what he does or why he is who he is, then maybe people would connect to him. But the writer’s clearly do not understand this, making him a maniacal but an otherwise flat and boring character that is the center stage for why this show has become “like a sitcom” and is declining in viewers by the millions.

The rest of the new characters and new communities have no depth and that is crippling the storytelling process of the series, especially in a slow paced and absolutely atrocious season like this one.

3. Organic storylines no longer matter.

Season seven was a big mess up on the parts of Scott Gimple and Robert Kirkman, as well as AMC. The storylines that made the first five seasons fun to watch and good to watch no longer exist. It takes Rick four episodes to start thinking about war and then 12 more episodes to even pull anything off, and even then it’s a mistake and a fluke.

The storyline follows the same overall plot for the entire season. That storyline was basically “The Saviors are bad, let’s go kill them, but we can do it later.” The episodes, one after another, were dealing with minuscule problems between a few characters, and me personally, I’m not against stand-alones, but it’s annoying to see every single episode revolve around the same people and the same small problems, then it gets annoying. The organic and fresh storylines every week made season two on the farm in specific a lot better than the Alexandria story’s we had in seasons six and seven. Again, this stems from their inability to change things up from the comics series.

4. Everyone wants to kill Negan, but everyone also sucks at trying.

Week after week, the survivors moved at a painfully slow pace to war with The Saviors, more specifically, with Negan who beat their friends to death with a baseball bat named Lucille. So far, there have been numerous attempts on his life.

Attempt #1: Rosita watches in horror, alongside several other Alexandrians, as Negan guts Spencer Monroe (Austin Nichols) by a pool table. Rosita pulls out a gun she had hidden and fires a shot but misses. The problems here are this:

• Spencer died the exact same way that he did in the comics with little to no changes, making it boring.
• Spencer is the second character in the first 8 out of 16 episodes to die their comic death.
• Rosita is stupid enough to fire a shot at Negan. Not only that, but she misses the shot.
• Rosita hits Lucille instead of Negan, and instead of dying then and there, she only gets a cut on her face.
• The Saviors kill two unimportant nobodies as far as the plot is concerned, Spencer Monroe and Olivia.

Attempt #2: Carl and Jesus infiltrate a supply truck heading to The Sanctuary, Jesus leaves the truck, but Carl stays behind to kill Negan.

• Carl fails to kill Negan, but kills other saviors.
• Carl failed to kill Negan even though he was only five feet away from the man.
• Carl doesn’t get killed or even harmed because of this. He is let out and is driven home.

Attempt #3: Negan’s wives lie to Eugene, asking him to make pills for Amber so she can kill herself. Eugene makes the pills, but figures out why they wanted two pills. The target was Negan and Eugene refuses to give up the pills.

• Eugene is back to being a coward.
• Eugene is refusing to kill the man who brutally murdered his best friend, Abraham, which makes no sense, fearful or not, he would want him to die either way.
• The wives have never just killed Negan any other way or at least tried.

Attempt #4: Sasha and Rosita gear up to kill Negan, taking a sniper rifle and getting close to The Sanctuary. Sasha refuses to take the shot because she would also have to kill Eugene to do it.

• Sasha fails to take the shot from this distance.
• Sasha saving Eugene by not shooting him, allows a massive dictator and an as*hole to stay alive.
• Thankfully Eugene stood right in front of Negan the whole time.
• Sasha is taken hostage by Negan as a result, not immediately killed.
• Sasha being captured happens offscreen, leading me to believe she went without too much of a fight.

Attempt #5: Sasha asks Eugene for a way out of the cell, a way for her to end her life, asking for a gun or knife, but she gets the cyanide capsules he made a while ago.

• Eugene is smart enough to understand that the wives wanted the pills for Negan but not smart enough to give Sasha the means to kill him herself.
• Eugene made the capsules for no reason if he hadn’t intended to use them on Negan, so why keep them?
• Sasha didn’t kill Negan earlier when he literally left her with a knife in her cell.

Attempt #6: Sasha takes the capsules while in a casket riding to Alexandria, so Negan can’t use her against her friends. When she reanimates, she is close to biting Negan but somehow fails.

• This is the third attempt by Sasha alone to kill Negan.
• Negan gets lucky every time he is nearly assassinated.
• Nobody puts Sasha down so she doesn’t kill Negan, they just have a Savior grab her and then kill that other Savior.

If you clearly can’t tell, there is no logical explanation as to why Negan is still alive, as he just “gets lucky” every single time because of the plot and length of the series. Negan is dead without a doubt, but logic has been thrown out the window with this show.

5. The deaths in this season really mean nothing.

This season we lost Sergeant Abraham Ford, Glenn Rhee, Spencer Monroe, Olivia, Fat Joey, and Sasha Williams, 6 names, yet none of them mean a thing to the story and in most cases, the audience.

Abraham and Glenn are the only deaths that impact the audience in a significant way, and even the death of the prior is debatable in this case. Abraham dies to give us suspense and hope for Glenn, which is a disappointment to his character and his character’s legacy. Glenn dies because the creator, showrunner, and writers “could not get the plot to work out for the season if Glenn survived.” Not only is this disappointing to viewers and kills the hype for the cliffhanger, but it was so predictable. On top of this, this is wrong on the end of those responsible for not changing it. The death is a slap in the face to viewers who have watched for a while and it shows that they follow the comics way too much.

Spencer dies his exact comic death, which, while he was listed as a main character, he has virtually no impact at all on viewers when he dies. Olivia was a nobody who died because Negan and the other Saviors are stupid enough to leave Rosita alive rather than kill her for trying to kill Negan. Sasha dies predictably by suicide and her death means nothing to the story, where she fails, yet again, to kill Negan and takes Holly’s comic death with a twist, but even that is lamely done.

6. The very predictable lineup deaths in the premiere that paved the road for an awful season.

Eleven lives were lined up before one man who was “waiting to order.” He smashed the skull in of one of these people, which many had speculated was that of Abraham Ford. That hunch proved to be correct without much of an issue with anyone, no one really misses Abraham except select few people. The second victim, Glenn Rhee, was also widely anticipated by viewers, his death, alongside Abe’s, was tragic but mostly because his wife, his pregnant wife, was right there and watched it.

Why didn’t they swap it from very obvious characters like Glenn and Abraham biting the dust? According to the creator, Robert Kirkman, Glenn’s death opens up numerous doors for Maggie and the other survivors, but you could argue (like I will right now), that these plot arcs could have easily been transferred to other characters. For instance, Glenn could’ve easily assumed Maggie’s leadership plot arc, seemingly since her leadership skills came from nowhere, whereas Glenn was already the moral compass and has lead smaller groups of people.

Abraham died to give us hope that Glenn would survive the slaughter by Negan. It’s a slap in the face to Michael Cudlitz, Abraham as a character, and his fans. Abraham is just to break the tension and even then it’s heartbreaking.

The expectation that both men would die cheapens their deaths and once again, we have a prime example of comic deaths being followed. The main difference this time is that Glenn went after Abraham, instead of being the sole victim, as he is in the comics.

Both of their deaths are a result of an extreme escalation of human on human violence, where we didn’t see most human on human violence, it happened offscreen, which is actually our next topic of discussion.

7. Human on human violence has escalated way too far.

Throughout the course of the series, human on human violence has been present, but after the season seven premiere, where we watched as Negan broke down Rick and the others by smashing their friends’ skulls in, wouldn’t have been too bad to see it offscreen or not at all, but they decided to show every single gory and bloody detail of the brutal murders of Glenn and Abraham, starting out with several swings on Abraham before he is down for the count and is still hit numerous times, chunks of brains and blood flying everywhere as Negan unleashes hell on Abe. As if this was not bad enough, Daryl punches Negan (so the writers have an excuse to off Glenn, make Daryl feel bad, and propel their useless narrative in another direction) and Negan brutally murders Glenn. Negan takes two massive swings before Glenn (who somehow took one more hit than the much larger man who died just moments before because that makes sense), is mocked by Negan, who says he “just cracked his skull so hard his eyeball is popped out”, Negan mocks him again after saying he will “find” his wife and then brutally beat to death, his head is totally shattered and proceeds to swing, well over ten times, at Glenn, who is clearly dead. On top of this, every gory detail of the contents of Glenn’s head is shown on camera, his eyeball laying in the gore, mirroring his comic death, while Glenn himself is still twitching and moving without his head, Negan walks away with a large chunk of flesh hanging from the barbed wire bat and then taunts Rick.

Why is this a problem?

Previously on the show, the human on human death was very minimal.

With the initial swing at Herchel’s neck by the governor being seen but not the man’s decapitation, which The Governor was on screen for but not Herchel. Putting Dale Horvath out of his misery at the farm via gunshot was done offscreen, cutting to Dale’s point of view while we watched as Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon pulled the trigger. Tyreese was bit by Noah’s brother on screen, he was put down in a shadowy way so we didn’t have to see all the gore and blood as he was put down. Lizzie kills her sister, Mica, and doesn’t do it on screen at all, all we see is the knife and we know she killed her sister.

There are several other cases, but it is absolutely careless how gory the human on human violence has gotten with no real buildup prior to. Given that there have been points in the past where violence escalated, but with a given buildup, like when Rick killed all of “The Claimers.”

8. Negan is overused and overrated.

Negan was revealed in last season’s season finale, titled “Last Day On Earth,” where he smashed in the skull of an offscreen victim with the barbed wire wrapped baseball bat he endearingly calls Lucille. His role in that episode was perfect, it was miniscule, ominous and made most of us hate the guy, which is the point of his character, right? I mean, that’s what has happened with all of the antagonists so far, from Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), to The Governor, to Dawn Lerner, to Gareth, each antagonist was, well, an antagonist who put our heroes down. But this is different.

Negan was way too prominent in the premiere episode, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” more so than he needed to be, which says a lot because originally I liked Negan, but after the premiere and his other appearances in season seven, he is just another flat and annoying character in the story. The problem with the writing for Negan is that he is more funny than he is a villain most of the time, which is not how villains should operate. Negan has awkward dialogue and I will give Jeffrey Dean Morgan credit for at least trying to make the character work, but it isn’t. Negan is way too overrated.

The problems with Negan are that you either love the guy or you hate him, the latter of which, I do. The writers, creator, and showrunner expect that just because Negan is the bad guy and he was prominent in the comics that we should automatically connect with him. Except anyone with half a brain would realize that’s not how that works. You can’t throw in flat and boring characters like Negan in the show and then just expect us to connect with him, the perfect way to do it, would have been to have Negan’s background (which we only would know if we read the comics or the Here’s Negan story) in the premiere and then revealed the deaths or swapped those. That way we would at least have connected somewhat to Negan, but instead we only know him as the polygamous pig who killed people we watched on the show for years.

For a flat and absolutely atrociously written character, Negan represents the problems with bad writing and even worse storytelling and what is a main point of what’s wrong with the show.

9. The show has become a soap opera with zombies rarely showing up.

“The show has become a soap opera. It’s a zombie survival show, but there are no zombies.” – Corey Chandler.

One of the focal points of watching a series titled The Walking Dead would be the zombies that make this zombie apocalypse survival series what it is, or so you would think. Thanks to this seventh season, walkers are no longer as big a threat as we had originally saw them as in season one when they killed some people like Amy, Andrea’s sister and Ed Peletier in the Atlanta camp. Or when they tore apart Noah in season five, or even Tyreese, Bob, etc. bit Herchel on the leg while the group was at the prison, forcing them to amputate his leg. As of now, humans seem to be the only threat. And no, I’m not buying into the speech Rick gave us a while ago about how the people who live are “the walking dead,” while that is true, the main focus of a zombie apocalypse should be the human survivors and the, oh I don’t know, zombies. The only real walker to show up in the finale was Sasha and that was only because she killed herself and didn’t destroy her brain. Kind of lame for a show on the apocalypse and survival in a new world overrun by the undead, which greatly outnumber the remaining humans who survived the outbreak.

I spoke to WHS students Masen Lamphere and Corey Chandler for their take on what needs to happen and why they feel the show has hit its all time low.

Corey: Honestly, it’s not even a survival show anymore. It’s more like that Wednesday morning soap opera that you watched with grandma, which is not how it started off. It just doesn’t seem like a zombie survival show anymore. They almost need to like start over, kill a bunch of people off, maybe narrow it down and then just act like they are starting over. Story wise, the show is trash. I’d rather watch “Days of our Lives” than “The Walking Dead”.

Masen: It’s turning into a drama more than anything, because they still do have some action, like every four episodes is action instead of how it was. They need to kill a bunch of people off to get it back to how it was. As Corey said, I don’t want it to be “grandma’s soap operas.”