It may be time for all of us to just accept that The Walking Dead is always going to be a stupid show. AMC can change showrunners as much as they want. (And, in case you missed it, the network announced during the mid-season break that it will be doing just that at the end of this season.) They can choose to follow the comic more closely or diverge even further from its text. They can rotate the cast, killing off main characters while bringing in fresh faces. But the fact is none of this will stop the show from being incredibly silly and failing to reach any level of quality above “gory guilty pleasure.”
There were other events that happened in “The Suicide King,” which we’ll get to a minute, but all anyone’s going to remember about it is Rick’s end-of-episode freakout in front of his post-apocalyptic family. While being asked to make a judgment on whether to welcome Tyreese and his friends into the group, Rick is distracted by the silhouetted form of his dead wife standing on a prison balcony overhead and soon begins to shout at the phantom woman in histrionic over-the-top fashion. Back in “Hounded,” when Rick first showed signs of a mental break by talking to a now-dead Lori over the phone, I remarked that it seemed out of place but would prove to be harmless assuming it was a one-and-done exercise meant to show how strained Rick’s mind is. Well, so much for that. Not only is Rick’s rapidly growing insanity going to be a lingering plot point, but it’s also apparently going to be wielded with the same blunt force the characters use to kill zombies on this show. There was nothing subtle or clever or the least bit intriguing about that last scene. It was a blast of pure, overwrought B-movie cheese.
Before Rick’s big meltdown, most of “The Suicide King” dealt with the repercussions of Daryl leaving the group … of which there really aren’t any yet. But that hasn’t stopped everyone from whining about Daryl choosing to hit the road with Merle after the two are rescued from the Governor’s gladiator games by Rick and company. During the entire first half of this season, we’ve been guessing that Daryl was going to have to at some point choose between the group and his brother. I think a lot of us assumed that would come in a tense, life-or-death situation, but instead it happens on the side of a deserted road during a few minutes of relative calm. The incessant complaining about Daryl choosing to bolt seems odd. Asshole that he is, Merle is his brother. And it should be obvious to everyone that they couldn’t bring Merle back to the prison. So what else can you do but let Daryl make a choice about what’s more important, his real family or his makeshift zombie-killing one?
Meanwhile, things are going to hell in Woodbury. Rick’s assault on the town to rescue Daryl has left bodies in its wake and the outer wall vulnerable. The pampered residents are so scared some of them are trying to leave. The Governor, now down to one good eye, doesn’t feel like doing much governing, emerging from his home only to put a bullet in a Woodbury citizen who has been bitten. (Was his sudden arrival onto the street to do that deed before disappearing again supposed to be funny? Somehow I don’t think so, yet I found it hilarious.) With him sulking and likely planning revenge, it’s up to Andrea to calm everyone’s nerves and rally the town. Which she gladly does instead of bolting for the nearest exit, which you’d think would be at the top of her list after discovering that (a) her friends are still alive and (b) the Governor was holding Glenn and Maggie hostage without telling her. Instead, she’s worried about the Governor shutting her out. Oh, Andrea, what are we ever going to do with you?
“So was there anything good in this episode?” you might be thinking. Well, Michael Rooker is all ornery and fun before Rick knocks him out with the butt of his gun. (I particularly liked him screaming “you really want to do this now?!” when Rick started pestering him about not being allowed to come with them before they’d even cleared Woodbury’s perimeter.) And Carol has a great little heart to heart with Beth where she tries to explain why Daryl may have chosen Merle over the group.
“Men like Merle get into your head, make you feel like you deserve the abuse,” she says. It’s a nice callback to her early days on the show where Carol’s defining characteristic was being an abused wife, and Melissa McBride imbued her performance in that scene with real depth. Also, Glenn’s transformation into a badass continues this week, although now it comes attached to some emotional baggage that’s getting in the way of all his relationships (with Maggie and Rick especially). It’s welcome character growth.
But don’t get your hopes too high. Remember, we also had this exchange this week:
Tyreese: “I must be the first brother in history to break into prison.”
Redneck prison guy whose name I forget: “Makes me the first white boy that didn’t want to break out.”
Ugh. More dialogue like that, and Rick might have company because I’m going to go crazy watching this show.
A few more thoughts on “The Suicide King” …
— You know that zombie that looked kind of like ex-Steeelers wide receiver Hines Ward? Yeah, that was Hines Ward. I live in Pittsburgh, and I’ve been hearing about it for weeks.
— Zombie kill of the week: Glenn boot-stomps a zombie’s head into mush.
— OH MY GOD, CHRIS HARDWICK … you’re not only back with your hashtags, but now you’re also doing live Talking Dead cut-ins during commercial breaks?! WHY, LORD, WHY?!
Follow Bob on Twitter: @robertbtaylor
18 comments
The Walking Dead, after The Office ends this year, will be my #1 ‘inertia watching’ series. (Hell, come to think of it, I may be doing the same with the comics.) The potential of this show is propelling my continued viewing; not even dumb-as-shit character moments can slow me down.
I feel a little bad for Hardwick. The Talking Dead seems to call for its “host” to be a hashtag delivery system and act as a conduit to dumbass, fluffy internet questions regardless which poor bastard is given the job. Talking Dead is clearly for those who don’t have the friends (or the Internet) to talk to about TV Walking Dead.
Also, what the fuck is a “Suicide King”?
you might as well ask what is google ? eh !
http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Suicide_King
Super nifty story, but that origin is totally urban legend :/ I should have asked why the title applied to the episode.
I live in the Pittsburgh area too, and I started getting side work in different movie and TV projects when the big tax credit began drawing more productions here a few years back. Have you tried getting involved with any of that stuff? I’ve managed to work in some capacity on a dozen movies, a few TV shows, and a handful of commercials so far, including some of Jerome Bettis’s S&T Bank ads. I got to be a PA for a couple of days on the pilot for “Those Who Kill”, which was my first real behind-the-scenes gig, and that’s really where I’d like to get more involved. The Pittsburgh Film Office site is a good start and is worth checking out for information if you’re interested.
This show is good for background gore and not much else on a Sunday night. I watched Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome instead. It’s a sad thing that intelligent shows are almost always canceled while the drivel just goes on and on. At least we’re getting another season of American Horror Story.
Ah, it was nice waking up to comments on this review. Thanks for reading and contributing, CHUD peeps. Glad to see I’m not the only one ready to, at least mentally, throw in the towel in this show.
Hey, thanks for the info, JohnDoe. Haven’t really been involved since I applied to be an extra for TDKR. (Friend of mine got called and is in the movie. Sadly, I did not.) But it may be something I am indeed interested in in the future.
I also laughed at the Governor’s shooting of Random Woodbury Guy. Did anyone notice in his quick list of the departed the Gov. named one “Heisenberg”? Hey, isn’t that a character on another successful AMC show, etc.
I caught it, backed it up to listen again, and thought he said “Eisenberg” without the “H.” Hard to tell though. Could have been a Breaking Bad shoutout.
I hate this show. I have stuck with it for so long, and it’s given us maybe three good episodes. Yes, the comics are awesome, but most of it they will never be able to show on television and the writing team for the show is terrible. The acting is bad. The plot is bad. The zombies aren’t present enough to make up for any of this. That, and these people have such a mundane understanding of topics like “madness” and “survival” that every character continues to suck at both. There’s more crying than Battlestar Galactica. You’d think by killing all of the biggest shitheads they’d actually be somewhere by now, but Rick has totally flamed out as a viable protagonist because his “insanity” is contrived and stupid. Carl was becoming compelling before he switches right back to “what’s wrong with dad?” mode. And they just wrote Daryl out of the group, and he’s the only one any of us cared about because he was the least full of shit. So that’s it, I’m done, fuck this show. I hope they all get murdered and eaten, and the show just turns into quiet montages of zombies wandering around. At least then the lack of decent dialogue would be understandable.
Proof positive that just because your zombie TV show is dark, gritty, and pessimistic, doesn’t mean it can’t be twice as stupid as an average episode of DR. QUINN MEDICINE WOMAN.
Gave up a long time ago.
Wow. Did everyone suddenly become spoiled with a Star Wars level of fanboy hate?
When you say “Star Wars level of fanboy hate”, do you mean “dear merciful JEHOSAPHAT how can something this bad be conceived by a human brain?”
Dead solid perfect. It’s almost as if the premise of the show is TOO full of promise – so they decided to fuck it up at every turn. Rick’s convenient insanity (and his refusal to trust ANY human) is beyond annoying. The writers are lazy, and insist on dumping EVERYTHING on EVERYONE at ALL TIMES – creating an absolutely hopeless situation. Jesus – if that’s the case, Rick (in between bouts of well-timed insanity) should just call for a mass suicide.
The only solution (outside of said mass suicide) is to rename the show “We’re All Fucked,” and zoom in on a different person every week having some kind of breakdown. I mean 60 minutes straight of some survivor crying, whimpering and essentially giving up. At least that way, viewers wouldn’t have any unreasonable expectations about the show.
How is one “spoiled” by the anguish of terrible Star Wars movies?
It just seems like they wanted to make it a soap opera, but needed to co-opt something cool to get anyone to care. I mean, to survive for as long as they have, eventually everybody needed to get their shit together and stop fucking crying. Which they haven’t done, at all. Am I really supposed to believe that this bunch of losers were resourceful and collected enough to make it through the zombie apocalypse? When they keep bickering about who they’re sleeping with and how they can’t talk to strangers? Come on. This is zombies and shit! You have the opportunity to make them shut up and kick ass as much as you want. That’s why people read the comics. It’s brutal, gory, and non-stop. Not because we care about any of these characters’ feelings. It’s like the writing team learned everything from romcom focus groups and beginner journalism classes so they can over analyze how to pander to the lowest common denominator without realizing that the way to do that is with excessive violence.
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