A Review of The Walking Dead Based Only on Spoilers

There isn’t much about the TV show The Walking Dead that appeals to me. If I wanted to see a group of sad people struggling to survive in a broken, post-apocalyptic wasteland, I’d go to Bakersfield. And if I wanted to see teeming masses of mindless husks shuffling around without any ambition other than the unending desire to consume, I’d go to an Apple store.

No fictional wasteland can compare in sheer horror.

I may have no desire to watch the show, but because I spend a good portion of my time online, I cannot help being exposed to The Walking Dead in some form or another. Whether it’s random Facebook comments from a distant friend saying, “lol I can’t believe Rick ate Glenn’s face off!” or some stupid meme referencing an obscure line in the show…

… I just can’t seem to escape it. For a while I looked at all this with a sort of resignation. Even if I wanted to get into the show now, all of the big moments and crazy twists have been ruined for me, so what’s the point?

But then I realized that if I already know the most important parts of the show, then that means that I understand it enough to review it. Thus, I am going to determine The Walking Dead‘s overall merit by examining only (what I have been led to believe) are its biggest plot points.

Beth Dies

All right. This is apparently one of the most recent doozies. Beth is a character that everyone on the internet seems to be really upset about getting killed off. Apparently, according to a few people on a forum I frequent whose posts I skimmed, Beth gets shot in the head in a hospital when one of the last doctors in the world reverses his Hippocratic oath. Poor Beth just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the disgruntled former surgeon suddenly decides to “do harm.”

There has to be a way to blame Obamacare for this.

This certainly does seem like it was a shocking moment in the show, but without any other background or context I’m going to have withhold judgment about how this one incident affects the rest of the series.

“The Governor” Turns Out to Actually Be Former Texas Governor Rick Perry

All right, for this one I have to give the creators of the show some credit. The show went two whole seasons without revealing which governor “The Governor” actually was until the very last moment of the finale. Somehow, no one managed to see it coming, despite the fact that the role was played by none other than Rick Perry himself, albeit in heavy makeup.

Picture taken from his 2012 presidential campaign.

The fact that this twist worked so well really is a testament to the power of good writing and an excellent costume department, so I give the show some real props for that.

Relative Newcomer Aaron is Quickly Revealed to be an Alien

Aaron’s ominous declaration of being “a friend” seemed highly suspicious from his very introduction. There was just something… off… about him. But Rick and company are sharp-eyed, intelligent survivors. It did not take long for them to spot the scaly tail protruding from beneath Aaron’s fourth leg. After his cover was blown, he quickly revealed himself to be an otherworldly trans-dimensional arthropod bent on Earth’s destruction.

You can tell.

Luckily, in last night’s episode, Aaron was easily dispatched with three bullets to the brain and some swift katana-based dismemberment before he could relay back to his home world to begin the Xanthian invasion. Overall, I’d say this was a good outcome for the show as a whole, since it seems the characters have enough to handle with all the zombies and the occasional dragon roaming around.

I may be mixing up my spoiler-heavy shows. The Walking Dead is the one with the smoke monster on the island, right?

The Resolution of the Rick-Daryl-Carl Love Triangle

This is the one major turn in the show that I am NOT going to spoil for anyone out there who hasn’t had a chance to hear about it.

Based on my educated assumptions, the flurry of emotions surrounding the love triangle between Rick and Daryl and Carl has been building toward eruption for three whole seasons. In a lot of shows, situations like these are bound to get messy when they come to a head. Take three white-hot, ruggedly desirable characters with intense feelings for one another and you are sure to wind up with some tantalizingly volatile passions.

I won’t ruin it for you, but rest assured that the way the show plays off the resolution of these character’s intimate feelings for one another is really quite beautiful, not to mention socially progressive. From everything I’ve heard, the last fifteen minutes of this episode features some of the most tender, erotic moments of the entire series.

Don’t worry, these supple lips definitely come into play.

Verdict:

On a whole I’m going to give The Walking Dead two stars. Based on what I’ve been told by strangers on the internet and my own subsequent logical leaps, I think that the show has a lot of interesting twists, but it seems to be just too all over the place to really come to terms with itself.

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