Sunday, November 30, 2014

Coda To Another Pointless WALKING DEAD Story

A few days ago, in the comments section of my article on THE WALKING DEAD's last installment, I offered some words on the trajectory of the series:  

"The season opener was one of the strongest eps of TWD ever produced and its immediate sequel was--as always with TWD--to throw out the drag-weights, slam on the brakes and bring it all to a virtual standstill. Take an episode worth of plot dealing with the cannibals, pile on the padding to stretch it to two eps and so sanitize the ending that the entire point of the story is lost. Since then, it's been up and down, up and down. Every somewhat decent ep is immediately followed by a pointless waste of space. What you're seeing there--while TWD is at the absolute height of its popularity--is the coming end of TWD. It fell into this pattern in the last season, seems unlikely to ever pull out of it and it's more wearisome than back during the Mazzara seasons when it was just a bad show that drew a certain audience. Now, it draws a much broader audience and produces eps that encourage much greater involvement with it then it immediately slaps the face of anyone who extends to it any greater investment. That's the rotating pattern. It's a situation bound to produce frustration and that will only grow as the boom-and-bust cycle continues and the better eps become less better and fewer in number. I wouldn't want to overstate that--it still has some seasons left in it--and things could always change, as they have so often with this series. That's its course at present." 

Couldn't help thinking about that while watching "Coda," tonight's stunningly lackluster mid-season finale. 

The ep opened promisingly enough. The cop who managed to escape our heroes at the end of last week's installment was running for his life, hands still bound behind his back. Rick, pursuing him in a car, tells him to stop. When he doesn't, Rick runs him down. The fellow, now terribly injured, wants to talk, talk, talk, the way characters will do on TWD, but Rick just shoots him. Tells him to shut up. 

That welcome ugliness aside, the ep was another major flop, which is a much bigger problem for a finale than for a regular ep. The storyline regarding the cops running the hospital in Atlanta--an original for the series, if the word isn't too abused by applying it here--started strongly with "Slabtown" then almost immediately degenerated into the usual TWD stewage, a string of episodes so densely packed with pointless padding that it's a marvel anyone trapped within them could even breath. Rather than actually using the time they had, the writers fought a delaying action aimed at extending yet another terminally unterwritten plot well past its natural expiration date, promising its viewers, while it drags and drags, that there will be a big payoff at the end. 

But even competently-managed suspense must eventually pay off. We don't get competently-managed suspense from TWD. And tonight, at the conclusion of the hospital storyline, we didn't get any payoff either. No twists or turns. No big set-pieces. The episode's climactic event--the death of Beth--was also its only substantive event, and it was telegraphed well in advance--a thing everyone who has paid any attention has seen coming for weeks.[1] The only question was how it would happen.[2] 

That's not a strong enough question to keep people coming back to TWD over the long term. Even if the series typically featured positively sterling writing rather than its polar opposite, you can only toy with and abuse audience expectations so much, and this isn't TWD's first offense when it comes to that. "Shocking" deaths aren't shocking if viewers can tell they're coming, and tragic deaths aren't tragic if viewers have been given no reason to care about the character doing the dying for their amusement. Building an otherwise lackluster series around such events simply isn't a formula that can succeed for very long.

--j. 

--- 

[1] Much of online TWD fandom has taken it has taken it as a given. Carol was also set up for death, but it would seem her growing popularity saved her for the moment. Her character will have to be assassinated before she's bumped off. 

[2] Like a light-switch being flipped, Maggie, who clearly doesn't understand the rules of the series, remembered she had a sister tonight just in time to give us a big, emotional breakdown scene, and I'm sure we'll hear more from her on the subject of Beth in the future--some of TWD's patented posthumous tell-don't-show "character development."


ADDENDUM (4 Dec., 2014) - The one attribute Beth was ever allowed was that she was the one who aggressively Chose Life. This was introduced during the godawful suicide subplot of "18 Miles Out" and reappared again in last season's "Still," which, warts and all, I really liked (maybe as much for its ideology as for its actual content). I've been listening to Arnold Blumberg's "Doctor of the Dead" podcasts lately (which are, by the way, great), and in his take on the ep, he sort of ran with that thought about Beth's characterization and noted that her death was strikingly out of character (to the extent, I would add, that anything can be said to be out of character for TWD's paper-thin redshirts--it was a violation of Beth's one character attribute). After all this time as the girl who Chose Life, she essentially committed bold suicide and in a remarkably stupid way and for no real reason, endangering, in the process, the lives of all of her friends who'd come to rescue her.

When you subtract Beth's death from "Coda," it really has nothing else to offer. The whole thing is meant to be built around a "shocking" death, except everyone who has ever paid any attention to TWD knew, weeks ago, that Beth was going to die. A background-noise character suddenly given not just a prominent role in an ep but her own ep, she was, by the established formula of TWD, walking dead from "Slabtown" forward. The writers could have thrown us a curveball by altering the formula. "Still" occurred during a period when the Gimple Gang had broken the characters into very small groups and was trying to give all of them some attention. The greater attention devoted to Beth in that ep was part of a new direction for TWD, Gimple's effort to build some characters rather than following the temporary-plot-dictating-the-characterizations approach that had become TWD's standard. Some habits die hard--while that spotlight didn't presage Beth's death, it did lead to her kidnapping and disappearance from the series for an extended period--but it can be seen as progress, even if merely a rather timid baby-step. Contrary to the rest of the series, none of the regular cast died in the season 4 ender either. Falling back on the old formula this season is a devolution, a retreat from that new direction. Rather than moving forward and trying to forge a TWD that draws attention for something besides its "shocking" character deaths, "Coda" is a regression. Maybe it's a surrender. As I said above, I think it's a sign of the coming end of TWD. For shock-tactics to work, they have to be shocking. If TWD is just going to be a show that depends on shock- tactics but is so timid and rigidly formulaic that its intended shocks are so entirely predictable, it isn't difficult to read its eventual end in its leavings, even if it's still a while in coming.

9 comments:

  1. awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful

    awful mid-finale.

    I might quit this show.

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  2. Michonne telling Maggie at the church that Beth is alive was pure comedy. Maggie almost looked like she was on the verge of saying who? The only thing funnier was watching Maggie wail at the sight of dead Beth. I'm still scratching my head over the church being over run by zombies. How did so many get in and how did they get so strong?

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  3. I definitely thought about you watching the episode last night. Then, watching the funeral they held for Beth on Talking Dead, I wondered how anyone could possibly be surprised by the character's death. They were setting it up as far back as last season. The only shocking thing to me is that Beth made it off Hershel's farm alive. It's really a marvel the character lasted as long as she did.

    Anonymous' comments on Maggie are spot-on. So funny.

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    1. I can't imagine how it could have surprised anyone either. Everyone on the various TWD intenet forums have taken her death as a given for weeks. I thought they may also have been about to dust Carol, and that may still be in the cards, but I imagine they'll do some more work assassinating her character before that.

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    2. I think Carol is popular enough to be safe. Next to Daryl, Rick and Carl, Carol is arguably the safest character on the show. I think even Michonne is more likely to be killed off than Carol. I think they would have to pull of Andrea-level character assassination to get away with killing her.

      Kirkman joked about this a bit on Talking Dead, but guessing who is going to die has become remarkably easy. He compared it to a math problem. My fourth-grade daughter brings home harder math problems from school.

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  4. I'm thankful Beth didn't get the insulting T-Dog/Andrea treatment. Other that, yeah, it's a disappointing midseason finale. It seems to be the general consensus among critics - even forgiving websites like IGN gave it lukewarm reviews. The only reason why I'm looking forward to the midseason premiere is because Scott Gimple's writing it.

    Also, I made a comment a while back about how I'll be mighty pissed if Beth dies. I'm not pissed right now, but I'm surprised I actually felt sad about it.

    Also, I think this hospital storyline is another attempt by Gimple to mine what's left of the prison arc. Lamson's (the cop who knocked out Sasha) death in the opening is a clear adaptation to Martinez's death in the comics, from Rick ramming his car into Lamson to Rick shooting him in the head despite his pleas. I think Dr. Edwards (the coward doctor) is a nod to Dr. Stevens, the doctor of Woodbury in the comics. Dr. Stevens already had a counterpart in season 3, but Dr. Edwards seems to be the closest counterpart: Edwards' first name is Steven, he shares similar physical attributes, and is somewhat a mentor to Beth. This makes Beth the counterpart of Alice, which makes sense because they died similarly, they both learned medical procedures, and they both become progressively brave towards the end of their run. Sorry if it's random, but it's just something I noticed.

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    1. Yeah, it's pretty clear Gimple is conscious of the weight of the incredible material Mazzara utterly squandered; I've made note, several times, of his trying to further mine it. The opening scene with the cop, in fact, lifted some of the dialogue directly from the Martinez scene in the comic. Rick was furious with Martinez though, and strangled the guy with his bare hand.

      If I could manage to care enough anymore, I'd probably be disappointed that Gimple, who was at least trying to build characters and make TWD noteworthy for something other than deaths that are meant to be shocking, has fallen back into this rut, which is, as I've noted, a cycle of diminishing returns (largely as a consequence of TWD's gutlessness).

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  5. The Maggie "oh, by the way, your sister is alive" made me laugh out loud. Suddenly you care now, Maggie? No consistancy as usual. Maggie couldn't stand the thought of Beth killing herself in Season 2... but when she disappears Maggie and Glenn throw themselves in the opposite direction, and honestly don't even care that Beth is gone. I can't remember even ten seconds of service given to the fact that Maggie had a sister missing.
    Beth's death could have been much more dramatic and shocking, and it could have ended the show in the same way as it did. There was a perfect moment for it. When Dawn threw the other officer down the elevator shaft they had a shot from below. Dawn was positioned behind Beth and for a split second I had an almost emotional response. It would have been shocking, at least much more so than getting shot after stabbing someone in the sholder with a tiny pair of sissors.

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