Despite My Best Efforts I still Hate the Walking Dead

I hate the Walking Dead. So if you love it and your curious why, read on. If you want to know why so you can convince me otherwise, find a new motivation. I just want something different from television. The most frustrating thing about The Walking Dead (T.W.D.) for me is the lack of a full story arch, followed by Rick just generally, closing that there is no sound decision maker.

I am positive that the writers of Walking Dead are going to move on and write some phenomenal things. The character development definitely had my attention. I get the metaphor for the human condition, capitalism. The futility of it all. I get it. It just doesn't do it for me, it's not enough for me, and I get the sense that that's the point of the show in a lot of ways. There are multiple accounts online linking T.W.D. to Marxism, the zombies being capitalists that just consume, which them the surviving humans would be communists, place to place with no regard to ownership, living as a unit. Whatever reading about all the symbolism of the walking dead always disappoints me, I really want to get into it, that's exactly the veiled entertainment I usually enjoy, and I just can’t.

The most glaring thing that I just can't move past is the need for a clear, purposeful resolution. I watched the first 5 seasons, I really gave it a shot, the only resolution to a story seemed to involve death, the first season set up an arch driven by solving the zombie problem, which the show eventually abandoned, and every other solution moving forward was thwarted by villains. I personally just need a full story, I Know not everyone is like that; I can't listen to ticking clocks or techno, my brain gets anxiously fixated on completing the patterns and I find it distressing. The lack of clear resolution to plot lines other than death just doesn't work for me.

Issue #2 is Rick Grimes. I hate him. As a woman, I find watching men maintain positions of power while also being incompetent and failing repeatedly, is so real, it ruins the whole show. He makes it impossible for other characters to grow and change, or for the story to move forward by his continued existence. I hate him, he makes the show infinitely less enjoyable. The Rick problem is only exacerbated by the fact that the group continually decides he is their default leader, despite his lack of people skills and decision-making competence. All the moral quandaries and character development is for nought because they just keep following his dumb ass.

So heres the other problem I have, how does everything in the zombie apocalypse go bad so quickly? Who shuts off the power and water? Who leaves them off? Why didn't Rick get eaten by zombies when he was in a coma? How long would the food in the stores last? Why do the buildings just fall apart so rapidly, if Rick was in the coma for 4-6 weeks, how then does he not have atrophy, but also why then is the grocery store they go to collapsing already? Especially now that I have spent a month in which I don't leave my house and society in multiple facets halted, I lack the suspension of disbelief to enjoy T.W.D.

The premise of writing characters and putting them into various scenarios while maintaining their core characteristics has components of fantastic writing. The downfall is for someone like myself who wants a story that is pushing forward, problems being resolved and characters growing, there eventually becomes a constant let down. Most of my favorite TV shows I don't enjoy past the 5th season and I almost never watch sequels to movies or spinoffs, I don't need every iteration a story has to offer. Which I suppose is the point of genres.