The Walking Dead is good. There isn’t too much argument out there on that subject. How good it is though, is a fairly big debate. The show’s first season was short and nearly half of it drove the story forward in no way whatsoever. It wasn’t jam-packed with zombies or slasher film violence, so why were people watching it? For the most part, I perceive it to be because the show took a largely ridiculous genre and made it a little less moronic, in turn, opening up what would ordinarily be something with a cult following to the public at large. I say “a little less” because there are still a myriad of issues that the show has and most of them have been truly fleshed out now that we’ve seen a good deal of season two. I won’t bore you with the details, but in short: the story has progressed slower than just about anyone thought humanly possible and the characters are prone to doing awfully stupid things. What then can be done to end this debate on the merits of the show and push it firmly towards the quality of its AMC counterparts Mad Men and Breaking Bad you ask? I have one or two ideas...

Bring Some Strangers Into the Mix

While this particular zombie apocalypse does appear to have been fairly disastrous for the human race’s numbers, there's no doubt that plenty of people are still alive out there. While our characters haven’t moved that far across planet Earth (which is what they seem to think the U.S. is as I don’t recall a single mention of trying to go somewhere else), it wouldn’t be difficult to write story lines in which they end up interacting with people that they don’t know. The show’s mid-season premiere did exactly that and even though the result of the path crossing was one fairly short scene, it rivaled the best material that they’ve put out this season. The group meeting Dr. Jenner in season one is also a prime example of an outside presence creating much more entertaining drama than the group ever could by themselves. Unknown entities that can actually interact with our core characters on a level other than just trying to eat them provides infinite possibilities to the show’s narrative. Cameo appearances can provide useful exposition and drive the story in different directions with an ease that the show needs right now. More importantly, introducing new characters to the group allows for the possibility that the people we already know might die.

 

Shake-up the Time Periods

Thus far the show has used them a few times and pulled them off fairly well, lending credence to the notion that introducing more flashbacks into the show could really work. We don’t really have any idea how the group managed to assemble, we don’t really know where they are from or what they went through before Rick showed up and we don’t know what their lives were like beforehand. There’s multiple episodes worth of material in all of those stories and it seems to have completely escaped the minds of the writers. The Walking Dead doesn’t have the mythology of a show like Lost and it certainly wouldn’t approach its flashbacks in the same way, but it, along with other shows, films and books throughout time have proven that flashbacks can work. Past events also have a much greater scope for action, especially those happening around the time of the outbreak, and could be a perfect counterbalance to a present day story that is lagging in pace. Moreover, flash-forwards may even be worthy of consideration to the same end; showing us that our characters are going to end up in a situation we can’t currently comprehend and leading us to it with the additional drama of knowing the end result of people’s actions. 

 

Develop a Story now and Then

Remember that time Rick mentioned that Lori was basically a heartless mother right before he got shot? The time that Morgan said he’d be up to Atlanta in a few days? The time that Merle Dixon disappeared and apparently stole a van with vengeance on the brain? The time that Jenner told Rick something in his ear? The time that Andrea and Shane had sex? Remember how none of these things really went anywhere? Me too! I’m all for developing the story over time, but this show has introduced so many threads into its narrative that just go nowhere that it’s becoming frustrating. Aside from Dale’s protective nature of the group (Andrea in particular), just about nothing has been touched upon multiple times throughout episodes. Seemingly important things happen and then the new episode arrives and it seems to have had no effect on people at all. Now that the Sophia storyline is over with everybody is just going to suddenly realize that they have reasons to be pissed at one another and collapse into a pile of rage? I hope not, but at least some kind of acknowledgement of the various things that have happened thus far wouldn’t go a miss. 

 

Make the Zombies a Realistic Threat

Despite these things seemingly having killed off almost every living person in existence, along with some of the characters that we’ve met, they’re not actually much of a threat. They’re slow, they’re stupid, they don’t really have particularly refined motor skills yet everyone seems to be terrified of them. The whole purpose of the show thus far is to find safety from these things but I can’t really figure out why. The second season has showed us that all you have to do to get away from them is head into the middle of the countryside and if and when they do show up, unless there are hundreds of them, you can just kill them all with relative ease. In the event that there is a huge crowd, all you have to do is get in a car and find a new place to lay low and if the bite is the threat, surely something as simple as thick clothing would remove any form of danger from contact with them. I don’t have any particular suggestions of how to do it, but more dangerous zombies would add at least some justification to everything that’s happening.