DYLAN RUPPRECHT IS HABITSTATS!! (THEY'RE LIKE STATS FROM YOUR HABITAT OF THE VARIOUS FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT)
Below is the topic review of the week. The mid-season finale of "The Walking Dead" has yet again ripped out the hearts of fans. The second half of season 5 airs again this February, so to hold people over, here is Dylan's critical look at the hit TV show.
Apocalyptic Morality
AMC’s sensation, The Walking Dead is currently in the midst of its fifth season, and as TWD fans have come to realize, each season just keeps getting better. It seems as this show ages, the plot just thickens more and more without the stagnant effect seen in other shows by this point in their existence. At this point, other shows have two choices: either build to an ultimate climactic ending, or prolong a familiar format to the point of being too stale to watch, which will lead to the forsaken, damned status of cancelation. However, The Walking Dead seems to be an outlier: fans who have seen even the first episode of season five know that this show can take its familiar survival-in-an-apocalyptic-world plot and keep it, not just fresh, but sensational. TWD is a snowball swelling in size the further it progresses down the TV slopes. And this snowball effect is happening within such a strict plot structure as characters simply do not have the same freedoms and luxuries seen in other shows to afford doing drugs or caring about a big debt since every decision made is a matter of life and death. Quite simply, with its never ceasing, captivating plot that seems to be getting better each episode, The Walking Dead is the best show on TV right now.
The series is an adaptation of the highly acclaimed comic book. Rick, a cop that falls into a coma the very first episode after a car chase, hold-up goes awry, wakes up alone in a rundown hospital away from his wife, Loran, and son Carl. Confused and distressed from his first conflict with the living dead (or “walkers” as the show refers to them) he decides to go to his house to see if his family is safe. The show has grown as a bigger look at humanity that stems from this example of Rick’s basic human instinct to track down his family and make sure they are safe.
Sure, the ethics and morality of human nature become obscured in such protagonists as Walter White from Breaking Bad or the characters in Sons of Anarchy, but the question of morality become a much more complex issue in The Walking Dead. In those other shows, people rationalize hurting already corrupted people, but in TWD, people are turned to kill people they once considered loving friends just to survive. And in TWD, it’s not just a handful of characters turned morally bad, but the stakes are set up in such a way that virtually everyone faces ethical decisions. The end of the world is unbiased in that only the strong ones or those who are better equipped with resources have survived, but absolutely no one is safe. This is the ingenious formula that turns even the least seemingly corruptible people, such as little girls, into cold killers; other shows simply fall short to this large-scale look at human morality. On TWD, these ethical dilemmas become more complex – more severe – as even our most beloved characters are pegged off. Humanity and its ethics from before seem to be the question at hand here as every new season seems to push what the audience would constitute as being morally right.
There is no consistent format to how each episode builds into the next. Some episodes seem to be slow and methodic in its build; then out of nowhere, shock and terror can strike in an all-out crap storm. Predictability in this show is as nonexistent as life on Pluto. It’s this unpredictable nature that lures people in. The only other show that has a similar premise is Game of Thrones, in the sense that anyone can be killed off at any moment, no matter how important that character seems to be. The difference in TWD, however, is that there are far less sides to worry about: there’s people, and there’s zombies, and in most cases, it is the people that are actually the most fearsome of the two.
So, the speed at which each episode varies is as appropriate to how unpredictable the series is. A supply run can feel like it lasts for several minutes if nothing happens, or the contrary if a horde of walkers shows up and propels the character to run for safety! It is remarkable how this show creates a sense of insecurity that allows such seemingly uninteresting events to become action-packed focal points. Perhaps it is this insecurity and tension throughout every single episode that hooks so many viewers.
As this series progresses, Rick, along with a slew of characters who have been added to the plot seem to push the boundaries in terms of the decisions they make to survive. Rick, however, seems to be the most morally ambiguous as his acts of violence seems to further intensify as he shows that he will do whatever it takes to protect his loved ones. Take the instance we’ve already seen this season when he used a machete to chop down someone who threatened his son. Everyone would have been shocked if Rick did this in the first season. But, somehow, the series has made an act as gruesome as this condonable. This is precisely the reoccurring effect that is tested throughout the series.
Morality, or lack thereof, works deliciously well with this series built-in premise of doing anything for the sake of survival. We have seen acts committed on television that would be enough to cancel any other show. But on TWD they seem necessary. Somehow, this show has taken the pop cultural attraction to zombies and implemented them almost as a side aspect. It seems like zombies are just a plot tool to emphasize the raw nature of human beings in the face of death. Morality is seen as a weakness in this new world, and the more ethical you are in handling other people, the less likely you are to survive.
Such is exemplified through Rick as he goes from being caring, but ultimately a weak leader to a cold rugged man who understand the harsh realities of survival. How one goes from being trust worthy as Rick was before he reaches the prison in season three to being almost emotionless in denying a starving women shelter is exactly the whole point. And somehow, all of these ethical shifts are understandable as major character deaths, lying, killing, disappointment and failures when the stakes were so high all contribute to Rick’s transformation. Rick changes after so many of his closest friends die as a result of his decisions. These deaths occur to move the plot and thicken the moral skin of characters such as Rick. He goes from being too scared to kill a walker to chewing out the jugular of another, actual living person (with the beautiful irony embedded in that). It’s this moral ambiguity and the use of zombies as a structural devise that makes this series the greatest on television.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Review
Nightcrawler Review
Focus Features Review
Inventing Human Rights Review
Taking Back Sunday- "Happiness Is" Album Review
Ouija Movie Review
Over The Garden Wall Review
AMC’s sensation, The Walking Dead is currently in the midst of its fifth season, and as TWD fans have come to realize, each season just keeps getting better. It seems as this show ages, the plot just thickens more and more without the stagnant effect seen in other shows by this point in their existence. At this point, other shows have two choices: either build to an ultimate climactic ending, or prolong a familiar format to the point of being too stale to watch, which will lead to the forsaken, damned status of cancelation. However, The Walking Dead seems to be an outlier: fans who have seen even the first episode of season five know that this show can take its familiar survival-in-an-apocalyptic-world plot and keep it, not just fresh, but sensational. TWD is a snowball swelling in size the further it progresses down the TV slopes. And this snowball effect is happening within such a strict plot structure as characters simply do not have the same freedoms and luxuries seen in other shows to afford doing drugs or caring about a big debt since every decision made is a matter of life and death. Quite simply, with its never ceasing, captivating plot that seems to be getting better each episode, The Walking Dead is the best show on TV right now.
The series is an adaptation of the highly acclaimed comic book. Rick, a cop that falls into a coma the very first episode after a car chase, hold-up goes awry, wakes up alone in a rundown hospital away from his wife, Loran, and son Carl. Confused and distressed from his first conflict with the living dead (or “walkers” as the show refers to them) he decides to go to his house to see if his family is safe. The show has grown as a bigger look at humanity that stems from this example of Rick’s basic human instinct to track down his family and make sure they are safe.
Sure, the ethics and morality of human nature become obscured in such protagonists as Walter White from Breaking Bad or the characters in Sons of Anarchy, but the question of morality become a much more complex issue in The Walking Dead. In those other shows, people rationalize hurting already corrupted people, but in TWD, people are turned to kill people they once considered loving friends just to survive. And in TWD, it’s not just a handful of characters turned morally bad, but the stakes are set up in such a way that virtually everyone faces ethical decisions. The end of the world is unbiased in that only the strong ones or those who are better equipped with resources have survived, but absolutely no one is safe. This is the ingenious formula that turns even the least seemingly corruptible people, such as little girls, into cold killers; other shows simply fall short to this large-scale look at human morality. On TWD, these ethical dilemmas become more complex – more severe – as even our most beloved characters are pegged off. Humanity and its ethics from before seem to be the question at hand here as every new season seems to push what the audience would constitute as being morally right.
There is no consistent format to how each episode builds into the next. Some episodes seem to be slow and methodic in its build; then out of nowhere, shock and terror can strike in an all-out crap storm. Predictability in this show is as nonexistent as life on Pluto. It’s this unpredictable nature that lures people in. The only other show that has a similar premise is Game of Thrones, in the sense that anyone can be killed off at any moment, no matter how important that character seems to be. The difference in TWD, however, is that there are far less sides to worry about: there’s people, and there’s zombies, and in most cases, it is the people that are actually the most fearsome of the two.
So, the speed at which each episode varies is as appropriate to how unpredictable the series is. A supply run can feel like it lasts for several minutes if nothing happens, or the contrary if a horde of walkers shows up and propels the character to run for safety! It is remarkable how this show creates a sense of insecurity that allows such seemingly uninteresting events to become action-packed focal points. Perhaps it is this insecurity and tension throughout every single episode that hooks so many viewers.
As this series progresses, Rick, along with a slew of characters who have been added to the plot seem to push the boundaries in terms of the decisions they make to survive. Rick, however, seems to be the most morally ambiguous as his acts of violence seems to further intensify as he shows that he will do whatever it takes to protect his loved ones. Take the instance we’ve already seen this season when he used a machete to chop down someone who threatened his son. Everyone would have been shocked if Rick did this in the first season. But, somehow, the series has made an act as gruesome as this condonable. This is precisely the reoccurring effect that is tested throughout the series.
Morality, or lack thereof, works deliciously well with this series built-in premise of doing anything for the sake of survival. We have seen acts committed on television that would be enough to cancel any other show. But on TWD they seem necessary. Somehow, this show has taken the pop cultural attraction to zombies and implemented them almost as a side aspect. It seems like zombies are just a plot tool to emphasize the raw nature of human beings in the face of death. Morality is seen as a weakness in this new world, and the more ethical you are in handling other people, the less likely you are to survive.
Such is exemplified through Rick as he goes from being caring, but ultimately a weak leader to a cold rugged man who understand the harsh realities of survival. How one goes from being trust worthy as Rick was before he reaches the prison in season three to being almost emotionless in denying a starving women shelter is exactly the whole point. And somehow, all of these ethical shifts are understandable as major character deaths, lying, killing, disappointment and failures when the stakes were so high all contribute to Rick’s transformation. Rick changes after so many of his closest friends die as a result of his decisions. These deaths occur to move the plot and thicken the moral skin of characters such as Rick. He goes from being too scared to kill a walker to chewing out the jugular of another, actual living person (with the beautiful irony embedded in that). It’s this moral ambiguity and the use of zombies as a structural devise that makes this series the greatest on television.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Review
Nightcrawler Review
Focus Features Review
Inventing Human Rights Review
Taking Back Sunday- "Happiness Is" Album Review
Ouija Movie Review
Over The Garden Wall Review