The Walking Dead Never Recovered From The Death Of Beth Greene

Fans have been dropping The Walking Dead (TWD) from their queues as fast as Kanye West drops verbal inanities—based on social media comments, it's not because fans have concept fatigue—it's sloppy writing. I've kept watching out of sheer momentum, but as season 8 drew to its close, I found myself wondering about the exact moment TWD jumped the shark. There are a lot of choices, but after much contemplation and head banging, I've pinpointed it to the aptly named Coda, episode 8 of season 5—the death of Beth Greene.

 The show never really recovered after Coda; last season was the hardest to watch. The Negan storyline in the graphic novel was the comic's best and most talked about segment. Negan was scarier than the Governor...a villain for the ages. It should have been the show's apex—it's grand culmination. But it fell flat with stupid dialogue and nonsensical actions on the part of the heroes. (How the hell does Ezekiel's tiger know whom the good guys are versus the bad guys once set loose in a fight?) People that dumb don't really survive apocalypses. The assault on the fans' suspension of disbelief was merciless.

Ebb & Flow

So why Beth...? Why not the mishandling of the Morgan character? (Morgan and Rick could have been the new Kirk and Spock, a partnership for the ages, instead, they wrote him as a mental weakling who becomes an annoyingly obtuse pacifist [to the point of endangering the lives of everyone in Alexandria] in an apocalyptic setting). Fans were yelling at the screen. But I digress; back to Beth...

There's an ebb and flow to series writing, especially hard dramas. Even the best acting and dialogue can't overcome that macro rhythm—the one that tells you the guys who you are rooting for deserve a win to counter the several episodes of losses and ass kicking they've endured. Shows have been doing this for decades. You can kill off great and beloved characters, but there has to be a balance somewhere else. The death of Beth after such a hard series of trials in season 5 was downright depressing. It just felt wrong. After being attached to Maggie's hip since season 2, they finally decided to fill out Beth's character (played by the wonderfully sublime Emily Kinney); except that we now know it was only for the purpose of making us care so that they could kill her off. We've seen beloved characters killed off before even on other shows. Take Ned Stark from GOT, for example; the difference is, he was developed along an entire season and beloved as the patriarch throughout, not propped up in the eighth episode just to lop his head off. The way Beth was manipulated for shock effect brought a whole new level of douchebaggery to the show—one that made it hard to remain invested.

Harsh dramas need to include minor wins to make them palatable, otherwise people stop watching. Even M*A*S*H knew this. Hope is the carrot that strings along fans and characters. A show without occasional relief makes you want to slash your wrists. In the case of TWD, they needed to recover Beth whole and sound at that moment. I'm not saying that she could not have been killed a few episodes later...just not that episode at the end of that story arc.

Since then, it's been a continual slaughter of beloved characters in the most nonsensical ways for sheer shock. Our beloved show is no longer in the hands of master wordsmiths. Perhaps the dismissal of show runner Scott Gimple* offers season 9 a chance (though I think they should bring back Frank Darabont). Inertia has replaced momentum; I doubt I will make it past four more episodes if the show only offers more of the same.  

*Mr. Gimple remains a writer and producer on the show. After viewing the first six episodes of season 9, TWD is vastly improved over the previous three seasons. If there a term for unjumping a shark, it applies here.

Algernon Swift lives in New York and works for The Man. He occasionally blogs and tweets to let off his highly opinionated steam in order to stay sane.