Why I’m quitting the ‘Walking Dead’ franchise

WashingtonPost.com ^ | 4/11/16 | Daniel W. Drezner

[Hot Tabasco]

The answer to the question "What have we become?" is "Whatever we needed to become to survive." When we no longer need to be that, we can revert to a more civilized state.

Whoa, that's heavy dude! And to think that I watch TWD simply because I love zombie stuff..........

[Drew68]

Those with characters like Shane, the governor, Negan, and the Terminus gang WILL be a threat once the constraints of polite society are gone.

Just look at ISIS. Not everyone who signs up is a religious zealot. Many are bored young men for whom the opportunity to chop off heads and take sex slaves sounds appealing.

[southern rock]

One of the things that made me lose interest was wondering how they keep their clothes in such good shape.

The Sherpa collar on Rick's jacket always seems to be white, despite being drenched in blood more times than I can keep track of. I know, I shouldn't notice these things.

[Hot Tabasco]

First, the Rickites need to build the defenses of their home until they're virtually impenetrable. Then.......

LOL!

Had you been in charge the series would have ended 5 series ago.....and we'd have nothing to talk about.........LOL!

[southern rock]

But how many man-vs-zombie battles can you have? How many man-vs-man battles can you have? Why don't they just find a safe spot, build up their defenses, and start rebuilding the world?

That has been exactly what the show is about since at least the 2nd season.

[PCPOET7]

zombie story’s generally are not science fiction. Zombie story’s are pure fantasy. science fiction is anything based on science or where science will take us in the future.

fantasy is when you don’t want an explanation to how come something is happening. Almost all Zombie stories fall apart when the author tries’ to explain it in ways based on real world science.

One of the biggest regret of the writers for the show was having the survivors of the walking dead encounter one of the scientists looking for a cure in season one of the walking dead. The reason the writers regret the encounter is that the writer tried to explain the dead walking with science and the answer was not satisfactory.

[x]

zombie story’s generally are not science fiction. Zombie story’s are pure fantasy. science fiction is anything based on science or where science will take us in the future.

You could solve the problem by calling zombie movies horror flicks.

If zombie stories have to be either SF or fantasy, you're right that the "science" isn't really there, but the "magic" or "otherworldliness" or whatever it is that distinguishes fantasy isn't present either (except maybe by default if you want to argue that zombies could never have a scientific explanation and therefore have to be some kind of magic).

Other difficulties: 1) the setting is realistic, not fantastic, 2) post-apocalyptic stories have come to be accepted as science fiction (indeed, almost to dominate popular science fiction) and 3) there are a lot of quasi-zombie SF stories -- it's the "rage virus" or something like that that lets you tell something a lot like a zombie story and still call it science-based science-fiction.

[Vaquero]

Depends. ( Yeah I know the scifi/fantasy/sword and sorcery trichotomy )

Will smith in I am Legend (and omega man and all the prequel/sequel/reboots) pretended to be scifi.....like the virus that killed most of humanity, that must be cured (and made the apes smart in the latest planet of the apes reboot).

The best virus scifi movie is still the original Andromeda Strain. No zombies though.

[Constitution Day]

But then it dawned on me that I was watching a soap opera with zombies.

Haha! I've never thought of it that way, but you are so right.

I still watch it, but it has pretty much jumped the shark for me!

Don't even get me started on "Fear The Walking Dead"...I started tuning into that just to see what utterly idiotic things some of the survivors do to get themselves killed.