I’m holding dice in my fist and blowing into my hands for luck, hoping to win big on the craps table of life. I’m chasing a loss, but the loss isn’t money - it’s time. Around 147 hours of my life. Almost a week! A week of my life spent watching a show that’s morphed into a soap opera with zombies. The Walking Dead is shit, and yet I shamble onwards, clawing and shuffling, hoping I get to sink my teeth into something soon.
Last night saw the return of The Walking Dead’s tenth season, and episode 17 barely did anything to give me hope it would be any better than the previous five or six seasons, which have also been terrible.
At one point in this episode, a sniper has Daryl and Maggie pinned down against some trees. Two of Maggie's friends who we just met 30 seconds ago have been shot. There’s no cover around and Daryl only has a crossbow because he’s the crossbow guy. Maggie says, “Keep him distracted and I’ll flank.” Then she just walks out from the tree and strolls up to the sniper nest.
I know we’re meant to suspend our disbelief in a world where the dead have risen, but come on - at least try to make a sniper standoff exciting. You can’t just introduce new people and kill them off within minutes. I don’t care about them, you’ve not given me any time to care. I don’t even know their names.
New characters in The Walking Dead might as well be wearing red shirts at this point, and established characters might as well be walking around in a kevlar onesie. In a world where people stab zombies through the head with literal stakes, there are still no stakes. Even series lead Rick Grimes got to leave the show with his life intact, just in case AMC wants to offer the actor a bucket of cash and milk the series’ rotten teat at some point in the future. Michonne, too, has also pissed off and left her kids behind, probably because actor Danai Gurira realised the show is awful now.
Yet again, the series introduces us to a new human faction for our heroes to fight against. These ones are called the Reapers or something, and in this TV show that’s basically just PUBG now, they’ve found a drop crate and unlocked ghillie suits. The last bunch of big bads, the Whisperers, at least had an interesting gimmick - wearing the skin of zombies to blend in with the horde - but these new guys just seem like serious military types with serious military gear.
When Maggie gets the drop on the sniper nest, Ghillie Man jumps out from the foliage and there’s a fight that’s seemingly been choreographed by Greg from AMC’s accounting department. Maggie is in trouble, but Daryl comes to the rescue, stabs the dude, and gets thrown into a tree. But then Ghillie Man is suddenly surrounded by their allies and he knows he’s beaten. He pulls a pin on a grenade and everyone hits the deck as he explodes into meaty chunks, the bone fragment shrapnel miraculously missing everyone. Honestly, it feels as if the show’s creators are as bored as the audience.
Oh, I forgot the context for this confrontation. Let’s rewind a bit. So, Maggie is back after a bit of a hiatus, and she’s brought a handful of new characters with her (they’ll probably be the first to die this season). She finds out that Hilltop has been destroyed after the mid-season finale, and she wants to join her group of survivors with Hilltop’s and regroup at Alexandria. So she heads off with Daryl to get her cronies and her son, Hershel. This is how most episodes of The Walking Dead play out if you break them down: we’re going to get something and then we’re coming back.
When they get to Maggie’s camp, it’s burnt out and her son and friends are all missing. People are dead, the buildings are burnt out, and that sniper is on the loose. When the smoke clears after the grenade blast, there are very few of Maggie’s people left, but somehow little Hershel is just chilling in a nearby tree without a scratch on him.
Thank god there are only 29 episodes left until the end - just one more day of my life. I’ve invested too much time in it to cash out now, even though every episode finds a new way to annoy me. At least with the end in sight, there’s a chance the writers will find a way to make me care again. Find out next week when Daryl has to trek across the post-apocalypse to find a potato or some shit.