Mind Coffee: Time is running out for ‘The Walking Dead’

Sunday night used to be must-watch TV in our household. Must-watch as far as one show – “The Walking Dead.”

In fact, it was the only show on TV that we watched regularly.

We cared about the characters. We celebrated their victories and mourned their losses which, in a show like “Walking Dead,” tend to outweigh the victories. We suffered as favorite characters died – and a lot of favorite characters die in “Walking Dead.” The zombies were almost an afterthought. The walking dead were the ones still living.

But this season, we must make ourselves watch it. Yeah, I know, if we don’t like it, why torture ourselves? Investment – we’ve invested six seasons to it and don’t want to feel like we’ve wasted that time.

The downward spiral began with the first episode of the season when two characters, including Glenn, who’d been around since the beginning, had their heads bashed in – in graphic, overlong, over-squishy detail – by a barbed-wire-encircled baseball bat. While their deaths moved the plot along, the on-and-on-and-on method of it was – sorry for this – overkill and unnecessary.

Since then, the episodes have mostly been unrelievedly grim.

There is no joy in Deadville, or very little.

The character Negan, he of the baseball bat, was interesting at first; now he’s just a nasty cartoon. My wife constantly yells at the TV, “Just SHOOT him!” Rick, who has led the group since Day One, has gone wimpy, terrified that more will die and it will be his fault.

But mostly, “Walking Dead” has become repetitious. The group runs from zombies, finds a place where they think they can live peacefully, then a horde of zombies comes shambling through or they run into living people who are worse than the zombies and it’s on the road again. Over and over.

Sure, the zombie apocalypse is no picnic, and watching people grow crops is boring, but c’mon. If bad stuff is going to happen, at least make it different from the last time bad stuff happened.

At this point, we’ve got several episodes recorded, so we can watch them at our leisure. And we will; we’re not ready to toss “The Walking Dead” like a rotten corpse onto a pile of other rotting corpses. There still are things we like about the show.

But time is running out. And not just for the characters.

Contact Shawn Ryan at sryan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.