No, I don’t hate The Walking Dead. Yes, I thought this Sunday’s midseason premiere was awesome. So why the title? Its because of this article. I hesitate to even link it because I don’t want to give that garbage site any more traffic, but to understand my response, you’ve got to read the article. Its a recap written by one of the io9 staff about the latest Walking Dead episode. Its one of many TV show recaps they do. io9 seems to be a the science and sci fi part of Gizmodo… I think. I can’t really be sure if that’s their guiding theme, because they also have articles about Kanye West and piracy, which doesn’t really fit. In any event, they wrote an article about the recent Walking Dead episode and it was so balls to the wall ridiculous, that for the first time in I don’t know how long, I felt compelled to actually comment on a website. But before I get to that, I have a question…
Is there really a market for this? Paying people to write recaps of shows they could have just watched themselves? If you’re a fan of the show, why not watch it? If you’re not a fan of the show, why do you give a shit? This makes no sense to me and just falls into the category of “Let’s watch other people play video games on YouTube or Twitch!” to me. If you’re completely awful at games, I can understand wanting to watch a game you’re bad at to see how it is beyond the part you’re good at. I don’t really see much of a reason to do so otherwise, but at least that’s something. Reading about someone else watching a TV show you like? I just don’t understand this. Is this some millennial garbage? “I like this form of entertainment, but instead of simply enjoying and experiencing it, I’ll turn to another form of entertainment to watch another person enjoy and experience it! Because that’s the same or even better, right?” If its not some millennial garbage, then what is it? Where does this come from? How does a site survive doing shit like this? I’m old and angry and confused and yelling at a cloud! But goddammit, its a stupid cloud!
Get off my lawn!
You might be wondering how I even came across the recap, given how I feel about that sort of thing. Its because I saw that an episode of The Walking Dead had recorded on my DVR, and not trusting my garbage DVR to know what’s a new episode or not, I googled to see if the show had returned from its break. This was the first result. While the title didn’t spoil anything, it did confirm that the show was back. The title also stuck out in my mind, so I thought I’d go back and read it after I watched the episode and had formed my own opinion to see how it compared to theirs. Anyway, go back and read the recap. I’ll wait.
If you’re a fan of the show, I imagine you’re somewhat confused as to how this clown could have possibly seen the same episode you and I saw. Honestly, it sounds to me that he’s either a parent, or has a close relationship with another child about the age of the kid who got snuffed from the show and his projecting that relationship onto this kid. Having done that, he’s not able to actually watch the rest of the episode without being horribly traumatized by this thing that didn’t happen to him or his loved one. As I mentioned earlier, I felt the need to comment on it, and I did… only to find my comment was “pending approval.” I thought about what might have caused an instant hold on the comment, and I realized I used the word “fucking” near the end of my comment. Now this is a very naughty thing to do, especially since the extremely sensitive people who are watching (or maybe just reading about?) a show about the zombie apocalypse clearly would be far to sensitive to be exposed to such a word. I edited the comment to remove that word, but as of the writing of this article here, it still sits in pending approval hell. From what I gather from reading the other comments, its unlikely to ever be allowed past the filters. I find this hilarious because I used the word in response to the closing section of the recap, where the asshole hack of a writer (who by the way has no grasp of the definition of a TV trope) preemptively insults and acts demeaning towards any reader of his verbal diarrhea. That’s allowed, but I can’t use adult language in the comments section of a recap that attacks its readers of a show that is all about adult situations.
OK io9, whatever you say!
I decided to save the text of my comment and post it here. You can’t censor me, io9! I may have zero audience, but people find my site by accident through search engines occasionally, so someone is bound to read it and know of the lack of integrity of your site and the poor quality of the recap writers you hire! Without further ado, my response:
Before I begin, I want to make clear that of course you’re entitled to your opinion and yeah, of course not everyone agrees with everything everyone says. But just like you’re entitled to your opinion on the episode, I and others are entitled to ours on both it, and your article that you are paid to write for a public audience.
Last I checked, this was The Walking Dead, not My Little Pony: Nothing Bad Happens to Kids Because Kids are Magic. The fact that you use the phrase “child murder” over and over again shows that it was really that one scene that colored your perception of the whole episode. If a rabid dog mauls someone, the dog didn’t murder that person. Pretty sure the same would apply to a zombie killing someone, child or not, because the zombie has no real agency. Honestly, this really comes off as you imagined your hypothetical child or child aged relative in the scene and lost your mind about the episode. I think this was a really good episode. There were parts that were for sure tough to watch, but to claim EVERYTHING was wrong with this episode, then spend a good portion of the article crying about the on screen death of a kid (who are apparently magic and no harm can ever come to) is pretty ridiculous. You do understand for the world to end up the way it did at this point 6 seasons in, millions of kids had to die? Just because you didn’t see it on screen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There are a lot of other quality, safe, family friendly shows you can be watching instead of TWD if this is the sort of thing that bothers you.
Honestly, the rest of this article sounds like lashing out at nothing because you’re cranky at the idiot kid getting himself killed. (By the way, you missed the part where Rick was NOT paralyzed by the death of the idiot kid’s mom as you claimed, but in fact took action to save his son.) This line in particular had me laughing: “This comes at the end of the episode’s best scene, where Rick talks to Carl about the fight, and not because it was absurd, but because he saw their group and the Alexandrians work together for the joint cause of saving Alexandria.”
Really? This was the best scene? You realize this wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t all gone out to fight the zombie horde, something several paragraphs are spent bitching about.It looks like you’ve had it out for this episode since your advanced screening, though. I followed the link about Andrew Lincoln’s visceral disgust, and found that when you read the actual quote, he wasn’t viscerally disgusted! He was upset and disturbed, but since you don’t know what about (something you do admit in the other article), you’re really reaching when you decide to make it about how Lincoln has no problem killing kids on screen so that must mean the finale will be horrific and the show is terrible now.
One final thing. I did read the whole article because I was interested to see what else you thought was wrong when you said “Everything,” but it seems that “Everything” was quite an exaggeration. When you start your bullet points by insulting and being condescending towards anyone who disagrees with what you thought of the episode, you can’t really be surprised when you get comments that disagree with what you thought about the episode. However I bet it makes you feel very self satisfied when you do get dissenting comments. Because hey, we couldn’t be bothered to read that far and thought you spat on our mothers or some nonsense. Most of your other assorted musings don’t really stand up to logic. Abraham and co. came out of nowhere? You mean they didn’t come out of the truck they’ve been driving to Alexandria for hours? I could go on, but why? You likely won’t ever read this and if you did, you won’t be able to get past the child murder to discuss this rationally.
And yeah, I’m pretty sure everyone commenting, whether they agree with your opinion on the show or not, know how fucking jobs work. What a ridiculous and needlessly inflammatory thing to say. But hey, I bet anyone who didn’t agree with me didn’t read this far and is a big fat poopy head. That’s a valid way to close a comment, right?