Walking Dead Getting Dumber and Dumber

Since I compared the latest Thor movie with the Pink Panther comedies featuring the comedian Peter Sellers as the inept Inspector Clouseau, I might as well chime in on the state of the Walking Dead TV show. It's getting dumber and dumber, not unlike the movie of the same name.

I mean talk about stupid. And I understand it's the writers making the characters do these stupid things. Last night we had a dude facing a woman holding an RPG pointed straight at him. Now the dude was a member of the hated enemy gang called the Saviors and the dude knew the woman facing him with the RPG was one of the members of a community at war with his gang. Instead of surrendering or running for his life, he makes the stupidest comment. "You ain't gonna use that, little girl," after which the woman fires the RPD and blows him up.

Completely stupid writing. Another example is when Rick, the show's main character, walks alone and unarmed into another enemy camp. It's a camp that had just betrayed him, and he faces the woman who led the betrayal and had shot him point blank. How stupid can you get? This group is a committed ally to the hated Saviors, and the woman had just shot him. She even makes it clear that she had just betrayed him and she had just shot him.

But Rick only answers that she only "grazed" him so he wasn't mad. Stupid writing. I mean what was to stop her or anyone in her community to shoot Rick right then and there? There are so many more examples of just plain stupid writing in the show over the past couple seasons, it's a wonder The Walking Dead remains TV's most popular show. 

Even my favorite TV show, The Blacklist, had a stupid moment last episode. The suitcase full of bones, which the show is not letting viewers know exactly whose bones they are, only that it's a secret that Red Redington is driven to keep, is finally recovered by Red. But does Red even look inside to make sure the bones are there when he's driving off with Tom?

No. Tom had put the bones into a big black leather case, which Red doesn't even wonder why Tom suddenly has a big black leather case with him as they are driving away after Red saved him. You would think Red would wonder why Tom suddenly has that case, and what the heck was inside it. You would think Red would ask, "Say, Tom, where'd you get that big black leather case, and um, just what the heck do you have in there?"

But no. He's content to watch Tom wander off. And only then does Red check the suitcase to make sure the bones are still in there, but of course, they're not. And of course, Tom made off with Red's special bones, having just learned the secret. But again, viewers have no clue what's so special about those bones. Whose bones are they? Liz's mom's bones maybe. But that would be too obvious.

I suppose the answer will come soon enough but in the process of reaching that point I don't appreciate such dumb writing from any show I watch. Lazy writing is not good writing. Stupid writing is even worse. In Blacklist the writing is lazy. In The Walking Dead, it's just stupid. Here's to hoping the writing gets back to the quality the shows had when they began.