Season of Disappointment

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

There are a handful of television programs airing in the first few months of the year that I look forward to watching, the last eight episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead, the new season of Downton Abbey on PBS, and the Netflix original House of Cards, which begins streaming at the end of February. These shows are very different from one another, and each has always had their share of strengths and weaknesses, but in the winter of 2015 they have all been somewhat more disappointing than entertaining.

The Walking Dead has been shuffling toward fatigue since the prison burned in the midseason finale of 2013. Recycling The Governor as a villain may have turned out better than expected, but beginning with the death of Herschel the show started losing too many characters that the viewers cared about. In a show about rampant death you risk losing your audience as much as your actors risk losing their jobs. And maybe nobody misses Bob (except for Sasha), but clearly Beth had fans who are upset over her loss. Killing off Tyrese in the first episode of the back eight didn’t help things. Some fans may be wondering who is left to identify with. But beyond the constant deaths, the old run, kill zombies, find haven, get threatened by human survivors, burn haven to the ground plot can only be used so many times before it is totally exhausted. Because we all already know that Alexandria is doomed.

On the other end of the spectrum is the period drama Downton Abbey, which is populated by strangely compelling (if somewhat too modern acting) characters living on an English estate in the early 20th century. This season saw more that the usual share of contrived plot points, including one that turned the tables on earlier events by having Anna end up in prison on suspicion of murder. And like The Walking Dead, too much of this season spent time going over old ground, Mary’s manipulative way with men, Edith’s self-defeating self-pity, Lord Grantham’s general cluelessness followed by a moment of rare insight. And even developments that seemed more original, Daisy’s pursuit of further education, Barrow’s attempts to cure himself of his homosexuality, and Carson’s proposal to Mrs. Hughes, never proved as compelling as earlier events in the series were.

Finally, House of Cards gave us what we’ve been waiting for since season one, a Frank Underwood presidency. But the Underwoods aren’t nearly as interesting in power as they are when scheming to get power. Yes their power is threatened from the beginning by the Party’s decision to not back Frank’s reelection, but under the scrutiny of being president he just isn’t able to make those classically nefarious Underwood maneuvers. He then manages to screw up by overreaching on both foreign policy and his domestic agenda, not to mention the estrangement of all of his personal and political allies. I understand that Underwood needs to be the underdog in order for this series to work, but he just makes way too many mistakes. And the dynamic of the relationship between Frank and Claire, whatever deep conflicts and problems exist there, is founded upon their mutual desire for power and their mutual dependence on one another to acquire that power. Claire leave? I don’t think so.

The Zombie Notpocalypse

Much like the ubiquitous vampires of the recent Twilight era, zombies are a hot commodity, as evidenced by the popularity of The Walking Dead and World War Z. Sure, zombies have probably passed the peak of their popularity, but they may have a couple of years before they become as overexposed and tedious as the vampires.

One unexpected consequence of all this zombie popularity is that it has pretty much eliminated the possibility that the zombie apocalypse will ever occur. I know, you’d have thought that the major problem with that would be biological, that dead organisms can’t really get up and walk around after they are, well, dead. But the presence of zombies within pop culture poses another difficulty to the zombies, should the problem of animating necrotic tissue ever be solved, and that is, we all now know how to deal with them.

Let’s face it, the only thing that zombies really have going for them is surprise, no one expects the dead to get up and start biting people. In a world without a pop culture reference to zombies, people would probably be confused and uncertain how to deal with the newly resurrected corpses. But us, we’ve got this covered. After the initial shock wore off, we’d get down to business pretty quickly, shooting walking corpses in the head and making sure that the dead were properly disposed of.  Even if the generals and admirals were uncertain of how to respond to an outbreak, soldiers and sailors raised on Resident Evil and other video games would step up and squash the threat fairly quickly. Sure there might be some initial panic and maybe even quite a few causalities, but ultimately the zombie apocalypse will never have a chance.