It’s time to give up on ‘The Walking Dead’ already

Now that season nine of The Walking Dead has shuffled on and off our screens like a rotting corpse who’s gnawed its own limbs off in boredom, we have a revolutionary idea to share with you: it’s time to stop watching the show.

At Film Daily, we conveniently forgot to continue tuning in to the AMC zombie drama at around the same time as Negan (the usually wonderful Jeffrey Dean Morgan) started bashing in the skulls of fan favorites like Glenn (Steven Yeun) and that redneck who looked like the lead singer of a Metallica cover band. Ironically, that might have been the most exciting thing to have happened to the show in seasons.

And yet, we drifted off. We tapped out. We were officially done with The Snoring Dead.

It’s worth noting that prior to this moment, for heavens knows how many seasons, the show was only really enjoyable as a shambling hatewatch – the TV equivalent of hooking up with someone you really can’t stand just because you have a deep, innate disrespect for yourself and a savage need to complain about things perfectly within your control.

Though the show would occasionally showcase a bright, shining moment of genius (we’ll always think fondly of Melissa McBride’s Carol telling a homicidal child to look at some flowers while she savagely shot the kid in the head – yowza!), overall it does nothing and goes nowhere.

The Walking Dead appeared to expire at some point during S2 and as a result, this show about zombies is itself a zombie. It’s a shuffling, reanimated corpse dragging the entrails of a perfectly serviceable narrative behind it when it could be so much more.

Still watching the show? Not too proud to admit  S9 wasn’t great and nor were S8 or S7, come to think of it? Maybe you should just do yourself a favor and quit the show like the bad TV habit it’s become.

We understand your potential motives for wanting to carry on, though. For one thing, at eight seasons in you’ve likely dedicated a great deal of time in watching Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) fail to shoot straight time and again or in seeing Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) mumble incoherently about his bike.

For another, you’re likely a really good person rooting for the show to improve and hoping all of this nonsense eventually leads to a satisfying finale in which every plot point and mystery is neatly tied together for you. Sadly, that probably isn’t going to happen.

There have been various genre shows that have strung diehard fans along throughout a progressively weak set of seasons before shitting the bed completely when the finale has arrived. Remember the Dexter finale in which our titular serial killer decided to forego just about every character detail we loved about him so he could go live in the woods to chop wood and cry? It happened!

Or the Lost finale in which fans feverishly awaited any explanation for a million unsolved mysteries and received an open-ended shrug explaining exactly nothing? The Walking Dead is making us think it’s capable of the same face-palm of a finale. Fans will want closure and answers but instead, the show will likely end on a closeup of Rick’s dirty face while a zombie can be heard offscreen. Will he live or die? Who knows? Thanks for watching!

So please, if you’ve been barely enjoying the past season (or several seasons) of the series then just do yourself a solid and stop. There will be no satisfying finale and it’s definitely not going to be changing its consistent formula of red shirt murders, finding a stable home only to be infiltrated by an outside threat, and long laborious scenes in which “the gang” walks slowly across a desolate landscape.

You’re better than that. Shoot the show in the head (or you know, just don’t switch the damn thing on) and give up on it already.