With S3, The Walking Dead is a “different show”—the most interesting one yet

Ars looks back at a tumultuous season and grabs 10 minutes with Robert Kirkman.

by Nathan Mattise - Mar 31 2013, 4:00pm EDT

Warning: This post—and likely its comment thread—contain speculation and potential spoilers.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/with-s3-the-walking-dead-is-a-different-show-the-most-interesting-one-yet/
The Walking Dead is many things to many different people—compelling, gory, frustrating, mind-numbing, pioneering for its genre on TV—but it's never dull. Season three comes to an end this Sunday, and there are as many thickening plots off camera as there are on it. Some major TV recappers have sworn off the show completely for its nihilism. And when AMC renewed the series, showrunner Glen Mazzara resigned over a "difference of opinion" about which direction the series should go. This triggered major backlash from the creative community, with Kurt Sutter of Sons of Anarchy saying AMC disrespects writers and Shawn Ryan of The Shield wondering aloud why anyone would sell a good show to the network. No matter where anyone stands on these issues (or on the show itself, promise we're getting there), The Walking Dead inevitably powers forward like its signature, unrelenting walkers. S3 was the highest rated season to date, besting shows like American Idol and The Big Bang Theory in the 18-49 demographic last fall and scoring the most watched single episode in broadcast this year (the premier of this season's second half). If you want to taunt an NBC programming exec, ask where the zombie series' talk show spin-off Talking Dead would rank among their network's offerings. Not bad for a comic-adaptation, right?

BRAAAAINNNS Technica

November 2010, Series premier:
"The first episode is better than the comics it's adapting."
December 2010, Season 1 finale:
"[The] finale seemed to think an explosion is the same thing as a satisfying conclusion."
October 2011, Season 2 premier:
"The TV show doesn't seem to understand what to do with survivors, but man it can handle the zombies."
March 2012, Season 2 finale:
"The Walking Dead is most gripping when any character drama is against the back drop of death looming. Whatever tranquility Hershel's farm once provided is long gone."
October 2012, Season 3 premier:
Brain-hungry walkers aren't the only concern
December 2012, Season 3 halfway:
Lori, split-seasons are equally frustrating

On with the show...

Now, is all the attention paid to the show merited by what happens in it? While opinions can certainly change if this weekend's episode, "Welcome to the Tombs," is a clunker, S3 as a whole is The Walking Dead's most interesting to date.
On a show where everything that happens is contained within an endlessly watchable framework—this zombie apocalypse isn't ending in S4—characterization is sparse and simply not the priority. The Walking Dead is about propulsion towards the next event. Our heroes are merely the lens through which we see reactions to these situations. When we started the year, Rick and company had just left the friendly confines of the Greene family farm. This week, there's an expected war between armed and organized living factions. We definitely ain't working on Maggie's farm no more.
Through it all, Hershel lost a leg, Carl lost his mom, Daryl lost a brother, and Rick lost his damn mind. It's been nice to see the wear and tear of this living nightmare explicitly surface. On the positive end, the Grimes group can now wield weapons efficiently enough to clear an entire prison or ambush a militaristic, constantly surveyed commune. On the downside, we slowly watched someone we know go crazy (even if the idea probably works better without ghost wife hallucinations) and had that impact reinforced by Morgan, a forgotten friend who met the same fate. "Clear," the hour of Morgan's re-emergence, was certainly a season highlight. We saw an unexpected fan favorite, heard Michonne talk, had a welcomed break from the will-they-or-won't-they games of Woodbury, and took a trip down memory lane with the Grimes family. But the real brilliance of that episode was how it only strengthened the journey continuing to unfold within Rick.
"When Morgan returned in the show, he’s a very different Morgan than when we last saw him. This character is back, but he’s kind of a completely different person," The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman told Ars. "If we saw Rick in S1 and then didn’t see him until S3, we’d be like ‘Wait a minute, who’s this guy? He’s completely different.' But you don’t really notice it as you watch from season to season. So to be able to do things with characters like Morgan, it draws attention to the fact that these characters are growing, changing, and evolving in really big drastic ways over the course of the show."
Kirkman, of course, is the creator of The Walking Dead comics and a driving force behind this apocalyptic world coming to television, gaming systems, and most recently the Web. Kirkman-fandom is a longstanding Ars tradition and he was kind enough to chat for 10 minutes the week after Rick and The Governor finally sat down face-to-face.

Rick's new foil however, that humble Governor named Phillip who we met in episode three, experienced this apocalypse evolution on speed. After suffering one loss of his own (RIP zombie daughter) he turned into a one-note dose of revenge-seeking evil. It makes you wonder if starting him off as a dictator-like ruler would've made more sense, but his initially democratic demeanor did one great thing for the show: it introduced his (theoretical) right-hand man, Milton.
As cliche as it is to have your brains guy named "Milton," he slowly became one of the season's more complex characters. First Milton was a yes-man lackey, soon after, a partial rebel who helped Andrea escape before ultimately snitching. Now, as The Governor has become more and more power hungry, Milton's allegiances have shifted to peaceful living. Getting to know Andrea, spending an afternoon with Hershel, and catching a quick glimpse of The Governor's torture chamber even compelled Milton to action in recent episodes. He is an absolute wild card heading into the season finale (though, avoid this Rolling Stone interview with Mazzara if you don't want our guess). Plus, Milton reintroduced the idea of humanity searching for reason within the outbreak. The Tibetan singing bowl chronicles were as memorable as the CDC encounter, even if the "research" would please Ars science editor John Timmer less.
"When you’re living on a farm, you’re under constant threat, and there’s a huge argument with this other group trying to move into your farm—I don’t think anyone’s going to be sitting around going 'let’s do some science work and figure things out,'" Kirkman said. "But once you get into environments like the CDC , kind of a no brainer, or Woodbury, which is safe and quiet to a certain extent, you would be able to have a lab and start to discover things. It’s the nature of man to want to find answers and that's something people would definitely focus on. We’re trying to portray it as realistically as possible through Milton."
Now, the show still isn't been perfect. T-Dog spent 23 episodes with viewers but his death is probably the most memorable thing about him. Andrea's waffling has been earning her "new Lori" status for many fans. And Oscar and Axel (remember them?!) confirmed The Walking Dead's variation on a red shirt: if you're not one of the 10 main characters and you begin talking about yourself, prepare to eat brains.
But S3 earned The Walking Dead a S4. If these 16 episodes erred, they did so in the opposite way of S2—with too much action instead of too little. New showrunner Scott Gimple had the writing credits on a few promising hours (the return of Morgan, the end of Merle) so the show's newfound upward trajectory will hopefully continue. Kirkman, of course, is a bit biased, but he certainly sees it this way. There is an exciting S4 to speculate about after the series gives us one final hour.
"It’s hard to do look ahead without spoiling the finale, but I will say it’s kind of a new beginning for Rick and his group coming out of this season," Kirkman said. "I think S3 has ended up being a big lesson on the part of Rick. It’s about him really learning how to live in this world and evolving to the point where he can do so effectively. We’re going to come into S4 with a much different Rick and we’re going to see how that affects everyone in the group in very serious ways. Every season has been a little bit different, and S4 is going to be vastly different...
...But it’ll still have all the zombie smashing that everyone wants."

Bonus: Kirkman odds and ends

Kirkman is keeping busy even as this season comes to a close. As stated above, he recently launched thewalkingdead.com. As of late 2012, he was also overseeing a pilot script for Thief of Thieves in the hopes that AMC would pick it up. On top of all that, Telltale is cranking out another edition of the award-winning game. It has to be difficult juggling all of it and keeping narratives consistent across medium, right?

Robert Kirkman

Jeff Slostad

"That’s why I don’t do it alone," Kirkman said. "I know comic books so I do the comic book stuff, I kind of know what I’m doing there. But when it comes to TV there’s a huge team of hundreds of people working on that show, all know TV better than me. When it comes to the video game, there’s a huge team of hundreds of people who all know video games better than me. I’ve been lucky enough to pick the right partners and collaborators and am able to work with the best of the best when it comes to bringing The Waling Dead into a new medium."
But does he want to get more hands-on with any of it? "I can’t help but learn things about it when working on it," he noted. "I watched the video game come together and helped that process come along to a certain respect despite my complete lack of knowledge about how things go in the video game world. It is temping to dabble in that field a little bit. But TV is really something I’ve gotten a little more well-versed in over the three seasons of The Walking Dead. I’m doing a lot more stuff in TV on my own and I've been working in the writer’s room for two years now, so I feel like I’m getting a little better. It’s definitely something that’s expanding the spectrum of things I think I can do."
Speaking of making TV, one of the nuts and bolts changes for The Walking Dead S3 comes from how we hear it. The show has increasingly used non-diegetic pop music to set the mood (see the existence of an actual soundtrack now or all the musical guests on Talking Dead). It's a big change from what S1 (or horror in general) tended to do, but the shift was intentional.
"It’s still something we try to do sparingly, but it is a different show," Kirkman said. "I’m really happy with the fact S1 was about people trying to survive—the struggle against zombies, killing zombies in the woods, killing zombies in Atlanta. It was like 'Oh wow, zombies are around every corner. And it’s scary but they’re killing them.' That’s kind of fallen by the way side and the show has gotten bigger and different. And as the show has evolved, I think the way we tell stories has evolved and that couldn’t be more clear than in the way the music has evolved over the show."
For more on what Kirkman has going on with The Walking Dead, well, that's why he went ahead and created a site this spring. No more bouncing between AMC, Image, Wikipedia, or Twitter; or that's the hope. At the very least, there's now one place you're sure to find Kirkman from time to time.
"You had to kind of scour the net to have all the info. TheWalkingDead.com was an effort to bring it all together so that somebody could go to one place to find out all things Walking Dead," he noted, adding that with this new project he's been known to check the forums after episodes, even interact with fans. "So when people say mean things I’m looking at it. I’m crying. It’s OK, it happens."
Listing image by Dylan Pech